Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — Like the proverbial old soldiers, anti-Jewish lies never die. But they don’t fade away either. No matter how often they are proven false, they come back to incite hatred and murder. Today, the focus of antisemitism is Israel, although the old forms of Jew-hatred remain. So, there are contemporary blood libels like the media accounts of the shooting of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durah, an exercise in what scholar Richard Landes has called “lethal journalism.” One of the most pernicious and persistent lethal narratives has been the myth of...
(JNS) — Come on. Be honest. Surely someone reading this is hoarding a keepsake from the Eisenhower administration, stashed away in the attic. Better check, because you might be in violation of the Espionage Act. It seems that anyone who’s anyone, and even a few nobodies, is in possession of state secrets with classified markings and fuzzy provenance. Secure facilities are so yesterday. Nowadays, top-secret documents apparently have feet and simply slip away to improbable locations. That’s the only conclusion one can reach now that we know...
(JNS) — The names Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, Johan Voskuijl, Bep Voskuijl, Jan Gies and Miep Gies should be well-known, but very few Jews know them. They were Otto Frank’s friends who, during the Holocaust, prepared a secret apartment at 263 Prinsengracht Street in Amsterdam for his family to hide from the Germans. They smuggled food and clothing to the Franks, including their daughter Anne, during the family’s two years in hiding. Miep Gies also had the presence of mind to keep Anne’s diary and presented it to her father upon his ret...
(JTA) — In January, 24-year-old Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills collapsed on the field after experiencing cardiac arrest. His team and the entire NFL community rallied around him. His first words upon awakening: “Who won?” Although Hamlin’s medical crisis was a rare on-field occurrence, the trauma surrounding his collapse stirred up age-old questions for me, and for many of us, about the toll football takes on the bodies of its players. What are we allowing to happen to these young men, in the name of sportsmanship, entertainment and nationa...
(JNS) — International Holocaust Remembrance Day has put me in mind of a famous poem by German clergyman Martin Niemöller about the rise of Nazism: First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To...
(JNS) — Seen only in the context of the struggle between America’s two major political parties, the House of Representatives’ vote to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Relations Committee is not a historic turning point. It is merely the latest evidence that the once largely polite battles between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have escalated into a full-blown culture war. But while it is possible to frame House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s making good on his pledge to oust Omar from her seat on Foreign Relatio...
(Jewish Journal via JNS) — We attach ourselves to narratives because they comfort us. It’s comforting to think that the terrorist who murdered seven Jews coming out of a Jerusalem synagogue on Friday evening was striking a blow against “the civilized world,” as President Joe Biden asserted. But he wasn’t, Mr. President. Alqam Khayri, 21, a resident of eastern Jerusalem, was specifically going after Jews. His Palestinian brethren who celebrated his murderous act by dancing in the streets and handing out candies were not thinking about the civili...
(JNS) — If CNN needs to flirt with antisemitic tropes to report on controversial Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, what does that say about the network? In an article dated Jan. 25, 2023, titled “As Israel bans Palestinian flags, one artist protests with his brush,” CNN’s Abeer Salman seemed to go out of her way to not just include ahistorical swipes at the Jewish state, but also—borrowing from centuries of antisemitic blood libel—associated the holiday of Passover with Jews benefiting from the shedding of blood of non-Jews. The focus of th...
(JNS) — The left-leaning Israeli media is disseminating news articles transmitting the discontent of American Jewish leaders with the new Israeli government and the policies it wishes to implement. A good example of this genre is the recent Times of Israel headline that blared, “169 liberal U.S. Jewish leaders sign letter expressing concern over Israeli government.” These leaders headed non-Orthodox rabbinical seminaries, federations, AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents and others, and they decried accusations of “antisemitism” directed...
(JNS) — Opposition to American antisemitism is remarkably situational: By and large, right-wing antisemites face, as they should, widespread condemnation and ostracism. Left-wing antisemites and antisemites of color almost always get a free pass, with ostensibly anti-racist progressives rushing to their defense and proclaiming the usual shibboleths about “criticism of Israel” and “taken out of context.” At the moment, the primary beneficiary of this largesse is Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has thus far served as a highly effective spearhead for the e...
(JNS) — One month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush held a prime-time news conference to update the American people on his administration’s war on terror. He said, “One month ago today, innocent citizens from more than 80 nations were attacked and killed, without warning or provocation, in an act that horrified not only every American, but every person of every faith, and every nation that values human life. The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world...
(JNS) — Over the past several weeks, the anger of the opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly elected government has reached hysterical, and even apocalyptic, tones. This should seem familiar to Americans, who have grown accustomed to the same kind of fever-pitch discourse ever since the emergence of Donald Trump on the political scene. Indeed, his presidency wasn’t merely opposed by foes; it was “resisted,” with conspiracy theories about his colluding with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election. Since 2020, many on the right are...
