Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — How long have we been the “wandering Jews?” I imagine ever since Abraham, the very first Jew. His travels and travails are recounted in the Bible for all to see and our sages taught that the lives of our patriarchs and matriarchs would be a harbinger of the destiny of their descendants for generations to come. And the wandering Jew has also been the wondering Jew. We’ve been forever wondering about who we are and how we fit in with the countries we’ve migrated to over the centuries. I imagine it’s been one of the ongoing dilemmas of...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The scenes that everyone of us see throughout Europe cannot be obscured. From London through Paris. From Amsterdam through Brussels. The classic symbols of Western European capitals have undergone significant changes in the first two decades of the 21st century. A phenomenon that began mainly in the ’90s of the previous century has been changing in recent years, not only the appearance of streets and neighborhoods, but also the face of politics in Western Europe and, recently, in the U.S. Two years after the most bru...
(JNS) — Judaism is all about bringing light into the world — affecting and improving it through positive acts, awareness, kindness and compassion. This mission is especially meaningful during the darkest of times and in the darkest of places, when light is not just comforting but transformative. The notion that each person can contribute to the illumination of the world is central to Jewish thought and practice, and it is this principle that Chanukah, the “Festival of Lights,” so beautifully exemplifies. In the Jewish month of Kislev comes t...
(JNS) — Whether on Broadway or in City Hall, theatrics are a fixture of New York City life. But no performance — whether in Times Square or Lower Manhattan — rivals mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s outrageous campaign-trail promise and post-election reaffirmation that he would seek to enforce an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he set foot in the city. The significance of Mamdani’s pledge lies not merely in its impossibility or illegality, but in what the promise and its later “cl...
You can be forgiven for thinking that the war is over in Israel and peace has broken out. Since President Trump’s October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, countless reports and headlines have presented this as a peace deal. Barring reports of daily conflict in Gaza or the return of the bodies of the remaining hostage in captivity for 26 months, “quiet” can be misperceived as peace. But the truth could not be more opposite. There are abundant examples. One recent one hit home personally. This week there was another terrorist attac...
(JNS) — I trust that Sabine Baring-Gould, an Anglican priest and scholar, will forgive me filching my title from his 1865 hymn. As it is based on a New Testament reference, II Timothy 2:3, whose theme is shared suffering, I thought it appropriate. Indeed, a few verses further in that chapter, we read, “the word of God cannot be chained!” and that harmonizes with the essential shared message of both Jewish and Christian Zionism. The support for Zionism is under a renewed attack of opposition and invalidation. One stream of vitriol, of cours...
Several years ago, I went through a long, nearly immobilizing depression. At some point during that time, I made a playlist I called “Morning,” with the hope that it would help propel me out of bed and into my day. The playlist was made up of contemporary music anchored in traditional Jewish morning liturgy. Each track contained a mantra of ancient verses that poignantly captured essential sentiments — gratitude, desperation, yearning, connection — and wordless melodies that articulated striving, divinity and even joy. Traditional prayer...
On Wednesday night, a mob of Muslims and radical leftists assaulted a synagogue in Manhattan. Much as in the past, the police allowed the mob to blockade the synagogue and terrorize the Jews in and around it with no response. The pro-terrorist mob chanted calls for death and globalizing the ‘intifada’ of Islamic terrorism. Taunts were shouted at local Jewish community members. As well as an explicit call for violence” “Take another settler out”. The pretext for the attack on the Park East Synagogue was that ‘Nefesh b’Nefesh’ (Soul to Soul)...
Chanukah, a holiday of eight days duration beginning on the evening of December 14, 2025, commemorates, according to Jewish tradition, the miracle of finding a small jar of kosher oil in the defiled Holy Temple in Jerusalem to reignite and rededicate the eternal flame of the Temple Menorah. The small jar of oil was sufficient to light the menorah for only one day, but it burned brightly for eight days until a new supply of consecrated oil could be secured; thus the holiday became known as the “Festival of Lights.” The “Festival of Light...
(JNS) — My son led Birkat Hamazon, the blessing after a meal, for the first time this summer at the Conservative movement’s Ramah summer camp in Wisconsin. This was a breakthrough—and not because 10 years ago, when he was 15 and knee-deep into Nietzsche, Nathaniel was an adamant atheist. The camp’s Atzmayim vocational program has guided Nathaniel, who is on the autism spectrum, into a role of public leadership. (Atzmayim is Hebrew for “independent.”) The program is an extension of Ramah’s storied Tikvah inclusion program. It pairs neurodi...
Almost 50 years ago the movie “Network” (1976) was released. The film is best known for the anchorman rant scene that features Howard Beale’s: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” But it is also known for another dramatic scene, a five-minute oratory by a man named Arthur Jensen (chairman of the conglomerate that owns the network) who convinces the same Howard Beale “the world is a business.” That concept was introduced to Beale because he had earlier caused a hysteria among the American public that was responsible f...
(JNS) — A strange thing happened in the middle of the night on Monday: the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved one of the most acrobatic, contradictory resolutions in its long history. It envisions an International Stabilization Force marching into Gaza to rebuild “civil order,” control the borders, dismantle Hamas’s military infrastructure and—almost as an afterthought—lay down “a path toward a Palestinian state.” As always, the conditions are buried in diplomatic language. First, Hamas must complete the handover of the...
