Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — When Israel demolished the abandoned former Jerusalem headquarters of the disgraced United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Western press reflexively condemned the Jewish state for a myriad of bogus transgressions. Their accusations falsely claimed Israel violated international law, threatened the welfare of Palestinian “refugees” and acted out of unwarranted political motivations. In fact, Israel has in no way violated international law, nor did its demolition of the UNRWA compound threaten the welfare of Pales...
(JNS) — The protests against illegal immigration enforcement, the Black Lives Matter movement, Occupy Wall Street, No Kings marches and the umpteen demonstrations against Israel and for terrorists—they are all branches of the same ideological tree. These are not like the civil-rights protests of previous generations, despite their best efforts to convince the public that they are. These people have exposed themselves to be divisive and hateful. Until people recognize that connection, they will keep losing the arguments, one issue at a tim...
(JNS) — I have read the recent statement by the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem warning against so-called “damaging ideologies” like Christian Zionism. As a native Aramaic Christian living in Israel, I feel I must respond—not to create division, but to share the truth about what life is really like for Christians living in the Holy Land. Christian Zionism is not a political ploy. It is rooted in the Bible. God spoke of the daughter of Zion and loved His fellow Jewish people. Christian Zionism honors that biblical heritag...
(JNS) — Zionists must step forward — not defensively, not apologetically, but proudly and thoughtfully. This is not a moment for silence or retreat. It is a time that demands clarity of language, depth of understanding, and the confidence to speak and act with conviction. Zionism has always required courage; however, this moment is an era of ever-increasing anti-Jewish hatred and bigotry. It calls not only to fight forward against it but also requires literacy and resolve. I am a Zionist not because it is fashionable or convenient, but bec...
(JNS) — After 843 days, Israel laid to rest the body of 24-year-old Ran Gvili, the final hostage held in Gaza. With his return last week, a promise made in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, has been fulfilled: No Jew taken by force would be left behind. This moment is not about closure; it is also about agency. Oct. 7 was not only an act of mass murder, but an attempt to reorder Jewish history by force, to return Jews to a familiar role as hunted subjects. The brutality was deliberate, the spectacle intentional, and the message unmistakable. H...
(JNS) — Television rarely gets Jewish life right. Too often, Jewish characters are comic foils, political symbols or walking memorials of tragedy. That’s what makes Dr. Michael Robinavitch (played by Noah Wyle, who had a lead role in the TV series “ER” that aired on NBC from 1994 to 2009, and whose father, original name Weil, is Jewish)—in HBO’s medical drama “The Pitt”—quietly remarkable. He is not defined by neurosis or by slogans. He is defined by how he treats people. This lead physician goes by “Dr. Robby,” sparing patients the need to pro...
(JNS) — The Western liberal mind has convinced itself that to be decent and humane, society must engage in diversity. True, diversity of opinions is creative and constructive. There is, however, another form of diversity that has been disastrous for native European societies. Perhaps the best example of which is the case of Sweden. In the 1950s, Sweden was largely a homogeneous society. It was known for its low crime rates, characterized by a cohesive society with high trust, where people left homes unlocked and bicycle theft was minimal. T...
(JNS) — “And the Children of Israel were going out (of Egypt) triumphantly with an outstretched arm.” Rashi interprets with an “outstretched hand” to mean “with proud and prominent valor.” Triumphantly, indeed. The Israelites left Egypt openly and proudly, with their heads held high. I sometimes wonder: Whatever happened to that pride and strength that were characteristic of our people back then? Over the centuries of Jewish life in the Diasporas of the world, we seem to have lost that sense of pride. We keep punishing ourselves rather unmerc...
(JNS) — One by one, Israelis removed the yellow ribbon from their jackets on Monday. From streets and squares across the country, the portrait of the last hostage was taken down. Ran Gvili was no longer in the hands of Hamas. Gvili was a 24-year-old police officer who, at dawn on Oct. 7, 2023, did what Israelis have done too often to count: he ran toward danger. As young people fled the Nova festival, he grabbed his weapon and charged forward. Wounded in the arm, he fought on near Kibbutz Alumim, neutralizing terrorists until his final b...
(JNS) — International Holocaust Memorial Day has become a spur to write the Jews out of their own history. The United Nations chose Jan. 27—the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration/death camp—to commemorate the Holocaust, the term that developed specifically to describe the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Yet the message the United Nations posted on X omitted any mention of the Jews. It said: “The genocide started with apathy & silence in the face of injustice, and with the corrosive dehumanization of the other. Today and always,...
(JNS) — Medical organizations that were previously shouting allegations about Israel denying Palestinians basic medical care have become oddly silent regarding attacks by the Iranian government on hospitals. This selective mutism reveals that these organizations are not really concerned about the safe delivery of medicine, as they are in trying to score points against the State of Israel. Just last year, the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Sue Kressley, wrote on behalf of her organization to U.S. Secretary of State Antony B...
(JNS) — Right now is one of those moments in history that will pass quickly, but is so significant. The body of Ran Gvili, 24, has finally been recovered, and for the first time since 2014, there are no hostages in the Gaza Strip. Before this moment passes, I don’t want to miss the chance to pause for a minute and reflect. My friend Naomi Gal, who has dedicated the last two years of her life to advocating for the hostages, always says, “The period of time between Oct. 7 until the return of all the hostages will be a blip in history. How will...
There are epochs in which moral conviction becomes indistinguishable from choreography. Ours is such an age: a time in which public virtue is measured not by the suffering one alleviates, but by performative symbolism. The global landscape of outrage today resembles less a conscience than a stage—carefully lit, meticulously curated and strictly selective in the tragedies it chooses to acknowledge. The revealing contrast is that, in Congo, children starve in what experts unanimously describe as one of the worst humanitarian collapses of the cent...
