Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 3576 - 3600 of 3712
Dear editor: I was quite disappointed to read the article “Countering anti-Semitism in the month of Ramadan” written by Rashad Hussain. Although Mr. Hussain has impressive credentials as an individual, the organization to which he is the United States’ envoy certainly does not. A little research into the background of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation would reveal this. For starters, in their publications, any and all actions taken by the State of Israel in retribution to attacks on the Israeli citizens are labeled as “ terrorist actions.... Full story
Which aspect of Secretary of State John Kerry’s repetition of the Arab position last week, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the root of Middle Eastern instability, is more remarkable? The fact that Kerry could actually say such a thing, or the fact that, with the exception of the Weekly Standard, such an extraordinary claim could pass almost unnoticed in a media landscape that is rarely short of opinions about the region? Let’s first revisit what Kerry said. After talks in Amman with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and his... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, has a Jewish problem. In a painful affront to the Jewish community, it recently defeated a government initiative to reinstate the legality of kosher slaughter of animals. This prompted Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, to threaten resignation and triggered sharp criticism of the Sejm from Jewish communities in Poland and around the world. What happens in Poland regarding Jews has special significance because of the Holocaust. More than 90 percent of the country’s 3.5 m... Full story
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA)—For the past decade, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture and I myself, as Poland’s honorary consul in the Bay Area, have been involved directly in furthering the renaissance of Jewish life in Poland. The renaissance is viewed as a “miracle” in Poland and around the world. At my foundation, we receive communications every day from all corners of the globe congratulating and thanking us for our leadership in the rebirth of Jewish life and culture in Poland. The renaissance is not just a Jewish one; it is really... Full story
As I was coming to the office the other day in the pouring rain, I saw a young mother with three small children: a baby in a stroller, a toddler in her arms, and a 3-year-old holding on to her hand, all huddling under the awning of the J building. I offered to help, and together, snuggling under my large umbrella, we delivered the little ones to the safety of her car. As we waded through the parking lot, the mother told the 3-year-old “the lady is doing a mitzvah.” My feet were wet and I was slightly late for a meeting, but I felt as if I had... Full story
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA)—The effectiveness of the European Union’s decision to blacklist only Hezbollah’s military wing might be debatable, but one thing about the move seems certain: It did not come easy. The decision July 22 by Europe’s 28 foreign ministers to put Hezbollah’s military wing on the EU list of terrorist organizations followed months of jostling by member states in the wake of last summer’s killing of five Israelis and a Bulgarian in a bus bombing near the Black Sea resort of Burgas. Israel and Bulgaria have accused Hez... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The guy with the socks up. The guy with the pants down. The guy with the headlocks. The guy who tweets and deletes. What is it with these male politicos? And why are they all Jewish? The cloistered community that is Washington’s Jewish elite collectively choked a little July 20 as it progressed through a column in which Gail Collins of The New York Times named the protagonists of what she dubbed the “Weiner Spitzer summer.” “Ever since the Clinton impeachment crisis, we’ve been discovering how much personal misbehavior... Full story
With the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, one is almost forced to question whether the global Islamist movement has been dealt a mortal blow. The notion that the era of Islamism has come to an end is not as outlandish as it seems. While the faith of Islam crystallized in Arabia 15 centuries ago, the ideology of Islamism—which aims to place the imperatives of sharia law at the heart of a coercive and all-powerful state—is a product of the last century. Like its totalitarian cousins—fascism, communism and nat... Full story
There are some basic things that constitute nationhood. A nation must have a native language; but it’s all right if the same language is spoken elsewhere. The language must be constantly updated to cover the events, history and culture of that country. It should have a history, however long or short. In the case of the U.S. relatively short, In the case of Israel, really a long, long time. It is important once again to emphasize that the people of the ancient and holy land of Israel have had for the past 66 years, the first indigenous, e... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—We don’t know. That’s the operative phrase of the new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks announced last Friday and ostensibly set to begin in the coming days in Washington. We don’t know their parameters, or if Israel will freeze settlements, release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners or agree to negotiate based on its pre-1967 borders. We don’t know whether the Palestinian Authority has agreed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. We don’t know how long Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will hold off on taki... Full story
Israel used to be just another picture in a textbook. It was another set of dates, another long list of names, another world. It was a photograph that was immensely important yet one could never understand why. Until I spent three weeks diving into Israeli culture through a BBYO summer program called Passport, Israel was simply a distant place—one I had not immersed myself in as I had in Florida, my home. I traveled through BBYO with 44 other teens from 16 different states and Canada. This trip opened my eyes to new perspectives—foods, cul...
