Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2937 - 2961 of 3730
(Kveller via JTA)—I used to have the right idea for Yom Kippur. I liked the notion of an entire month to clean up my messes from the past year, and I worked hard to deliver carefully worded apologies. The promise of a clean slate appealed to my resolution-making personality. And I appreciated the fact that the obligation to make life improvements deeper than, say, eating better, differentiated the Jewish New Year from the secular one. I was a High Holidays superfan. This year, however, I’ve found it difficult to focus solely on my faults, my... Full story
BUDAPEST (JTA)—As our car rolled slowly toward Budapest, we saw a huge group heading in the opposite direction on the highway just outside the city: Hundreds of people quietly walking in the breakdown lane, marching toward freedom and peace. I couldn’t tell if the other drivers were lifting their heads or not, but I couldn’t look away, paralyzed by a scene that reminded me of the stories my grandfather told me about his march from Budapest to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. Barbed wire fences are again being built in Europe to stop the fl... Full story
You won’t read about it in the New York Times or the Washington Post. But this week’s arrest of four Palestinian terrorists who were plotting to attack a Jewish holy site tells you everything you need to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. The reason you won’t hear about it in the American news media is because the terrorists were caught before they struck. Apparently intentions don’t count. No casualties, no news coverage—and even when there are casualties, there isn’t always news coverage. Did your daily newspaper report abou... Full story
On Aug. 16, the Israeli Army revealed that Iran has been directing terrorist attacks from Syria against Israelis in the Golan Heights region. Nobody paid attention. Four days later, Iranian-sponsored rockets from Syria struck Israel’s Upper Galilee. Is anybody listening now? For weeks, supporters of Israel have been warning that the emerging Iran agreement would give Tehran funds that it could use to wage war against Israel through its proxies. But now it turns out that Iran is already waging that war. The question is, who is paying a... Full story
It’s time for another round of that hoary folk song about disaster just about everywhere, i.e., “They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain...” The ugliest story concerns more than 70 bodies, decomposed to a smelly lump making counts difficult and identification impossible, found in a closed truck along a highway in Hungary. No less disturbing are reports by an Israeli journalist who interviewed women in a refugee camp on the Jordan side of the Jordan-Syria border. There were few men to be interviewed. The women told stories o... Full story
(My Jewish Learning via JTA)—We live with a practical tradition. We begin the Jewish New Year with 10 days devoted to introspection. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we are asked to review our past failures and victories, to evaluate our relationships and how we can make things better for ourselves and those we care for. We take stock of our lives and try to put ourselves back on the right path. “Chet” is the Hebrew word commonly translated as “sin.” It is derived from the term that means “to miss the target.” The assumption is that sin i... Full story
Is it over? On Wednesday morning, during a KPCC radio talk show about the Iran deal, the host, Patt Morrison, asked me whether, now that President Barack Obama has the 34 votes he needs to support the Iran nuclear agreement, the rancor and vitriol within the Jewish community that marked the debate over it would subside. Honestly, I wish I knew the answer. I do know that last night, the evening before Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski said she would sign onto the deal, a prominent Maryland rabbi held a rally outside his synagogue, during which he... Full story
(Kveller via JTA)—Growing up as the only Jewish family in town meant that we missed out on a lot of things. We didn’t go to Hebrew school, we barely acknowledged Shabbat and we had very little connection to the Jewish community. My Israeli mother did her best to give us a basis in Judaism, but since my dad did not have a Jewish background and there were no other Jews for miles around, being Jewish was more of an abstract concept than a way of life. But every year, when the air turned cooler and the leaves turned colors, something would cha... Full story
The nuclear deal with Iran has, inevitably, been accompanied by a large amount of crystal ball gazing among its defenders and opponents as to how the legitimization of Tehran’s nuclear capacity will impact its behavior. Will the Iranian regime emerge from the deal as a responsible international actor—an outcome on which President Barack Obama himself is betting—or will it seek to rub salt into the wounds of its gullible Western interlocutors by fanning existing regional conflicts and launching new ones? Predicting politics is a notor... Full story
Bruce Feiler has written a really fascinating book titled “Abraham—a Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.” It tracks the story of this founder of the three dominant faiths in the world today. Abraham, the man, if he did exist (calm down religious ones), was indeed every man. All our foibles, all our visions, all our shoulda-couldas are in him. He had a wife who could not bear him a child, so he took his maid to bed. Now in the story, his wife told him to do it. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not have the same excuse. Later, his wife did bear him a... Full story
The US State Department and Justice Department are wrestling with an issue concerned with a verdict handed down by a Federal Court in New York. It involves a civil suit, brought by American families who suffered injuries and death due to Palestinian terror attacks in Israel. The jury decided in favor of family charges that the Palestine Authority and PLO personnel were responsible for the attacks, and awarded the families $218.5 million. Due to provisions of US antiterrorism law, the verdict was automatically tripled, to $655.5 million. The... Full story
I was born in Iran, but I fled when I was just 17, leaving my home for the uncertainty of a life without family or friends, and enduring a dangerous desert crossing that forever changed my life. Although I love Iranians, I love the freedom and choices offered in the West more, and I want to protect them. The decision to facilitate nuclear production under the Iranian-Islamic government puts us all at risk. The nuclear deal is not good for the Iranian people, the region or the world. It gives the mullahs power to suppress opposition and... Full story
