Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — According to an old Israeli quip, the way to remove 500 Canadians from a swimming pool at closing time is to whisper, “Everybody out of the water, please.” The implication is both clear and amusing to each group. Israelis are famous for and proud of being disobedient and unruly; Canadians are considered and view themselves as well-mannered and orderly. But the joke, apparently, is on all concerned, now that the latter’s truckers have entered the picture. These guys aren’t exiting the proverbial premises with a subservient bow. On the co...
(JTA) — Is it appropriate to call an ancient rabbi a “legendary hottie”? To translate one Talmudic voice replying to another as, “Oh my God, what the actual f–k is wrong with you, you misogynistic ageist dips–t”? Miriam Anzovin, an ex-Orthodox artist in Boston, ignited debate over those questions this week after making headlines in both North America and Israel for her series of TikTok videos responding to passages in the Talmud, the central text of rabbinic Judaism. Anzovin’s way of talking about Talmud has been shocking for some. “This is...
Obama's career of political activism began in some ways when he met Eileen Hershenov. He graduated from Columbia University, and as David Remnick put it, "got it into his head to become a community organizer." After a brief stint working for a living, he answered an ad and joined Ralph Nader's left-wing New York Public Interest Research Group. His supervisor at the time, Eileen Hershenov, describes having "some really engaged conversations about models of organizing." After a year, Hershenov...
(JNS) — It hasn’t been a good year for school boards. In the last 12 months, many of the local bodies that govern public schools have been taking a beating over policies dealing with the COVID pandemic that many parents believe are hurting their children. Many boards have also faced furious pushback from the public about their willingness to go along with teachings on critical race theory that seek to divide Americans against each other. In those instances, much of the mainstream media rallied to the defense of the education bureaucrats aga...
As I was checking out of the grocery store on Friday morning and thanking a Palestinian Arab worker for helping to bag my groceries so efficiently and quickly, then wishing him and the Palestinian Arab cashier a Shabbat Shalom, I was pulled aside by the store manager and reprimanded. “Don’t you know, sir, that we are an apartheid state, and we are neither to show any interest in or empathy for the Palestinian Arabs workers, and certainly not treat them with kindness or respect because everything in our interaction with them needs to be abo...
In the Feb. 4, 2022, issue of Heritage, the upcoming meeting with Anti-Defamation League Southern Division Senior Associate Director Eric Ross was announced. I, as the editor, saw it as an opportunity to bring attention to many changes in the organization and that the community would have this opportunity to ask questions. Unfortunately, my attempt to bring awareness was interpreted by some as causing provocation, which was never my intent. The use of opinion, however, in an informational article was inappropriate and I apologize for it. Becaus...
One of the more curious responses to Amnesty International’s Israel Apartheid report came from the Anti-Defamation League. In a press conference the heads of Amnesty held, they presented the main “findings” of the “investigation” they conducted regarding the status of Israel’s existence. It works out that after years of “careful study,” Amnesty’s entirely professional “researchers” determined that Israel has no right to exist. The Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews after two thousand years of homeless wanderings, is a typ...
(JNS) — It made headlines in many Jewish outlets, even if it was ignored by the secular press. Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, gave a sermon on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in which he said: “The continued occupation in Palestine/Israel is 21st-century slavery and should be abolished immediately.” What really drew attention to his statement was his claim that Israel was employing “enslavement.” This is a piece of libelous fiction. The term “slavery” is not a metaphor. Tha...
The brouhaha around Whoopi Goldberg has been hijacked by the red herring of race. Instead of focusing on the horrific murder of 6 million Jews strictly because they were Jews, we’re arguing over whether these murdered Jews should be considered a race. Since Hitler himself saw the Jews as an “inferior race,” Goldberg has come under attack for challenging that categorization. “The Holocaust was not about race,” she said, implying in subsequent comments that the Jews shouldn’t be considered a race. Even when she apologized on the Colbert Sho...
(JTA) — My entire adult life I have espoused and jettisoned multiple theologies and philosophies after subjecting them to the ultimate test: Would they survive Auschwitz? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, almost always with some kind of caveat. Now Auschwitz presents a new test much closer to home. This month, the subject of who betrayed Anne Frank and her family has exploded onto the airwaves. A new book, prominently featured on “60 Minutes,” claims that the Franks were betrayed by Arnold van den Bergh, a member of the Joodse Raad, or the Jewis...
(JNS) — A 211-page report issued by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom is pouring a deeper foundation on top of an already dangerous and insidious path to delegitimize Israel. The report charges Israel “with oppression and domination of Palestinians, through cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion,” in what it further describes as crimes against humanity. Disturbingly, this report joins a malicious piling on against the world’s only Jewish state. Last April, the organization Human Rights Watch issued a 213-page repor...
Dear Editor: Good ole Uncle Joe Biden has more in common with good ole Uncle Joe Stalin than any American I can think of. When he brings up, which he does constantly, that White Supremacy is the greatest threat to our Democracy he sounds like Tokyo Rose in her hey day bragging about the Japanese victories over America during WW II. I know that he had racist animus toward Blacks and he didn’t want his children going to “hell hole” schools with them. I know that he was close and admiring friends with fellow Senator Byrd who was a Grand Wizar...