Here is an amazing set of iconic and ironic events! Israel essentially defeats its Muslim enemies on seven military fronts after the unprovoked barbaric attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. The Israeli Mossad obliterates 90 percent of Hezbollah leadership by distributing pagers to its upper echelon which simultaneously explode in their hands, killing and maiming thousands and humiliating the survivors. The Israeli Air Force decimates Iran’s air defenses and missile launches allowing American B-2 bombers to invade Iranian airspace unhindered to deliver BGU-...
(JNS) — I’ve often wondered what we can learn from the stories of ancient Jewish communities that have for years been besieged by cultural prejudice. How did they survive for centuries, in some cases, for millennia? What can we learn from their resilience? And, most importantly, how did they maintain a sense of community in the face of antisemitism? What customs and traditions helped them build that strength in times of difficulty? This November, one such community, the Beta Israel, will gather at the Armon Hanatziv Promenade above Jer...
Visiting the Collingwood art and street fair in September, my wife and I did not expect to find anti-Israel slogans stenciled into the sidewalks and an anti-Israel Defense Forces message chalked in front of the CWOOD sign in front of City Hall. It felt unnerving and out of place that the pitch of standard slogans rallying against Israel would be underfoot on this sunny day in downtown Collingwood, which calls itself “a progressive community” in Ontario, Canada, with not one person seeming to be bothered enough to question the message’s offen...
(JNS) — Israel’s greatest strength is not only its military resilience or technological success, but its insistence on building a democratic, lawful, moral society in a region where power often substitutes for principle and justice is too often replaced by vengeance. From the first days of its founding, the State of Israel has insisted that Jewish sovereignty must rest on a different foundation — one anchored in due process, accountable government, ethical national defense and a justice system that binds leaders and citizens alike, Jews and n...
(JNS) — “Start spreading the news. I’m leaving today . . .” Oh, sorry for the lyrical misdirection, but this version of the Frank Sinatra standard has the crooner fleeing New York! Hold onto those “vagabond shoes,” after all. Don’t jettison those “little-town blues,” just yet. New York might become the “city that doesn’t sleep” for more redoubtable reasons. A day may come when we might actually not “wake up” at all! Not a valentine, but a requiem for what was once the world’s cosmopolitan wonderland. After this past week’s mayoral election...
(JNS) — For decades, the Heritage Foundation championed honest, intelligent, pro-Israel conservatism. The Zionist Organization of America proudly participated in Heritage’s Project Esther to combat antisemitism. But things at Heritage have changed. In a recent, disgraceful video statement, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts defended, whitewashed and allied with Jew-hating, Israel-basher Tucker Carlson after he said Christian Zionists are “heretics” infected with a “brain virus” and spouted other shocking antisemitic libels, while fawni...
(JNS)— The Council on American-Islamic Relations presents itself as a benign civil-rights organization; however, behind this friendly facade lurks an extremist core. From its inception, CAIR has harbored alarming ties to jihadist groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood—connections that reveal it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a threat to the American way of life. While CAIR denies supporting terrorism and touts its advocacy for Muslim Americans, evidence from courtrooms, investigations and even its own leaders’ words tells a darker...
(JNS) — The post-World War II halcyon days for the American Jewish community in the United States have ended. New York City, which has more Jews within its population than any place on earth outside of Israel, elected its first jihadist mayor. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Zohran Mamdani is a Muslim. It has everything to do with the very words that have come out of his mouth. Two years ago, Mamdani said, “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it has been laced by the IDF,” a refer...
As I went on my nightly dog walk with a neighbor couple, the wife who is a dedicated fifth-grade teacher mentioned a troubling new problem at her school. She said the principal had told her of a new trend he was seeing — boys were being reported for threatening another with “I’ll shoot you,” not in play but with a tone that chilled her. It wasn’t roughhousing anymore, she said — it was an echo from somewhere darker. Her husband introduced a term I’d never heard before: stochastic terrorism. He said it described the way inflammatory words from p...
(JNS) — Anyone who has watched the news, scrolled through social media or spent time on an American college campus since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, knows the chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” To the Western ear, the English slogan is lyrical and emotive. But the version chanted in Arabic is a far different sentence with a far different intent. In Arabic, the line is closer to “Palestine will be Arab.” The two chants are not synonymous. Palestine will be Arab does not mean equa...
Just five days before the 87th anniversary of the two-day pogrom on German and Austrian Jews and Jewish communities, known as Kristallnacht (Nov. 9-10, 1938), an eerily familiar feeling is being felt by the American Jewish consciousness following the disturbing election of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor-elect of New York City. This sentiment begs the question: What’s going to be with the Jews? The answer in 1938 was that the very people who had contributed for so many years to the advancement of Europe’s most enlightened soc...
Twenty-five months have passed since the barbaric Palestinian terrorist invasion from Gaza into Israel. These Hamas monsters and their popular supporters in an unprovoked attack brutally massacred 1,200 men, women, children and babies, with another 3,500 wounded. If that wasn’t evil enough, Hamas also took 251 hostages, both living and dead, to later ransom them for convicted Arab murderers who had been afforded due process under Israeli law and found guilty for their criminal acts. The Jewish people were among the first among civilizations w...
(JNS) — This series has explored the many fronts on which Israel has struggled since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023; however, Israel has scored one clear and decisive victory—in Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank. This success is not the product of a single battle, but of Hamas’s failure, Israel’s foresight and the Israel Defense Forces’ quiet exploitation of an opportunity while the world’s attention was elsewhere—fixed on Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. In the shadows of those wars, Israel has struck a...
