Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 3618 - 3642 of 3854
Rachel and I sat in the comfortable living room of prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. We had been invited for tea by Aliza Begin, wife of the prime minister. It was the spring of 1980. When Menachem Begin entered the room there were greetings and hugs all around. Rachel and I had been close friends of the Begin family since our meeting on an airplane in 1968. The prime minister had just returned from a meeting at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. As I remember, we sat, had tea and some cookies. I asked Prime Minister Begin what could h... Full story
Providing a proper response is like being caught in the horns of a dilemma. The real issue is a combination of first, how to avoid war; second, how to inhibit Iran from nuclearizing weaponry; and, third, how to impact Iran to become less of a terrorist outreach state. I assess the pragmatic goals in the following order: First priority is to keep Iran from a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, there’s no practical way, short of all-out war, to keep Iran from having nuclear capabilities. Had the U.S. taken them on seriously five or eight years ago, w... Full story
Dear Editor: Now that the Roth Renovation Project nears completion with a fabulous new courtyard playground, I would like to thank all community members who generously donated to the project. Along with the playground, the revitalized campus features a renovated pool area, a resurfaced and relit outdoor basketball court, resurfaced tennis courts and auditorium improvements. All of these components make the whole campus greater than the sum of its parts and promote sustainability as a vibrant and vital community hub. When my wife, Caryn, and I... Full story
This year, the stars aligned! The first day of Chanukah and Thanksgiving fall on the same day! According to many calculations, it is the rarest of occasions that will not be repeated for many, many years. It is fascinating to delve into calculations and assumptions stemming from the differences between the Jewish and the Gregorian calendars, but let’s rather think about the meaning and the message behind this coincidence. Just like everything in Jewish life, the unique convergence makes sense and comes at a very important time when many of u... Full story
Here, in a nutshell, are the principles driving the Obama Administration’s Middle East policy. Screw the Syrians. Don’t upset the Iranians. And stop those damn Israelis from wrecking Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations. We are coming to the end of year marked by shameful climb-downs in the face of our enemies and utterly unreasonable demands made of our allies. In Syria, Obama temporarily toyed with the idea of launching air strikes against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, before being seduced by a Russian proposal to have that same reg... Full story
There was so much Jewish outrage in the wake of professor Steven Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott against Israel, it’s hard to know where to start. The most dramatic expression of that outrage could be found in the many commentaries and Facebook posts suggesting that if Hawking is going to boycott Israel, then why not also boycott the Israeli computer chip that enables him to communicate despite his severely handicapped state? As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote on JPost: “Why would one of the world’s leading academic minds condemn th... Full story
Israelis and Americans are going through a couple of bad patches with Barack Obama. The two issues are as different as they could be, but are united in reinforcing distrust of duplicity at the top. Americans’ problems are currently focusing on the limping roll out of what is linked directly to the president via its popular label of Obamacare. In particular, lots are remembering a presidential promise that they could keep their present insurance if they liked it, as they read the letters of cancellation received from their insurance companies. O... Full story
The Jewish Daily Forward 2013 ’Top 50‘ represents their annual survey of the 50 men and women who’ve made “a significant impact on the Jewish story” over the past year, and is informed by ”rules require that every one is an American citizen whose actions speak with a Jewish inflection.” Their 2013 list includes such prolific Jewish voices as Philip Roth and Ruth Wisse—as well as a former Guardian columnist we’ve commented on quite frequently: Their selection of Glenn Greenwald is explained thusly: The biggest story of 2013, and possibly the... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—As the extent of the catastrophic damage and tragic death toll continues to grow in the Philippines, a particularly heroic piece of history should be recalled by the global Jewish community, which owes a debt to the island nation. Seven decades ago, a Philippine president, a globetrotting Jewish family named Frieder and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, my organization, helped save the lives of more than 1,000 Jews who otherwise would have almost certainly died in the Holocaust. Thanks to their initiative, t... Full story
A tried-and-true method for lobbyists whose cause is opposed by the U.S. president is to bypass the White House by going to Congress. It worked for Jewish activists in 1943. But will it work in the current battle over sanctions on Iran? Seventy years ago, the Holocaust rescue activists known as the Bergson Group found themselves stymied by an administration that did not want to take action to save Jewish refugees from the Nazis. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his aides insisted that rescue was not possible until the Nazis were... Full story
One of the most irritating aspects of the international efforts to deal with Iran’s nuclear program lies in the unrealistic expectations that negotiations create, even among those—like the American Jewish advocacy groups who met with the White House Oct. 29 to discuss the nuclear issue—who have every reason to be cynical. From Nov. 7-8, members of the so-called P5+1, which comprises the five members of the U.N. Security Council along with Germany, will meet with representatives of the Iranian regime in Geneva. These talks follow from preliminar... Full story
America’s loss of dominance was inevitable. Its standing from the late ‘40s through the ‘50s could not last. The power derived from being the sole country on its feet after the most destructive war in history. The American economy thrived as a result of pent-up purchasing power from wartime full employment, the genius of sending demobilized troops to college, the skills they acquired, the economic boom associated with the babies they made, and the additional genius of foreign aid in the context of the Cold War that made the U.S. No. 1 in a wes... Full story