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) — Theodor Herzl has been with me my whole life. I know that is an odd statement from a Canadian who has lived his entire life in Toronto. I am not related to Herzl and, of course, I never met him. Yet I feel very close to him. My earliest memory of Herzl is of a family visit to his grave in Jerusalem in 1966. I co-wrote and performed in a play about him when I was in seventh grade and organized Herzl-related programming at summer camps in Ontario. When I go to Israel, I revisit his grave to pay my respects. I celebrated my 50th b...
(JNS) — In Mexico City last week, the president of the United States met with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada for what was dubbed the “Three Amigos Summit.” The notion that Joe Biden, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Justin Trudeau resemble Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short—stars of the 1986 cult classic comic film ¡Three Amigos!—seems far fetched. Do these politicians make you laugh? On second thought…. But seriously folks, their Declaration of North America listed “six pillars.” Topping the list (of course):...
(JNS) — The Palestinian Authority and its supporters have a new enemy: the Louvre. The world’s most-visited museum, the famous French institution that holds some of the greatest works of art and antiquities, is likely to find itself on anti-Israel boycott lists around the world. This is because among the Louvre’s storied collections is a slab of stone with an inscription that affirms the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. The stone, known as the Mesha Stele, was first discovered in 1868 near the Dead Sea, but its i...
(JNS) — After two years of pointedly ignoring a problem largely of his own making, President Joe Biden finally made a brief visit to the U.S. southern border in El Paso, Texas. While there, however, he saw little of the human cost of the catastrophe, as he didn’t meet or see any of the illegal immigrants who have streamed across the border since he assumed office. But in the days before he arrived for what was little more than a photo op, Biden rekindled a controversy that has been simmering for most of the last decade. The president dec...
(JNS) — It seems that every Jewish organization claims it is fighting antisemitism. Yet, it is clear that they are failing. Many reasons account for the spread of this cancer. One is that some Jews are antisemites or have taken positions that are antisemitic. Others are enablers of antisemitism. Jew-versus-Jew is not a new story, but usually, we have managed to unite to fight a common enemy. Now we are proving the adage that we are our own worst enemies. While it is true that antisemitism is a disease of both the far-right and the far-left, w...
It is a fundamental American principle that religious and racial discrimination is impermissible, unacceptable and unjust. We Americans do not let threats of violence stop us from changing a discriminatory “status quo.” Thus, threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other bigots did not stop the U.S. government from ending the longstanding “status quo” of segregated schools, “whites only” drinking fountains and practices that prevented Jews and blacks from living in many neighborhoods. Instead, we stood up to the racist Black-hating terrorists....
(JNS) — In their zeal to construct an academic setting that reflects the true diversity of the nation and attempts to redress past discrimination and exclusion, universities have created “protected” groups of students who are scrupulously shielded against any emotional or ideological assault via university harassment policies and codes of conduct. There is one group, however, that is absent from the accepted list of protected groups, even though, as a small ethnic and religious minority, they should be recognized as such. That group, perha...
(JNS) — Imagine if Pope Francis were to say: “Only Christians are permitted in the Vatican! No Muslims and no Jews!” The “international community” would be outraged. But the pontiff would never say that. Muslims and Jews are welcome in the Vatican. Imagine if Israelis were to say: “Only Jews are permitted on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount! No Muslims and no Christians!” The “international community” would be outraged. But Israelis would never say that. Christians and Muslims are welcome on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, the place where...
This week, much of the world got uptight over the visit of a Jewish man to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jordanian, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders and entities referred to it as the “storming of Al-Aksa” and “violating its sanctity.” Itamar Ben-Gvir is a newly installed cabinet member of the Israeli government, however its not the first time that he’s visited the site, and it’s not the first time that a minister in Israel’s government has done so. So why all the fuss now? After reuniting Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel restor...
(JTA) — I was first introduced to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI, in the late 1980s when he was visiting Jerusalem. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, was eager for me to meet with the cardinal, telling me that I would discover a very different person from the image portrayed in the general media. He was so correct. That image was in no small part the result of Pope John Paul II having made him the head of the Vatican Office for Doctrine and Faith, to enforce orthodox Catholic teaching. In addition, the fact that Ra...
In the midst of all the New Year’s reveling in the streets of Orlando, high above on an office building on Orange Avenue and Washington Street antisemitic messages “Vax the Jews,” “Honk if you hate Jews,” “Hitler was right” streamed over and over across the building’s top. According to clickorlando, no one below reacted to the sign. But news outlets and politicians across Central Florida and the nation soon began talking out against it. Channel 6 reporter Eric von Ancken was right on top of it. I’m glad to see that our local news is bringing at...
We need to feel empowered, not scared. In 2020, my TV show “Skin Decision: Before and After” premiered on Netflix. In it, I helped people bring out their best selves through performing life-changing plastic surgery procedures. I quickly gained a huge following online. Suddenly, I had over a million people who wanted to hear what I had to say. At first, I kept the conversation light. I talked about my work and showed pictures and videos of surgeries I was doing and the incredible transformations my patients made. But when the 2021 Isr...
