Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 3666 - 3690 of 3854
It is too early to comment with any certainty about the policy of the United States, or any other country with respect to Syria’s chemical weapons or its civil war. There are likely to be twists and turns before us heavy thinkers can pass on to other topics. Nonetheless, there are hints of interesting developments. My concern is with the United States and Barack Obama more than with the morass of Syria. His waffling was not impressive. Sending Kerry to make an impassioned speech, then making a very forceful half speech of his own before turning... Full story
It is estimated that there are at least 120 million fanatic Muslims around the world who want, and frequently chant, “Death to America!” Unless we Americans wake up to what they are doing, these fanatics will achieve their goal “Death of America!” Are you willing to give away our way of life? Hezbollah’s secretary general, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, stated, “We consider the United States to be an enemy because it wants to humiliate our governments, our regimes, and our peoples, because it is the greatest plunderer of our treasures, our oil, an... Full story
Recently Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas met with Jewish community representatives in New York during his trip to the United Nations at a special dinner hosted by the S. Daniel Abraham Middle East Foundation for Peace. Guests included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer; Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard University; Wolf Blitzer, host of CNN’s The Situation Room; Congresswoman Nita L... Full story
On the first weekday of chol hamoed Sukkot, most years, my wife and I take our four children to Hershey Park. The park, which is in Lancaster, Pa., is closed to everyone but frum Jews on that day. Lancaster is not known as a center of frumkeit—it is most decidedly “out of town”—but on that day Hershey not only makes accommodations for the visitors, but actually reconfigures the whole park to be frum friendly. The food stands, including the kettle corn that draws some of the longest lines, are all kosher. Placards advertise the times for min... Full story
Dear Editor: (In response to front page article titled “Arab Knesset member claims Temple Mount for Muslims only”) “Jews will not be allowed to ‘contaminate’ the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.” “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is a place of prayer for Muslims alone. Period! Not for the others.” “We repeat: the occupation of Al-Aqsa by the Crusaders was long, but it ended; the same was true of the British Mandate,and the same will be true of the Israeli Occupation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Al-Aqsa.” These vile words were spoken by Ahma... Full story
My wife and I recently took our first vacation in years, a four-day trip to New York City. We caught up on ourselves, on each other. We heard the amazing Emily Wells at an outdoor Lincoln Center concert. We visited museums. We saw the 9-11 Memorial. We walked. And walked. And walked. And we saw two plays—“The Assembled Parties,” a story that spans 20 years in the life of a once-wealthy Jewish family in Manhattan, and “The Book of Mormon,” one of the funniest and most outrageous plays to hit Br... Full story
There has been a flurry of items coming to my in-box describing the latest under the heading of anti-Semitism. It is, alas, a very long story, going back at least to the beginning of the Common Era. For those who aren’t familiar with Jewish ways of recording the dates of the goyim, that’s the year 0. The current wave grows out of the post-World War II and post-Holocaust era, when Christians renounced what they had been preaching for two millennia, and Muslims quickly picked up what Christians discarded after Israel’s War of Independence. Now w... Full story
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana said this in his “Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1”... and it’s still true. Look, call it “Arab Spring,” “Uprisings,” “Revolution”—the end result is that some of Africa and most of the Middle East has been stood on its head in the past three years. I listen to some supposedly really smart people parse the situation in Egypt, Syria, Libya and elsewhere. And I keep waiting. Okay? Now, tell us the real problem! Once in a great while, a writer l... Full story
By Ben Cohen JNS.org From the brink of war, the Middle East has moved at dizzying speed to the cusp of peace. Or so we are led to believe. The issues at hand are Iran and Syria—and incidentally, there is good reason to feel some relief from that fact, since it’s a timely reminder that Palestinian opposition to Israel’s legitimacy is not the core dispute in the region, but a sideshow in the larger civil war with Islam that has engulfed much of this neighborhood. In Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad claims, under the watchful eye of the Russi... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—At a recent kids-included party in Jerusalem, I spent much of the time either on the floor with my daughter Mari or trailing her around to make sure she didn’t eat anything toxic. A successful American journalist living here chatted with me for a few minutes, and as I left her to intercept my daughter before she reached a stairwell, she told me, “Don’t worry. They get older. You get your dignity back.” Funny, I didn’t even have any spit-up on my clothes. But her words tapped into the part of me that feels inadequate.... Full story
I suspect you are already tired of hearing about Syria. The future path is blurry—even to our president. Assad will still be in power. How many has he killed without chemical weapons? Who is using the chemical weapons? It sounds to me like the real problem is the one issuing the orders in Syria. Americans are now on the verge of committing billions of dollars of money we do not have to impact an area of the world that already hates us. Here at home we have millions who cannot find a job. We have millions more who cannot feed their families w... Full story
Barely minutes after the news broke that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was planning a major effort on Capitol Hill to garner support for the Obama Administration’s plan for a limited military operation against the Syrian regime, the conspiracy theorists were having a field day. As always, it’s instructive to note how the notion that American foreign policy is a prisoner of organizations like AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobbying group in America, is an idée fixe on both the far left and the extreme right. Juan Cole, a left-... Full story
“A Portrait of American Jews,” a major study due out soon from The Pew Research Center, is said to show that more than 60 percent of the children of intermarriage are raised as Jews. It also notes that only 22 percent are given a Jewish education. What, then, does it mean to be raised Jewish if it doesn’t include a Jewish education? That’s just one question certain to be brought up in a renewed discussion, prompted by the report, over the nature, sustainability and future of American Jewish life in the 21st century. Already in recent days a... Full story
