Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Media pundits spend a lot of time “explaining” to the rest of us why some political or social development just occurred. Last week, The New York Times presented what it claimed are the real reasons behind the controversy over Israeli judicial reform. The recent election results, which brought Israel a new government—and the judicial reform plan—are part of a “rightward drift” that goes back a number of years, according to the Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief Patrick Kingsley. “The failure of peace negotiations with the Palestinians in the...
(JNS) — President Joe Biden’s foreign policy has been highlighted by the disaster in Afghanistan and its embrace of Ukraine, whose security it seems to value more than that of America’s own borders. But one consistent theme has been the attempt on the part of the Obama administration alumni back at work in Washington to revive their old boss’s pivot in the Middle East away from longtime allies Israel and Saudi Arabia to a new alignment based on a rapprochement with Iran. That’s the context for the Iran-Saudi pact. The two longtime foes will...
(JNS) — For many decades, during Shabbat services, Conservative and Religious Zionist Orthodox congregations have recited the heartfelt Prayer for the State of Israel, written by Israel’s chief rabbis in 1948. The Conservative movement’s Sim Shalom prayer books seem to solely use the prayer’s first paragraph. Reconstructionist Jews, in their Kol Haneshamah prayer books, have also adopted the prayer’s first paragraph, with minor modifications, and made more modifications to latter portions of the prayer. The prayer’s widely-used first paragraph...
(JNS) — America and Britain claim to be allies of Israel. There is no gainsaying the deep links between them of military assistance, intelligence and trade. Israel is the invaluable strategic asset for America and Britain in the Middle East, a crucial bulwark in the defense of the West. And yet, both America and Britain undermine Israel’s security and defense against existential attack by sanitizing, promoting and funding Palestinian Arabs, whose active cause remains the destruction of the Jewish state. A recent event illustrated this par...
Insights from the Academy-award winning film. There are a lot of ways to explain the multiverse — a concept or theory that our universe is one of many different universes, possibly each containing a different version of ourselves or our world — but the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” simplifies it: Every decision in a person’s life is like a fracture point, creating alternate universes where the ramifications of those decisions ripple forward, like the proverbial hurricane blowing after a butterfly flaps its wings. The movie bui...
(JNS) — Don’t expect a flood of Jewish families moving to Arkansas in the wake of the state legislature there passing a bill this week that charts a path towards universal school choice. When Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders affixes her signature to the Arkansas Learns Act, it will make her state the fifth to enact legislation that allows state funds to follow students enabling parents to choose whatever school is the best fit for their children. Arizona was the first state to do so last year and since then West Virginia, Utah and Iowa have als...
(JNS) — As the 2024 election begins to slide slowly into view, it’s now clear that barring an unforeseen health issue, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president. But the Republican field has been unusually slow to develop, mainly because most of the GOP potential candidates have been hesitant to be the first to join Donald Trump on the primary landscape. They remember how Trump eviscerated Jeb Bush and others in the early stages of the 2016 campaign, and they clearly see safety in numbers when it comes to confronting the for...
(JNS) — This week, The Guardian quoted the policy director at J Street, Debra Shushan, as saying, “Christian Zionism, particularly of the variety that has become predominant among American evangelical Christians in recent decades, which sees Jewish control and settlement in the entire land of Israel as a requirement for fulfilling their end-times prophecies, has been extremely detrimental to U.S. politics, and U.S. policy toward Israel.” To emphasize the seriousness of this alleged threat, Ms. Shushan went on to note that in America, Chris...
(JNS) — U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides has persisted in interfering in Israel’s internal affairs, egregiously violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Affairs, which requires diplomats to “respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state” and “not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State.” While collaborating on foreign matters of mutual interest (such as working together to counter Iran) would be welcome, interfering in Israel’s internal affairs is off limits. Yet Nides regularly makes hostile demands and e...
(JTA) — My synagogue sent out a cautiously anxious email yesterday about an event coming this Shabbat, a neo-Nazi “Day of Hate.” The email triggered fuzzy memories of one of the strangest episodes that I can remember from my childhood. Sometime around 1990, in response to local neo-Nazi activity, some Jews from my community decided to “fight back.” I don’t know whether they were members of the militant Jewish Defense League, or perhaps just sympathetic to a JDL-style approach. When our local Jewish newspaper covered the story, it ran on its...
(JNS) — One of those Palestinians who the U.S. State Department keeps telling us wants a two-state solution murdered yet another Israeli, this time an American citizen. Elan Ganeles, a 27-year-old in town to attend a friend’s wedding, was shot dead by a Palestinian terrorist on a highway between Jericho and the Dead Sea. I’m not sure how many people are aware of the number of American victims of Palestinian terror. Since 1970, at least 80 Americans have been killed and 87 wounded in Israel and the disputed territories. During that time, nearl...
(JNS) — Several days ago, I returned from attending the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (“CoP” or the “Conference”) leadership mission in Israel, along with the leaders of approximately 20 other American Jewish organizations that are Conference members. The mission’s sole purpose was supposed to be to learn directly from Israel’s key elected leaders about vital and serious issues that confront Israel so that American Jewish leaders can be better informed when they address their communities, the media and Con...
(JNS) — King David’s plaintive and eternally mysterious question ad matai? (until when?), which we recite daily with heads bent or in deep self-contemplation, has a particularly searing relevance when I look at the recent terror attacks unleashed upon our innocents. The murder of two young children invokes the exact inverse of the Talmudic wisdom that he who saves a life has saved the world. With these murders, the world has been destroyed; the world of decency, of compassion, of any kind of empathy—gone. Furthermore, the murder of the Yaniv...