The two-state premise for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back to the very foundation of the State of Israel. The United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 divided British-ruled Mandatory Palestine into two separate entities, one Jewish, one Arab. The plan recognized that the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea must be shared, a principle at the core of current efforts to achieve, through bilateral negotiations, a permanent peace based on two states for two peoples. Even though many Zionists had originally sought Jew... Full story
We all want the Arab war against Israel to be finally resolved. But is establishing a Palestinian state the answer? Not when the Palestinians’ goal is Israel’s destruction, as opposed to a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. Every opportunity the Palestinians had to establish a state was rejected because it meant accepting Israel. The offers they rejected included: a 1937 Peel Commission proposal of a state on 95 percent of territory what is today all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza; in 1947 a division of the land into Jewish and... Full story
By Ed Ziegler By searching the Internet it is easy to confirm that a very large number of Muslims continue to generate murderous terrorist attacks. The vast majority of these attacks are perpetrated on infidels (non-Muslims) who are peaceful and unarmed. It is not uncommon that these fanatics state a reason for the attack that has nothing to do with the victims. A typical example was on June 23 the BBC.co.UK reported that gunmen killed 10 Chinese and Ukrainian tourists, at a base camp The tourists were preparing to climb Nanga Parbat Mountain... Full story
Is the American Jewish community about to go over “the leadership cliff?” That phrase, which appears in a sober new study by the Jewish People Policy Institute, an independent think tank, reflects a growing sense that at a time when as many as 90 percent of the top executives of our largest national Jewish organizations, major seminaries, big-city federations and JCCs will retire in the next few years, there is a serious lack of preparation for the transition, with potentially dire consequences for the communal future. The 26-page JPPI rep... Full story
(JTA)—Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent four days of meetings in Jerusalem and Amman yielded no breakthrough and no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. One hurdle he must overcome: 42 of the 120 members of the Israeli Knesset vehemently oppose a two-state solution. Though those 42 members comprise only one-third of the Knesset, they hold nearly every important position in the government and the Knesset, and have a stranglehold on the actions of the government. They are strongly committed to settlements and occupation. (Prime Minister Ben... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—After two months of Jewish communal squabbling following the disclosure of a flubbed opportunity to detect a massive fraud scheme at the Claims Conference years before it was stopped, the Claims Conference appears to be moving on. At its annual meeting this week, the organization’s board of directors debated for more than six hours the circumstances surrounding an anonymous letter sent to the conference in 2001 alleging that multiple false claims had been approved for restitution payments. Despite two investigations that yea... Full story
Words can do much harm. Words such as two-state solution, land for peace, occupy, occupation, divestment, sanctions, boycott, have done much harm to Israel. Everyone gets on the bandwagon, including Jews, to put those words into action. On the other hand, lack of words, Islamic terrorism, radical Islam, mutilation, honor killings, can hide the true nature of dangerous forces we are all up against, but many of us have no clue. We do not see or hear about the danger to our country and Israel in the media. Those dangerous words have been stifled,... Full story
It’s tempting to see the chaos in Egypt right now, with President Morsi ousted and his Muslim Brotherhood party discredited, as just another failure of government. But there’s another aspect to this failure—and that is religion. It’s conceivable that if human beings didn’t have to eat, the holy clerics who have been running Egypt into the ground over the past year would still be in power. But if they want to ever regain their credibility with the people who soured on them, they will have to learn a lesson that every religion needs to learn: God... Full story
A few years back, the following clue appeared in the New York Times crossword puzzle: “Curly ethnic hairstyle, colloquially.” The answer? “JEWFRO.” The word made Patrick Merrell, the Times’ puzzle blogger at the time, anxious. “JEWFRO! Really? Is that something we can say?” he wrote. Don’t worry, Mr. Merrell—most Jews that I know have embraced the word (if not the hairstyle), and this (straight-haired) Jew approves. I suspect it’s the use of “Jew” as an adjective—a la Archie Bunker talking about “Jew lawyers”—that makes people... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—I had only known my girlfriend for a few weeks when she invited me to a friend’s house for Shabbat dinner on the Upper West Side. As a 44-year-old secular Israeli who had moved recently to New York City after my divorce, I didn’t have much experience with American Jews. Her friends were great: educated, liberal traditional Jews who seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me. While their religious rituals were new to me—I never saw people washing their hands and not speaking before making blessings on the challah... Full story
By Ira Sharkansky Chaos in Syria and now in Egypt, with instability in Lebanon increasing as Hezbollah is deeply involved in Syria. Hamas in Gaza is most likely planning its response to the problems of its patron in Egypt. Jordan’s king may be even more worried than usual about threats to his regime, and who knows what is going through the minds of the Palestinians in the West Bank who are close to their government or waiting for an opportunity to take over their government. Is all this good for the Jews? In the short run, we don’t have to wor... Full story
Following the ugly battle between the Egyptian military and Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, resulting in Morsi’s ouster on July 3, as well as the ongoing bloodbath in Syria, the arguments for the preservation of the Jordanian model—politically moderate, more democratic than its neighbors, and proudly Islamic yet amenable to good relations with western nations and with Israel—are self-evident. When King Hussein of Jordan died in early 1999, Israel mourned him, as the veteran journalist Eric Silver pointed out at the time, “as o... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—For the second time in less than three years, Egypt is erupting in chaos, with a popular protest movement leading to a swift change in the country’s leadership. For Israelis, the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency last week is a cause for optimism. An Islamist and a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi’s brief tenure saw a further estrangement between Israel and Egypt. The Brotherhood advocates Israel’s destruction and supports Hamas, the terrorist group that governs in Gaza. And while... Full story
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—On Yom Kippur, we ask “Who by fire?” Sadly, this year at Tisha b’Av we already know who—the 19 firefighters who perished in Arizona. “This is as dark a day as I can remember,” Gov. Jan Brewer said in a statement. Unknowingly, the governor connected me to the mood of the Ninth of Av, the Jewish day of mourning that begins this year on the evening of July 15. Each year we come from the sun of summer unprepared for this darkest day on the Jewish calendar. With the itinerary of vacation days on our minds, we reluctantly s... Full story
