Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(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...
(JNS) — In 1918, V.I. Lenin renamed the Bolshevik Party the Russian Communist Party. Western scholars and policymakers soon began studying communism and the threat it posed to free nations. In 1920, the German Workers’ Party adopted a new name: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazi Party. Western scholars and policymakers soon began studying Nazism and the threat it posed to free nations. In 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Western scholars and policymakers were uninterested, regar...
(JNS) — Former Fox News host and current political commentator Tucker Carlson recently said he “dislikes” Christian Zionists “more than anybody,” deeming their views un-Christian and inconsistent with Western civilization. He singled out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee as adherents to this “dangerous heresy,” but he might have added President Abraham Lincoln, who saw the restoration of Jews to their national home in Palestine as “a noble dream and one shared by many Americans.” After the Civil War, Lincol...
(JNS) — The Jerusalem Post recently reported that Congregation Shaare Zion, a large Orthodox synagogue serving the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn, had taken an unprecedented step in the run-up to New York City’s mayoral election: Members and their spouses must show proof of voter registration before they can secure seats for the High Holidays. “In approximately two months, New York City will be electing its next mayor,” the synagogue’s executive committee wrote, “The outcome of this election could result in very serious problems th...
(JNS) — The old clichés no longer apply to the U.S.-Israel relationship. It’s time to stop talking about the United States “acting in Israel’s interests” or claiming that “Netanyahu takes orders from Trump.” The relationship has moved beyond those outdated formulas. What we are witnessing now is a genuine alignment of interests—a partnership built not on dependence, but on shared purpose. Its name is peace. This evolving strategy is complex and long-term, requiring patience and a broader view of the regional transformation underway. Report...
(JNS) — The tuition crisis has been on the Jewish community’s agenda for many years. No silver bullet has delivered day school affordability to our families. Teach Coalition has worked together with community leaders, politicians and schools to bring relief in the form of additional government funding. We’ve achieved remarkable progress, but no silver bullet has appeared; until now. With the creation of the Federal Scholarship Program, we are on the cusp of a revolution in Jewish education, making it vastly more affordable and acces...
(JNS) — Former U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann is the only one brave enough to say what too many so-called “friends of Israel” in President Donald Trump’s camp won’t admit: the Gaza plan spearheaded by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff isn’t just flawed; it’s dangerously disconnected from reality. It risks halting Israel before it can finish the job and effectively rewards barbarism. There’s no question that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are working on something historic—a transformative vision for the Middle East. A new econo...
(JNS) — Since Israel’s founding, one assumption guided its leaders: that America would always stand as the ultimate guarantor of its security. From Truman’s recognition in 1948 to Kennedy’s arms deals and Reagan’s intelligence coordination, this belief became almost sacred. Even moments of tension—such as Eisenhower’s rebuke after Suez or Obama’s Iran deal—were seen as temporary storms in a permanent alliance. By 2025, that illusion was fractured. The world has changed: Washington’s focus drifts between Asia and domestic politics, while Isr...
To the Jewish community of Central Florida: Where were you during the last two years of terror of the Israeli community? There were no rallies showing support for Israel, there were no fundraisers to financially support Israel, there were no parlor meetings (that I was aware of). Basically, nothing done as a community as in the past. As an Orlando resident for 83 years, I cannot ever remember when there was such a lack of open support for Israel by the Greater Orlando Jewish Community — no rallies, no fundraisers, no community action, nada. M...
(JNS) — Hundreds of thousands gathered in Jerusalem for what some called “Prayer for Shalom HaMedina” (Prayer for the Peace/Welfare of the State of Israel), representing a broad, unified front of the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi), traditional and Religious Zionist communities. The massive demonstration, characterized by prayer only with no speeches, is a powerful expression of concern over recent arrests of Torah students and, more broadly, a perceived assault by progressive, left-wing forces on the nation’s traditional values and the role of the...
(JNS) — My daughter Alisa was murdered in a Palestinian Islamic Jihad-Iranian sponsored terrorist attack in Gaza on April 9, 1995. She was 20 years old, a college student studying at Nishmat in Jerusalem on a leave of absence from Brandeis University. She had worked hard at college for more than two years to take that leave of absence. It was her sixth trip to Israel. In that instant, my world was divided into “Before and After.” It has never returned to Before; it never will. I can’t read stories about hostage returns or terror victims without...
