Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 3356 - 3380 of 3706
By Josh Hasten Dear Harvard College Israel Trek 2014—As you well know by now, your current trip to Israel has drawn international attention and media coverage. While a group of college students traipsing through the Jewish State is probably not worthy of such focus, your visit to Ramallah and specifically your smiley group photo at the grave of Yasser Arafat, the father of modern-day terrorism, has drawn condemnation from many (myself included). At the same time your organizers on the ground in Israel, as well as your sponsors back in Boston i... Full story
Ah, the devious Benjamin Netanyahu! Just when we are on the cusp of a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations, Israel’s slippery prime minister introduces a potential deal-breaker, in the form of insisting that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. That, in essence, is the narrative that has emerged over the past fortnight, as shaped by the tiresome pundits who spend their days forensically examining Netanyahu’s statements and actions. Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Hussein Ibish, a faux moderate wor... Full story
Every time there’s a public discussion about whether Israel should release more imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, my heart skips a beat. My daughter Alisa was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1995. Two of the killers have been in an Israeli prison since 1995, serving life sentences. I always worry that they will be among the ones released. So yes, it’s personal. But it’s also much more than that. It’s not just about my daughter’s killers; it’s about dozens of other Israeli and American families whose loved ones also were victimized... Full story
By Richard A. Ries I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that I’ve been to more synagogues in the Orlando area in the last few months than many people get to in a year, let alone a lifetime. I have not been “shul shopping”—looking for a place to specifically join. Most of my pit stops had little more depth attached to them than where my car happened to be on I-4 on a given Friday or Saturday. A few weeks ago, I had a Friday business conference at a Disney resort. I had never been to the Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation, so I stuck aro... Full story
Dear Editor: Foreign Minister of Israel, Avigdor Liberman has proposed that the State of Israel budget $365,000,000 annually for Diaspora education, the objective of which is “to serve as an antidote to rising assimilation, intermarriage, and disengagement from the Jewish community.” A threshold question is how many additional students can be educated if all of the $365,000,000 is allocated to the United States, and the preferred vehicle is Jewish Day School, at a cost of $20,000 per student annually, or $180,000 per student for nine years (K-... Full story
It’s getting harder these days to survey the latest developments in the Middle East without feeling anxiety about the negative impact they will have on our own policy debate. I see a pattern—some may call it “Obama’s Law,” though I hesitate to do so—whereby the worse things get for Israel in a strategic sense, the more pressure there is on Jerusalem to make concessions. And because Israel cannot make concessions when Palestinian terrorists in Gaza shower the south of the country with missiles, or when Iran tries to smuggle in rockets to... Full story
One of the best known and most useful lines in the analysis of things political and military comes from Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general who died in 1831. His treatise “On War” contains the phrase that still guides realists, “War is the continuation of Politik by other means” Politik can be translated as “policy” or “politics.” The terms may be close cousins, but they have different implications. Americans and others schooled by images of overwhelming power, enormous numbers of military and civilian casualties, and demands for unc... Full story
In Herzl’s dream, Israel was to be the home of the Jewish people. A home for the Jewish people. Herzl pictured a utopian libertarian place where creative, literary and academic Jews could be Jews. Where their knowledge, their inventiveness would no longer have to deal with anti-Semitism or prejudice of any kind. Ah, but where in the world would this place be? And what about the Jews who did not fit the literary, academic profile? The gentile minds of the time felt that location was secondary to just getting the Jews out of their hair. As t... Full story
Rabbi Rick Sherwin (Rabbi Rick), spiritual leader at Congregation Beth Am in Longwood, had the privilege of attending the 2014 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 2-4. The largest gathering of America’s pro-Israel community, the policy conference highlighted the importance of the partnership between the United States and Israel and showcased the two nations’ common interests in making the world a better place. Through demonstrations of groundbreaking Israeli innovations, keynote speeches by leaders from both the U.S. and Isr... Full story
What would you do if you saw someone drowning in a river? Or witnessed someone being torn limb from limb by wild beasts? Or if you stumbled upon someone who was under attack by armed robbers? Judaism is clear in its answer; you intervene to save them. The Jewish sages use these cases as the springboard to teach that we always have an obligation to save a life. Health insurance saves lives. That is why we have an obligation to try to reach every American who needs access to quality, affordable insurance, and to help each sign up through the new... Full story
In March, the Obama administration reported on Obamacare’s enrollment numbers. Fewer people have signed up than the administration had hoped, especially among the young and healthy. For many people, even the previously uninsured, the choices in the Obamacare market are simply not what they’re looking for in a health insurance plan. It’s easy to understand why. Obamacare replaces a wide variety of market-determined plans with a limited number of plans containing narrow networks of doctors and hospitals and a required set of items covered. No mor... Full story
Back in 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused his regional rival Viktor Yushchenko, who was then the pro-western president of Ukraine, of having campaigned on the basis of “anti-Russian, Zionist” slogans. Putin’s invocation of the Z word led some observers to briefly fear that Russia was reviving the spirit of Soviet anti-Semitism dressed up as “anti-Zionism.” But a few hours later, Putin’s office clarified that what he’d meant to say was “anti-Semitic,” not “Zionist.” Was Putin’s office lying with this clarification? Was the... Full story