Should you be fearful of someone who demands you convert to his religion or he will kill you? What if there were 100s of such fanatics demanding you convert or they will kill you? What if you learned that they have killed thousands who refused to convert? There were thousands of people who took the fanatics’ demand too lightly. Below, are a handful of typical scary statements made by Islamic leaders. Read their words. Their words are similar to those spoken by many around the world. Then consider the possibility that they mean and intend to d... Full story
It’s common these days to micromanage what information we receive. Many of us have a list of favorite Web sites and blogs we regularly go to, as well as Facebook pages and mobile apps that reflect our individual tastes and ideologies. It’s a way of maintaining some level of control amid the chaos of the Internet. There’s an opportunity cost, however, to micromanaging this flow of information: We rarely experience the joy of what I call “bumping into knowledge.” That’s why I want to tell you about my all-time favorite Web site, Arts & Letters D... Full story
A new book published in the United States this week reveals that President Obama considers the prime minister of Israel to be a pain in the tuchus. For those Yiddishly challenged this translates as a pain in the posterior. No doubt the diplomatic fraternity will be frantically trying to play this latest revelation down and bury it under the proverbial carpet but for us mere mortals it is plainly obvious that despite spin doctors’ activities to the contrary, Israel’s reluctance to acquiesce to its own demise, does cause painful symptoms in the... Full story
The subject of incitement as an impediment to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may finally be getting the attention it deserves. But even now, discussion of the issue glosses over a deeper problem. Israel has been complaining for years about Palestinian Authority incitement against Israel and against Jews, arguing that it merely inflames old anger, stirs up violence and terror, and foments new hatred in each new generation. Most depressingly, it prevents the population from coming to terms with the idea of peacefully... Full story
When I was much, much younger I desperately wanted to be a musician. It was something my parents never encouraged, and I didn’t have any close friends who missed hanging out in the afternoon because of their music lessons. But I loved music. I loved the piercing sound of an electric guitar, the thrum of a bass guitar, the blast of a saxophone. So I tried. I tried them all—guitar, sax, mandolin, bass. I even went so far as to take harmonica lessons, because I thought, “That at least I can maste... Full story
Ah, Saudi Arabia! The country that spawned 15 of the 19 terrorists that executed the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. The country we in America are told is an ally, even though, when it comes to values, we have virtually nothing in common with the reactionary oil billionaires running the place. The country whose oil supplies us, for the moment, with about 13 percent of our annual energy needs. The country with one of the most abysmal human rights records in the world, which bans any religion other than Islam, which imports slave labor from the... Full story
In Woody Allen’s Sleeper, the hero wakes up from cryogenic sleep to find out a war has wiped out the world as he knew it. “Over 100 years ago,” a doctor tells him, “a man named Albert Shanker got a hold of a nuclear warhead.” Allen knew this incredibly specific joke would kill in 1970s New York, where it was easy to imagine that Armageddon would be launched by the fiery, bespectacled, Jewish leader of the New York City teachers’ union. The joke came to mind when I read how casino mogul, Jewish benefactor, and Republican bankroller Sheldon Ade... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Belief in God is at the core of my very being. But that belief is sometimes challenged by the scores of innocents killed over the millennia in God’s name, from biblical times to the present day. Last month, dozens were killed at a shopping mall in Kenya by terrorists demanding to know if those they were confronting were Muslim. If Muslim, they were spared; if not, they were murdered. One man who claimed to be Muslim was asked to name Muhammad’s mother. When he could not, he was summarily shot in the head. The day after the mall... Full story
Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) are engaging in negotiations refused for years by the PA. Yet, only weeks ago, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash delivered a paean to Shekih Ahmad Yassin, founder and leader of Hamas, the terrorist organization that has murdered hundreds of Israelis in scores of suicide bombings, calling him a Palestinian “icon.” How can peace talks and glorifying a terrorist chieftain coexist in the PA? Al-Habbash gave us the answer this summer, when he justi... Full story
A decade ago, Jewish parents worried that their children wouldn’t marry Jewish or bar and bat mitzvah their own children. Today, however, we see a younger generation that is marrying within the faith and looking to raise their children Jewish, while maintaining a strong bond to Israel. Taglit-Birthright Israel’s free educational trip, offered to young Jewish adults between the ages of 18 and 26, is largely responsible for creating the change we believed only a decade ago to be impossible: The younger generation is not only more connected to... Full story
In the important new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, American Jews overwhelmingly (by 94 percent) say they are proud to be Jewish. And yet, one of the most significant trends cited by the survey is the growing percentage (32 percent) of younger, “Millennial Generation”Jews, who identify themselves as Jews with no religion, considering themselves Jewish solely on the basis of ancestry, culture, or ethnicity. This stands in sharp contrast to my parents’ generation—the “Greatest Genera... Full story
One of the unintended highlights of this year’s Conversation—the annual Jewish Week-sponsored two-day retreat for a wide variety of Jewish leaders and future leaders from around the country—was the emerging friendship between two participants with seemingly little in common besides their names. Actually, their name. You see, the small team that helps put together the list of about 55 participants each year had intended to invite David Ingber, the dynamic and popular rabbi of Romemu, a growing congregation on the Upper West Side. When his posit... Full story
Years ago, Grandma told me, for the nth time, that God helps them who help themselves. It’s a message she should have directed to the Palestinians, as well as to her lazy grandson. Once more, the Palestinians are blaming others for their problems, while their most obvious roads to progress remain unused. This time it is Khalid Amayreh, writing in what he labels “occupied East Jerusalem” about what he claims to be “institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews in Israel.” I received the article from my friend Muhammad, with whom I often dis... Full story