(JNS) — Fifty years apart, two disasters in Israel are bound by the same Hebrew word: conceptzia. Following the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the term became shorthand for the conceptual failure that enabled Egypt and Syria to launch their joint surprise attack against the Jewish state. Translating to something between “governing assumption” and “preconceived notion,” it regained prominence in local vernacular following Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel five decades later. Since Oct. 7, 2023, conceptzia has become a polemical catch-all for blame ov...
As a physicist, lawyer, and late-for-appointments human, I have always grappled with the concept of “time.” Time is not a physical or spatial metric even though it is categorized as the 4th dimension in conjunction with the three physical dimensions of length, width and depth. In Genesis, the initial words of the first book of the Torah, are, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (emphasis added). Was that the beginning of time or was that a reference point to mark on the continuous time scale when the universe came into exis...
(JNS) — What has happened to the camps of sympathetic and understanding Christian traditionalists who had identified Israel, and its Zionist identity, as an ally against Islamism in the struggle against anti-Americanism in the world? Why are some leaving the cause? Why do others have doubts? And why are still others now turning virulently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, dog-whistling Jew-hatred? Is it an infection of xenophobic nationalism that can be argued, or is it a theological hatred that cannot be properly checked? Back in April 2024, in a...
(JNS) — As the plane touched down in Thailand, I received the check-in email for my journey back home. Despite the 11-hour flight, I could only stay one day. I had a wedding to officiate upon my return. As a “freelance rabbi” (meaning not the head of a synagogue), I serve in a few capacities. I help people join the Jewish religion, I help them marry, and I’m a mohel (ritual circumciser), performing the sacred ritual of brit milah (circumcision) in Israel and around the world. The latter was the purpose of my visit to the Far East. I make th...
(JNS) — One of the things that has made the Jewish people so unique and has led to our survival throughout history is the sanctity placed upon human life. In Deuteronomy (Chapter 30, Verse 19), it is written: “I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse; and you shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live.” That is why the Jewish community has struggled with feelings of ecstacy at the homecoming of the remaining living hostages, who have been held for two years in the most brutal conditions imaginable, coupl...
(JNS) — On Oct. 7, 2001, the United States began an ill-fated campaign to “nation-build” Afghanistan. Now, 24 years after that anniversary and two years after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, we may be on the cusp of an even worse nation-building program in Gaza that seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Right down to resurrecting former U.K. premiere Tony Blair to head it. Nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq failed for three reasons: 1. The Bush administration belie...
(JNS) — In his Knesset address on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of his first partner in his great utopian vision—a time of peace for the entire world: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. In an outpouring of shared enthusiasm at the Knesset during the return of the hostages, Trump placed Netanyahu in the circle of history’s great figures. “Thank you very much, Bibi. Great job!” he declared. “Without him, none of this could have happened. Without his courage and patriotism,” Trump said. “He’s not the easiest person to...
(JNS) — As Israelis continue to debate the release of convicted terrorists as part of the current hostage exchange deal with Hamas, they aren’t the only ones thinking about prisoner releases. American victims of Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and their families are watching, too. For us, the prospect of seeing the murderers of American citizens walk free is not an abstract policy issue. It is deeply personal. Thirty years ago, my daughter Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old American college student, was murdered in a Palestinian terror att...
The past few days in Israel have been filled with heart wrenching euphoria mixed with cautious optimism, and foreboding. After two years in unspeakable conditions and captivity, Hamas has released all 20 living hostages who have returned home to begin a long process of physical and emotional recovery. Predictably, Hamas has also violated the terms of the agreement to release all the bodies of the 28 remaining hostages, as of this writing still 21 remain in the terrorists’ clutches. So far, one of the bodies that they have released has not b...
(JNS) — “Israel treats the Palestinians the way Nazi Germany treated the Jews.” Few slogans in modern propaganda are as powerful, emotional and poisonous as this one. In recent years, it has become a rallying cry at demonstrations and across social media. Gaza is depicted as the “Auschwitz” of the 21st century. Israeli airstrikes are labeled “genocide.” “Refugee camps” are likened to the Warsaw Ghetto. The nakba (the “disaster” or “catastrophe” of the State of Israel) is rebranded as the Arab shoah. Israel’s government is accused of pl...
(JNS) — At a time when America is still reeling from the murder of Charlie Kirk and anti-Jew and anti-Israel hatred is peaking, the Anti-Defamation League decided to put Kirk’s Turning Point USA in its crosshairs. Did the ADL think that would reduce Jew-hatred somehow? It seems likely it did just the opposite. As egregious and upsetting as that ADL action was, it was just another horrific misstep in the last decade of its misguided cultural crusades that have nothing to do with its core mission: protecting the Jewish people. The ADL was est...