(JNS) — Elan Ganeles of Connecticut was murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists this week, thus becoming the 147th American citizen to be killed by Palestinians since 1968. Yet not a single Palestinian Arab terrorist has ever been brought to the United States to stand trial for any of those crimes. Think about that: 147 dead Americans and not one prosecution. The problem is not that we can’t find the suspects. The whereabouts of some of them are already known to the authorities. In fact, the Israeli government has publicly identified some of...
(JNS) — There are many issues worth having an argument over; then again, some are better left alone. For example, a debate about whether or not the actress who is hired to play Golda Meir in a movie is Jewish is not worth a moment of anyone’s time. By contrast, the discussion about whether the current nearly unlimited powers of Israel’s Supreme Court should be checked and balanced by giving more power to the Knesset elected by the country’s voters is of utmost import. As it so happens, the British actress Helen Mirren is the focus of an unim...
(JTA) — Ever hear Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” sung in Yiddish dialect? It used to be a regular bit performed by comedian and actor Richard Belzer, who died last week at 78. He also used to do a routine about Bob Dylan’s bar mitzvah in which he recited a Hebrew prayer in the singer’s distinctive tone. A similar Elvis bar mitzvah bit was also part of his routine. Surprisingly, Belzer performed these niche routines in numerous comedy venues and even on the nationally televised “The Late Show with David Letterman.” In addition to a v...
(JNS) — One of the mysteries of the war against Israel is the extent to which a monstrously twisted narrative about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs — casting the former as evil and the latter as sanctified victims — has been absorbed by so many people. Still stranger, this narrative seems to be the driver of progressive politics. It’s not just that “intersectionality” demonizes the Jews, but that it is driven by an obsession with Palestinianism. As Corinne Blacker wrote in Tablet, “In queer and women’s studies programs, the topic of Palest...
(JNS) — For all intents and purposes, the Iranian nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is dead. In December, Iranian officials said they had doubled their capacity to enrich uranium. International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring cameras were shut down by the regime last May, and IAEA inspectors have been banned from checking on the program. IAEA officials say Iran has enriched 154 pounds of uranium to 60% purity. According to the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, that is enough to produce several weapons. Iran can now enrich i...
Dear Editor: “JCRC’s thoughts on antisemitism” reminds me of a sixth-grade paper I would be required to write in Delaney Park Elementary School sixth grade English class. Having lived in the Greater Orlando area for over 80 years, I have seen the pendulum swing in both directions. Having been on the receiving end of blatant antisemitism throughout my school days, I can tell you today’s antisemitism is child’s play. “Jesus loves me yes I know for the Bible tells me so”… “Hey Jew Boy, did you eat your pork sandwich at lunch today?” and so fo...
(JNS) — When the spokespersons for the U.S. State Department and the foreign ministries of America’s Western allies churn out press releases condemning the building of homes for Jews, it’s all a matter of finding a similar document in the archive, and just cutting and pasting the text and slapping a new date on it. Their joint statement denouncing Israel’s announcement of approval for the planning and building of 10,000 new homes in Judea and Samaria, as well as the government authorization of nine “outpost” settlements, was strictly by...
I have mentioned before that I volunteer twice a week at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience here in New Orleans. I love the experience of guiding people through over 430 years of the American Southern Jewish Experience. Did you know that the first Jews in America came from Spain in the 1500s? Did you know that they settled in the Caribbean Islands before coming to the U.S.? And that they came through Galveston, Texas as their port of entry some 300 years before the great Northern European Migration to New York? As I guide these...
(JNS) — Earlier this month, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen paid a diplomatic visit to Khartoum, where he met with the leader of Sudan’s transitional government, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. They finalized the terms of a normalization agreement between the two countries, which will be signed later this year following Sudan’s official transfer of power to civilian authority. On the same day as Cohen’s visit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood alongside the President of Chad, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, as they inaugurat...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — Many official reports and media accounts speak of heavy Russian casualties in the Ukraine war, both economic and military, especially in terms of the estimated number of Russian army casualties. The New York Times, in a recent report citing U.S. and Western officials, put these losses at nearly 200,000 Russian soldiers. These losses, incurred in only about 11 months, exceed U.S. losses in Afghanistan over two decades by a factor of eight. Other reports have addressed Russia’s economic and strategic losses. An obj...
(JNS) — The tough stuff is what makes the news right now: Israel is in the midst of an exceedingly distressing situation. But we are so much more than this. We are more than angry demonstrations, communication failures and even the occasional shocking call for violence. In order to provide a heartening balance, I share a story: At the beginning of February, I received an urgent phone call from my 15-year-old grandson who attends a yeshiva high school. It is a small and modest yeshiva, built on the heights of a tiny yishuv (settlement) in the w...
Dear Editor: I notice that most of your opinion pieces and world news briefs come from the right-wing Jewish News Service. Perhaps you should balance these articles with an equal amount of material from center and center-left Jewish publications. When writers like Jonathan Tobin and Mitchell Bard (see Heritage Jan. 20, 2023) accuse Jewish Democrats and liberals of being “Jewish antisemites,” one has to wonder, since the majority of Jews are Democrats and liberals, who the “Jewish antisemites” really are. Burt Whiteman Endicott, N.Y....
