Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 3084 - 3108 of 3706
I was walking out of Publix the other day, my arms full of groceries, my head tilted down as I looked at the pavement, deep in thought, when I heard someone call my name. “Mr. Bornstein,” a woman said. “Can you stop and talk?” I recognized her immediately, a member of my congregation and one of my mother’s peers. She spoke with the vestiges of a long-ago foreign accent, with all the seriousness and focus of someone intent on making an important point. “Mr. Bornstein,” she began. “I was just t... Full story
By Ira Sharkansky We can’t avoid it. There are a billion or so Muslims, and the rest of us are more or less dependent on what they do. Oil and gas is one dependence, which we should not minimize despite the current dip in price. Physical presence is another dependence, even in places where non-Muslims are large majorities and control government. Israel’s 20 percent Muslim population, with Muslim dominant countries all around is one setting with a disproportionate influence on world politics. European percentages between 5 and 10, higher in maj... Full story
Did you know that the United States Senate has been underwriting a series of events publicly glorifying a Palestinian terrorist who murdered an American citizen—in fact, a senator’s niece? Well, it is, and this outrage must come to an end. The terrorist’s name is Dalal Mughrabi. On March 9, 1978, she headed a squad of 13 Palestinian terrorists who set out from Lebanon towards Israel, in several small boats. They were members of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). At the time, Yasser Arafat was chair... Full story
Amid the numerous studies and analyses regarding Jewish American life, a simple fact remains: part-time Jewish education is the most popular vehicle for Jewish education in North America. Whenever and wherever parents choose Jewish education for their children, we have a communal responsibility to devote the necessary time and resources to deliver dynamic, effective learning experiences. The only way we can do this is by creating space for conversations and knowledge-sharing around innovative new education models. That also means making the... Full story
The supposedly unprecedented step taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his plan to speak directly before Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat on March 3, rather than working exclusively with the White House on the issue, actually has an interesting precedent—established in 1975 by none other than Yitzhak Rabin and America’s Democratic Party. That spring, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger undertook a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The negotiations quickly ran... Full story
(Kveller via JTA) Since the news of the recent Disneyland measles outbreak and the subsequent chatter on Facebook began, I discovered I have at least four Facebook friends (and likely a few more) with healthy, non-immunocompromised, vaccine-aged children who have decided, for non-medical reasons, to not vaccinate. For some of these friends and acquaintances, the news was not surprising considering their views on other issues. With one friend in particular, though, it felt like a betrayal, one that I just can’t get past. Here this person wa... Full story
You have to hand it to the United Nations, I guess. It’s hard to think of another body that would organize a special meeting on the subject of rising anti-Semitism with anti-Semites not just in attendance, but making speeches as well. The Jan. 22 meeting on the subject at the U.N. General Assembly, organized in the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, started well enough. The keynote speaker was French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy, who used the occasion to mount a forthright denunciation of what he called “the del... Full story
It didn’t take even a week to be refuted. On Jan. 15, noted Israel critic Peter Beinart declared that Palestinians who hate Israel never claim that they were inspired by anti-Israel incitement. Just six days later, on Jan. 21, a Palestinian who stabbed twelve Israelis on a Tel Aviv bus said he was inspired by “radical Islamic broadcasts.” Beinart is a CNN commentator, a columnist for Ha’aretz, and a fellow at a liberal think think, the New America Foundation. He made a splash in 2012 in the Jewish world with his book The Crisis of Zionism... Full story
The UN may do good somewhere, but the case would take some convincing. Its people are spread throughout the Third World. All told, they are probably not worse than the governments they are meant to help. We often see UN vehicles and personnel in our neighborhood. They are here to help the Palestinians, but living in Israel because it is more desirable. The UN reached the limit of its peacekeeping role in Korea, and has not returned to anything close. That exercise, like later ventures in Vietnam and elsewhere, was managed by the U.S., and... Full story
For a look at the voter’s guide, please see page 2. (Forward)—Fed up with the American Jewish community and the big-mouth nobodies who think they own it? Good news: There’s an election going on. And you can vote. No, really. An actual, honest-to-goodness election. Until April 30 you can go online, pay $10 to register and cast a vote for a delegation that will represent the Jews of America at an international convention in Jerusalem next fall. The convention, in turn, will choose officers and set budgets and policies for several major Israe... Full story
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (JTA)—While nascent talk of the Holocaust was in the air when I was growing up in New York City, we did not learn about it in school, even in lessons about World War II or the waves of immigration to America’s shores. There were no public memorials or museums to the murdered millions, and the genocide of European Jewry was subsumed under talk of “the war.” My father was a somber man who arrived here from Poland after the war and, like many survivors, kept to himself, trying his best to block out the past. Growing up, my... Full story
(JTA)—Three weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in a Parisian kosher butcher store several miles west of the supermarket where four Jews were murdered on Jan. 9. The shop in our neighborhood was well patronized, with lines stretching out to the sidewalk before Shabbat. We were staying in an apartment in Paris’ 12th district while I promoted a new book about the treatment of Jews in France during World War II. During our stay, we spoke with dozens of our Parisian friends, including some who are Jewish, about whether the year 2015 evokes for t... Full story
Dear Editor: Upon a world marred by Islamic turmoil, terror, and violence, a gift of inestimable value has been bestowed. On Dec. 28, 2014, in a speech directed at Islamic religious scholars and clerics, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said, “It is inconceivable that the ideology we sanctify should make our entire nation a source of concern, danger, killing, and destruction all over the world. Honorable Imam (the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar), you bear responsibility before Allah. The world in its entirety awaits your words, because the I... Full story