A certain Jewish skill gets pronounced obsolete—right up until institutions seize up and diplomacy turns rigid. The skill is “shtadlanut,” Jewish intercession: the disciplined ability of a trusted person, operating outside the spotlight, to gain access to decision-makers and quietly shift an outcome before positions calcify and failure becomes inevitable. Shtadlanut depends on one condition: silence. It works only when negotiations are shielded from spectacle, attribution, and public pressure. Once the process is pulled into the open for appla...
(JNS) — A friend recently asked me: “Why would the left support the mullahs?” As Iranian security forces gun down protesters in the streets the question addresses the most consequential moral failure of our time, one that directly threatens both Iranian freedom fighters and the Jewish people. The answer exposes how an ideology born in Parisian cafes in the 1970s migrated through Western universities into America’s mainstream, poisoning our ability to distinguish between freedom fighters and fascists and ultimately, between those who would d...
(JNS) — Three-month-old Lia Tzipora Golovnetsitz and six-month-old Aharon (Ari) Katz died on Jan. 19 at a private (pirate) daycare center in Jerusalem’s Romema neighborhood. Emergency services responded promptly to calls from the women running the unlicensed, unsupervised facility—two or three small apartments in a residential building—reporting that many of the children had become ill. Chaos ensued when EMTs arrived on the premises and discovered that there were more than the 50 kids under the age of three suffering from an unknown ailment...
A controversy in antebellum New York City that has a parallel to a contemporary issue there has roots in the Torah. The issue: the obligation to offer refuge to an outsider, a slave or a migrant, who is being pursued by government authorities or other people with a claim on that person. First, some 19th-Century history: A man who had come to New York City from another area finds a job as a porter in lower Manhattan. One day, a pair of men deputized by the U.S. government surprise him at his workplace, handcuff him, and take him into custody....
(JNS) —The opening of Phase 2 of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan is being described as a case of realism. It risks reviving a dangerous illusion: that Hamas can be reasoned into relinquishing power if offered reconstruction, recognition or the promise of a “better life.” That illusion should have died on Oct. 7. American officials now speak of engaging and coordinating with Hamas on Gaza’s governance, as if the terror organization that planned and carried out mass murder can be separated from the political system it dominates...
(JNS) — The British Broadcasting Corporation recently asked British Jews whether Israel’s actions in Gaza were responsible for the terrorist attack in Bondi, Australia. The watchdog organization CAMERA rightly criticized this absurd line of questioning. How could random Jews in London possibly bear responsibility for the tactical decisions of a government thousands of miles away, let alone for the heinous actions of a terrorist in yet another country? Yet in our rush to defend ourselves against this inappropriate premise, the Jewish community o...
(JNS) — In a New Year only days old, one story resonated loudly with me: an item about a swastika discovered etched on the wall of the boys’ locker room at the U.N. International School in New York. As reported in JNS, the school’s director sent a letter to parents and supporters of the school in which he rightly termed the matter antisemitic and unacceptable, and which causes “real harm, particularly to our Jewish students, families, faculty and staff … .” In the past couple of years, if you Google “swastika” and “classrooms,” t...
(JNS) — Tucker Carlson has been won over by Qatar. He now touts the country to his millions of social media followers and, no doubt, to his friends in the White House. Some people get a lot of money from Qatar to do that sort of work. Four former congressmen, including two Democrats and two Republicans, are each getting paid $80,000 a month to lobby for Qatar. American universities get pallets of money from Qatar, too—perhaps as much as $100 billion since 2000—to teach students anti-Jewish, anti-American propaganda in their classrooms. And Carl...
(JNS) — A conversation titled “The Jewish Tent at a Crossroads,” held at B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, on Jan. 6 featured Rabbi Jill Jacobs (T’ruah); Esther Sperber, the founder of Smol Emuni US, a self-described movement of Orthodox Jews committed to justice, equality and dignity for Jews and Palestinians; far-left journalist Peter Beinart; and Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove (Park Avenue Synagogue). It was moderated by Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. A year ago, K...
(JNS) — For decades, victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism have been told to be patient. We were told the regime was permanent. That the Islamic Republic of Iran was too entrenched, too ruthless and too strategically important to ever be held fully accountable. Courts might rule in our favor, we were advised, but enforcement was another matter entirely. Justice, if it came at all, would come slowly—if ever. Now, as the Iranian regime shows visible signs of strain, victims are watching events unfold with something closer to quiet vigilance tha...
(JNS) — Israeli television anchors repeat the same message: There is no immediate alarm. Shelters will open if needed. Hospitals are ready. Experts even joke that life will continue as usual—drink a glass of water, go down to the shelter, return to work. Iran has fierce ballistic missiles, but after tasting Israeli air power during the 12-day war, the ayatollahs may think twice. More importantly, had Israel not seized its destiny after Oct. 7, 2023—confronting Hamas, Hezbollah and ultimately Iran alongside the United States—it is hard to imag...
(JNS) — I lecture frequently and understand that for many audiences, the experience can feel depressing and overwhelming. Rising antisemitism. Palestinian rejectionism. Terrorism. The ring of regional threats around Israel. I can see it in people’s faces—the quiet sense of helplessness, the feeling that the problems are too vast and the individual too small to matter. No single person can resolve the global challenges confronting the Jewish people. But it’s not true that individuals are powerless. History—and Jewish history, in particula...