Al Jazeera America, the satellite and cable television news network owned and operated by the wealthy sheikdom of oil and gas-rich Qatar, can’t seem to present its Arab-Israeli news straight. This should come as no surprise. The Qatari ruling family supported the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and the Brotherhood’s Palestinian spin-off Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Profit isn’t of much interest to Al Jazeera America. “That is the difference that will allow u... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Leaders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement say they are protesting Israel’s policies in the West Bank. They are doing far more than that. BDS advocates routinely oppose a two-state solution and seek to delegitimize the sovereign, Jewish State of Israel. In some cases, BDS becomes the latest form of anti-Semitism. The BDS movement aims to isolate and punish Israel, using the same techniques applied to apartheid South Africa. Not hesitating to misrepresent facts and ignore context, these Israel bashers take adv... Full story
As I believe many have heard, Orange and Seminole counties, along with 58 other counties in Florida, have changed the starting date of FCAT testing from what was publicized earlier in the year. Instead of beginning the third-, fourth- and fifth-grade reading exam on Monday, April 21, the FCATs will now start on Monday, April 14 and continue throughout the week. This revised schedule conflicts with the religious calendars of many throughout the state as Monday evening the 14th is the first night of Passover and that is also Holy Week. This... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—The last time Ambassador Samuel Lewis was at an Anti-Defamation League podium was in April 2008 as part of a roundtable celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary. The speakers were each asked to share their most vivid and representative recollections of Israel. Sam, a distinguished State Department veteran, served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1977 to 1985, and had engaged in tough battles with Israel’s leaders over the negotiations with Egypt and particularly over the Lebanon War. Yet, what he chose to recall, so poign... Full story
Dear Editor: It was very disappointing to see the Heritage rebuttal at the bottom of Jeremy Scheinberg’s very compelling letter regarding the inadvisability of a Jewish Academy of Orlando (JAO) move and the role of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando (JFGO). First of all, only after Mr. Scheinberg’s letter did you disclose the Feb. 7, 2014, piece written by Stan Roberts was actually written on behalf of the JFGO and was approved by them. How nice it would have been if this would have been disclosed when it was first published! Ins... Full story
#Rethink2014 is one of the more creative Twitter hashtags I’ve recently encountered. Launched by students opposing the hatefest otherwise known as “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW), the hashtag is designed for incorporation into tweets that explain why this ghastly annual event is a series of calumnies and lies from beginning to end. Some examples: “I oppose Israel Apartheid Week because I know what apartheid actually means.” “I oppose Israel Apartheid Week because I’m sitting next to an Arab-Israeli Muslim IDF soldier on the bus in Jerusalem.” ... Full story
Settlers and the ultra-Orthodox are important minorities in Israeli politics. Both are somewhere on the fringe of key decision-makers, but must be taken into consideration even if not part of the A-team. There is no precise measure of either group. “Settlers” are both more and less the people living in post-1967 neighborhoods of Jerusalem and elsewhere over the 1967 borders. Many, most, or the overwhelming majority of the people living in those locales chose their residence for any number of prosaic reasons, with no thought of making a pol... Full story
Patternicity” is what scientists call the human tendency to find meaning in random events (seeing patterns where none exist—like faces in the clouds or Jesus in a potato chip—is known as “apophonia”). Connecting the dots can lead to false conclusions (“Paul is dead!”), brilliant insights (“E=mc2”), or the latest Malcolm Gladwell bestseller. I spent Sunday at Limmud NY, the annual festival of Jewish learning, sampling classes on Israel, Jewish spirituality, anti-Semitism, and even Israeli comedy. And though it is not the coincidence of th... Full story
For 20 years now, we have seen the two sides of the controversy over “land for peace” talking past each other. The “peace camp,” as they like to style themselves, has argued that Israel is doomed to be either a bi-national state, which may not always have a Jewish majority, or an “apartheid state,” with democracy only for the Jews and second-class citizen rights, at best, for the Arabs; that, in order to be both Jewish and democratic, it is necessary for Israel to divest itself of the main Arab population by giving them a state of their own,... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—For Americans, the definition of national identity is straightforward: It goes hand in hand with citizenship. If you are an American citizen, you are also American by nationality. The same applies to the French, Germans and many others. In Israel, however, there is a different but equally valid conception of the relationship between citizenship and nationality. Indeed, this understanding is central to Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. The State of Israel maintains a national population registry in which every resident is cla... Full story
Dear Editor: In light of the article about J Street in the recent edition of the Jewish Heritage, I want to tell the community about the movie “The J Street Challenge,” which premiered last month in Miami. It was sold out in just 2 days, with 400 people attending. More screenings are planned. The movie will also be shown in the Orlando area later this month or early next month. Watch for further details or contact Sandi Solomon at sansolomon@hotmail.com to be on the mailing list. David Moldau Longwood... Full story
Dear Editor: While changing Birthright Israel’seligibility requirements to include young adults, who previously participated on a teen Israel experience, appears to be a worthy addition to Birthright israel, it is, in fact, a mirage and a misstep. The change has the appearance of bringing more young people to Israel, but because the experience will be duplicated, increased participation is an illusion. It is not that a second free trip is a bad thing. The misstep is that the precious dollars can and should be used to actually increase the n... Full story
At friendly dinners and agency meetings, on the phone and in emails, the plans outlined in a recent edition of the Heritage, detailing a way to restructure the Maitland campus and reduce if not eliminate the $5.8 million debt hanging over the property’s (and community’s) head, are being discussed with interest and, in some cases, a modicum of panic. Coming to be known as the Schwartz Plan (after Charles Schwartz, a Jewish community leader for decades and one of the prime reasons anything is eve... Full story