By Ira Sharkansky On the one hand there are these considerations... On the other hand are these... In the light of these conditions, what should be the policy of the United States? Of course there is no clear or “objective” answer. Someone has to decide. Most prominently it will be the president of the United States, with inputs from White House advisers, secretaries and others from the Departments of Defense and State, plus whatever comes out of Congress, what reaches the president from interest groups and commentators in the U.S. and ove... Full story
I’ll never forget the words of my Hebrew school teacher: “While we may have once been the ‘Chosen People,’ now we are the ‘Choosing People.’” This has been a guiding principle throughout all my years as an educator, one that has accompanied me from my tenure in the Soviet Jewry movement in the 1980s and early ’90s right up until my present-day position as the director of America’s oldest Zionist youth movement, Young Judaea. This time of the year is all about evaluating ourselves as the “Choosing People.” What choices have I made this past... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The scene is familiar to us all. Women of the Wall come to the Kotel to worship in the shadow of the Temple Mount. Haredi Orthodox worshippers respond by disrupting their prayers, sometimes pelting them with eggs and other objects. Underlying these clashes are distinctly modern issues—the conflict between liberal and traditionalist Jewish movements and the proper place of religion in the Jewish state, among others. But the controversy surrounding women’s prayer at the Western Wall hearkens back to events that occurred but a few... Full story
Dear Editor: Chanukah stamps should be available at all post offices on or about Oct. 17. It will not be a new issue, rather it will be the same stamp issued in 2011. Since it is not a new issue, not all post offices will order a supply. Chanukah is early this year, beginning the night of Nov. 27. If your post office does not have a supply of Hanukkah stamps after Oct. 20 you can contact Ronald Scheiman at hanukkah@att.net. This information is important to show there is a demand for Hanukkah stamps that is not being met. Ronald Scheiman The... Full story
The girlfriend had been living with her boyfriend for nearly seven years. They lived a good life. He owned a successful business he’d built up himself. She worked at a highly respected international environmental organization. She was extremely cool—bright, funny, well liked by all. Neither was young anymore. They’d both been married once, and though they loved one another, they hadn’t yet gotten over the bad taste their previous, difficult relationships had left. So, while they didn’t... Full story
By Ira Sharkansky The people of Israel continue to live in a condition that is marked on the one side by the theme of the national anthem, Hope, and on the other by the national slogan, oy gevalt. Once again, this New Year has its reasons for optimism, not unblemished by worries. Life is good for most of us. Measures of health rank Israelis as one of the most long-lived of people (Jews and others), with a medical system considered among the best in the world. Hospital care does not provide the luxuries associated with private rooms enjoyed by... Full story
If our prayers are heartfelt, they will resonate on high, and be answered favorably. One of the loveliest aspects of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the concept of forgiveness, the notion that if we are sincere in our commitment to make atonement for past sins and try to improve our ways, God will, in effect, wipe our slate clean at the outset of the new Jewish year. But too often, despite our best efforts, human nature intervenes and we are back to our old ways before we know it. That’s why one particular, and often neglected, passage of t... Full story
“Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon/The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave/They buried us without shroud or coffin/And in August the barley grew up out of our grave.” These lines are from the poem “Requiem for the Croppies,” by the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who died last week. They were pointed out to me by a dear friend of mine, also an Irishman, who instructively observed how Heaney’s verse—which commemorated the merciless British crushing of an Irish uprising in 1798—eerily conjures up the terrible real... Full story
LOS ANGELES—I started building my sukkah in December. To those of you who are sukkah DIYers, you know how ridiculous this sounds. A sukkah is the ritual hut that Jews build each year on the holiday of Sukkot, which begins this year on the evening of Sept. 18. You set it up after Yom Kippur, you take it down after the eight days of Sukkot are over. Most sukkahs come as easy-to-make pre-fab kits—setting one up takes all of 30 minutes, even for a tool-challenged people. So why did I start making mine eight months ago? Because this year, I’m makin... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Each year when I sit in synagogue during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I’m struck by the complex stories we read about biblical women and by the wisdom these stories offer about ensuring the dignity of women and girls today. The past year was one of paradoxes. At a time when Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai, Wendy Davis and countless others reinvigorated conversations about women’s leadership, health and safety, rape and sexual violence continued to escalate all over the world. As I try to grasp these contradictions, I’m r... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the trial of Leo Frank in Atlanta, let’s begin by stating for the record: No, the Leo Frank case was not the impetus for the founding of the Anti-Defamation League. It is true that the organization, now celebrating its centennial, was founded the same year as the arrest and trial of Frank for the murder of one of his factory workers, a 13-year-old girl named Mary Phagan. But the idea for ADL, conceived by Sigmund Livingston, a Chicago attorney, preceded the case. Rather than being the... Full story
The barbarians didn’t appear out of thin air; they have always been around. They have been operating in sleeper cells within the mock civilization that was left behind by the European colonialists as the first world war drew to a close in Middle East. With Syria’s lid blown off, President Bashar al-Assad’s tribe and its various affiliates have been fighting the Sunni tribes that were in power before November 1970, when Assad’s father staged a coup and had his loyalists appointed to senior positions in the military and the government. Do the var... Full story