With the Obama administration determined to see the Iran nuclear agreement passed in Congress, and increasingly belligerent toward its critics, many opponents of the deal worry that by continuing to wage what appears to be a losing fight in Washington, Israel will pay a heavy price The Day After the mid-September vote. But several key anti-deal Israeli and American Jewish officials I have spoken to in recent days insist that is not the case. Rather, they say that in addition to the moral imperative of opposing what they view as a catastrophic... Full story
I didn’t think the Iran deal could get any worse. I didn’t think I would find any more loopholes that would make it even easier for the Iranians to cheat and get away with it. Then, this morning, I read this extraordinary news item from the Associated Press in our Jewish Insider Daily Kick-Off, and I had to find a word that would be stronger than “rip-off.” I found swindle. Here is the news item: “AP Exclusive: U.N. To Let Iran Inspect Alleged Nuke Work Site” by George Jahn: “Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a... Full story
In Europe, Jewish communities are still licking the wounds from a miserable 12 months that saw deadly jihadist violence erupt against them in Paris, Brussels, and Copenhagen. On the old continent, there has also been an unprecedented rise in hate crimes targeting Jews, along with a growing acceptance of anti-Semitic discourse masquerading as fevered, impassioned criticism of alleged Israeli crimes. These events are entirely consistent with Europe’s trajectory since the turn of the 21st Century. One can now confidently predict that any u... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Congress and the American people are focused on what everyone agrees is a historic, serious and consequential foreign policy decision—the fate of the nuclear deal with Iran. While we all hope for a debate based on substance and conducted with civility, the truth is that political debates today are often characterized more by slogans and fearmongering than by evidence-based deliberations. Some of the rhetoric around the debate over the Iran deal has been far from edifying and downright worrying. Republican presidential can... Full story
It’s worth pondering at some length Barack Obama’s overlooking of Winston Churchill in his comment that he does not remember a case when a foreign official involved himself as much in American politics as Benyamin Netanyahu. Churchill was intent in bringing the United States into the European war, and it is conceivable that he would have succeeded if Pearl Harbor had not done the job. Roosevelt was in an incremental process toward war, not all that different from Wilson’s road to participating in World War I. Moreover, the US was as deepl... Full story
One of the lessons learned from the intense debate over the Iran nuclear deal is that there is a serious and growing divide within American Jewry. In large part it’s between those who are active in Jewish and Israeli life, and those who are not. This gap is increasingly evident in our widely divergent views on Israel, U.S. foreign policy, and the merits of the agreement with Tehran. Indeed, members of each group find it hard to believe that fellow religionists can actually see things any other way than the way they do, and they often base their... Full story
“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith...” What if words like this actually meant something? This is Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which the United States signed in 1970. It continues: “...on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” Please read it again, slowly, understanding that 190 nat... Full story
The tenth anniversary of Israel’s retreat from Gaza has occasioned a number of interesting commentaries. Perhaps the most innovative comes from Shmuel Rosner, of Haaretz and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, who views the withdrawal as a kind of triumph for Zionism, surprisingly enough. We should “rejoice” over the fact that Israel “chose” on its own to leave Gaza, Rosner contends. “We took our fate in our own hands...The Jews were not evicted... We were not driven out.” He is alluding to the classic Zionist concept of Jews taking their fate into... Full story
When it comes to the deal agreed to a fortnight ago in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program, there’s a pattern evolving that should be worrying the Obama administration: the more you know about it, the less you like it. A new opinion poll conducted by the organization I work for, The Israel Project, reveals that an increasing number of Americans are anxious about national security—after the economy, it’s the issue voters take most seriously—and that the Iran deal has exacerbated their concerns. More than 75 percent of Americans say they have... Full story
On the surface lies and jokes may appear harmless. Many of the lies about Jews are so absurd it’s hard to imagine that anyone would believe them. But they do. Anti-Semitism and hatred for Jews are fanned by lies and jokes dating back centuries. In the 14th century, a sickening lie “Blood Libel” made the claim that Jews kill Christian children for their blood to make matzo (unleavened bread). To this day it is still circulated. Also in the 14th century Jews were blamed for poisoning wells across Europe causing the Black Plague. The Proto... Full story
Commentators have long noted that Israel is a western outpost in the Muslim Middle East, and suffers accordingly. This note accepts such a designation, but begins with a slightly different perspective, and seeks to learn what is relevant for the here and now. The Middle East is not only Muslim, or nearly entirely Muslim. It is also the Third World. This designation has its social, economic, and political elements, irrespective of religion. Traits of Mexico are similar to those of Palestinian areas of the West Bank, Gaza, and just about... Full story
“Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv,” President Obama warned on Aug. 4, claiming that if his Iran deal is rejected, military conflict will inevitably ensue. Mr. Obama seems to be betting that the rest of us have forgotten that Iranian rockets already fell on Tel Aviv last year. If rockets fell when there was no agreement in 2014, why should Israelis be frightened by warnings that rockets will fall if there is no agreement in 2015? There was a time, not so long ago, when Tel Aviv seemed immune from the dangers brewing in Gaza. Sure, border towns suc... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—This past month, as our attention was focused on watching the developing Iran deal, the situation in Israel has taken a deeply troubling turn. First, a woman wearing a kippah was detained by the police for attempting to worship at the Western Wall. Then David Azoulay, the haredi Orthodox minister of religious affairs from the Shas political party, called the largest movement in Judaism, Reform Judaism, “a disaster for the State of Israel.” He then followed up with an even more disturbing diatribe, saying he couldn’t even call ad... Full story