Waiting for someone in authority to say Kadish. It isn’t prominent in any of the major party platforms. To be sure, one must be wary of making any conclusions about what candidates say and write in the midst of a political campaign. If they are not lying outright, the chances are that they are not telling all the truth. In a context such as Israel, where a coalition government is inevitable, the importance of campaign promises is even dicier. No matter what politicians really think and intend, the unpredictable politics of a coalition may m... Full story
Truly, there must be peace-loving people in every religion. It is for this reason there are a number of interfaith events among Christians, Jews and Muslims. In hopes of achieving peace, many Christians and Jews assume all their Islamic counterparts enter the meetings with similar values and honesty. Obviously they are not aware that the Q’uran approves of Al-Takeyyah: Lying For Allah. Nor have they become aware that so many Islamic leaders preach hate of infidels and Islamic domination. According to “Islamic Commentaries” falsehoods (Al-T... Full story
Jews spent close to two millennia away from home. When the Romans finally expelled the Jews from their land, really upset because it took so long to beat their guerilla forces, we scattered to over 50 countries. Gone was the Second Temple, gone was our government, our army, our social structure, everything. Except us. The Jews. We scattered and as we did, we invented something uniquely Jewish: The Portable Community. We didn’t have a Temple, so we built synagogues. We didn’t have our social structure, so we created Jewish Community Centers, Jew... Full story
Recently, a comment was posted on the Heritage’s website concerning an April 18, 2014, op-ed piece titled “Islamic enclaves in America,” by Ed Ziegler in his column “Remember, Never Again.” The comment read: “This is a complete fabrication... so bad that even Fox News retracted the story... My Jewish friends, there are many out there attempting to manipulate society through lies... we have seen this before. Please be vigilant and never forget.” The writer, who called himself Edison, also referenced www.snopes.com to validate his position. Edi... Full story
Palestinian Christians warn that the current situation of no-war and no-peace with Israel is not sustainable in the long term, and say they want to see a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which have been frozen for more than a year. Most Palestinians say they support non-violent resistance to achieve an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem next to Israel. The Palestinian Authority has recently joined several United Nations organizations, most recently the International Criminal Court (ICC) which could... Full story
The controversy over whether to bury the French terror victims on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives is a reminder of the embarrassing failure to provide basic security at one of the Jewish people’s most sacred sites. The Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reports that when the decision was made to bury the four terror victims in Israel last week, the Israeli authorities suggested they be laid to rest at the Mount of Olives cemetery. The 3,000-year-old site is the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world. It includes the graves of the biblical pro... Full story
Dear Editor: (In responds to the Jan. 19 issue op-ed titled ‘Defending Alan Dershowitz is not a Jewish issue’ by Ronn Torossian) I don’t know where to begin. I do agree that defending Alan because he is a Jew is absurd. But the rest of this column is just as absurd. Alan is one of Israel’s strongest advocates and one of our most effective leaders, and this effort to damage his reputation is beyond the pale. OF COURSE HE IS NOT GUILTY—he has already proven that without a doubt! Columns like this just add to the media frenzy and do nothing b... Full story
Lest anyone think, even for a moment, that there is even the slightest link between Islamic terror against Jews in Paris and Islamic terror against Jews in Jerusalem, the New York Times has rushed in to disabuse us of that notion. The Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, authored a half-page article on Jan. 10 mocking the idea of such linkage. The editors helpfully added a huge color photograph of a scowling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The image of the mean, angry Netanyahu is important to trying to discredit any sympathy for h... Full story
There has been widespread condemnation of attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher market in Paris, with interesting differences between the condemnations. There are Muslims condemning both as deviations from true Islam, while other Muslims praise both as appropriate defense measures for the sake of Islam. And some Muslims condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo but praise the attack on the Jews. A recent YouTube featuring an ambassador from the Arab League assigns much of the blame for Middle Eastern ferment to Jews who control the media and... Full story
It was an electrifying moment: in a voice crackling with anger and pain, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls denounced the rise of anti-Semitism in France before the country’s National Assembly on Jan. 13, pointedly observing, “We haven’t shown enough outrage.” Valls was speaking following the funerals of seven of the victims of the recent Islamist terrorist attacks in France, in which a total of 17 people, including four Jews trapped in a siege at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in eastern Paris, were murdered in cold blood. Though his spe... Full story
PARIS (JTA)—The kosher supermarket was chosen deliberately. Men, women and children were shopping and preparing for Shabbat. Only two days before the attack, terrorists had left 10 of the best-known satirical journalists and cartoonists dead at Charlie Hebdo. Three French police officers were also struck down, one of them a Muslim. Each Islamist terrorist attack targeted a symbol of the French Republic, seeking to bring the country to its knees. That Jews were targets of radical Islam was, alas, unsurprising. Four of the hostages—Yoav Hat... Full story
Sunday’s solidarity event in Paris was, for this viewer, a day full of anomalies and disappointments. First there was the march of world leaders itself. There, in the front row was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with, to his left, the President of Mali, French President Hollande, German Chancellor Merkel, the head of the European Union, Palestinian Authority President (seemingly for life) Mahmoud Abbas and, next to him, the King of Jordan. Firstly, one wonders how Mahmoud Abbas got there and why? Is he really among the ranks of world l... Full story