On Chanukah 2002, four Hercules planes bearing hundreds of people evacuated from Africa landed in Israel. The passengers included Israeli families who had been vacationing in Kenya — some alive, some wounded, and some children returning to their homeland in small coffins. Now, Biden has decided to release Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, an Islamic terrorist who “participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks” from Guantanamo Bay. 2002 had been a bad year in Israel. Four hundred and fifty-seven Israelis were murdered by terro...
(JNS) — The antisemitic hostage-taking in Colleyville, Texas, on Jan. 15 brought to the surface bitter memories of the Holocaust: Jews being singled out simply because they were Jews. Eighty years ago, on Jan. 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference took place on the outskirts of Berlin. In 90 minutes, the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe, calling it the “Final Solution.” They intended to wipe out 11 million Jews across Europe, including in the Soviet Union, England, Ireland and Switzerland. The host was Reinhard Heydrich, known a...
(JNS) — One of the tragicomic if all too prevalent customs of contemporary woke corporate culture is the way many groups and corporations now open meetings with ritual acknowledgments that they are on “stolen land.” It involves the convener of the gathering to begin any proceedings by first stating that those speaking are “on the lands” of whatever Native American tribe once lived there as the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent. That is part of the context of the claim that the State of Israel was built on “stolen l...
(JNS) — Less than four days after a gunman held four Jews hostage inside a Texas synagogue in a doomed attempt to free a convicted terrorist, the Council on American-Islamic Relations thinks it is ready to renew its campaign to achieve the same objective. “It’s time to push back,” CAIR’s Dallas chapter director Faizan Syed wrote on Jan. 19. “The news coverage around Dr. Aafia Siddiqui over the last few days has been inaccurate, one-sided and made to paint a victim of the war on terror as a terrorist. The ‘Free Dr. Aafia Campaign’ has...
In a recent statement published on the annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, not only misrepresented and defamed Dr. King’s legacy, but he did so using some of the most vile antisemitic tropes singling out the Jewish people and Israel. In his statement, Dr. Nelson wrote of Dr. King’s legacy and overcoming societal inequities in the U.S. and all over the world. Listing a broad range of social problems, Dr. Nelson then seaml...
(JNS) — As far back as 2013, Pakistani Muslim terrorists plotted to take “foreign Jews” hostage to trade for “Lady Al-Qaeda.” In 2022, a Pakistani Muslim terrorist actually went out and did it. The hostage crisis at Congregation Beth Israel in Texas, ended with Faisal Akram of Blackburn — another post-industrial English town where Muslims make up a third of the population and Pakistanis account for more than 10 percent — dead and his Jewish hostages set free. Back home, the Blackburn Muslim Community page announced “Faisal Akram has sadly...
On Jan. 15, 2022, during Shabbat services, Congregation Beth Israel located in Colleyville, Texas, a suburb of Ft. Worth was attacked by an armed individual who barricaded himself in the synagogue, after taking four congregants hostage, including the synagogue’s rabbi. Fortunately, there were much fewer attendees on this Shabbat morning because of the continuing pandemic, as most congregants were participating at home through live streaming of religious services. The attack on this synagogue is the latest in a string of violent and lethal a...
I am writing this on Jan. 6, 2022. It could not wait until my usual deadline date. I was two years old in 1932. The only thing I knew about the burning down of the German Reichstag (their Parliament Building) was what I read and was taught in school. A group of disgruntled voters who had not won the election stormed Germany’s Capitol and burned down the Reichstag because their chosen leader, one Adolph Hitler had won only thirty two percent of the popular vote. They were told by the Nazi party and believed the vote had been rigged and that H...
(CAMERA via JNS) — In its coverage of Saturday’s hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, The Associated Press has advanced, intentionally or not, the absurdly false narrative that the terror attack was not connected to the Jewish community. The leading news agency has completely ignored statements by the Anti-Defamation League, the largest and most established American organization combating antisemitism, along with remarks by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other senior U.S. and British off...
(JTA) — In 1957, at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered words whose wisdom continue to resound today: “For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.” When a weekend meant to commemorate Dr. King was shattered by the hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, we called upon each other as longtime friends a...
(JNS) — Millions of people around the world, including myself, spent much of our Saturday with our thoughts and prayers focused on Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. As the events were unfolding, my thoughts went toward the antisemitic mass shooting that took place on Oct. 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh. The perpetrator killed 11 Jewish worshippers and wounded six others, including several Holocaust survivors. It was the deadliest attack to date on the Jewish community in the United Sta...
(JNS) — At a time when antisemitism is on the rise around the globe, the office of the U.S. State Department’s Special Envoy for Combating and Monitoring Antisemitism ought to be filled. Indeed, the Biden administration seemed to signal its interest in the subject when it decided to upgrade the post by expanding the office’s staff and conferring the title of ambassador on the envoy. President Joe Biden also named someone that was considered eminently qualified for the job in Emory University professor and historian Deborah Lipstadt, a widel...
(JNS) — Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz must have known that hosting Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at his home in Rosh Ha’ayin would arouse the ire of the right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cloaked the outcome of his tête-à-tête last Tuesday night with the octogenarian honcho in Ramallah in typically euphemistic language. Following the meeting, Gantz tweeted that he and Abbas had “discussed the implementation of economic and civilian measures, and emphasized the importance of deepening security coordination and preventing...
