Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

Assault reported at Chabad of the Bluegrass menorah-lighting in Lexington, Kentucky

By Philissa Cramer

(JTA) — A Chabad center in Lexington, Kentucky, will see increased police presence for the rest of Chanukah after an assault during one of the community’s public menorah lightings.

A driver directed anti-Semitic language at people lighting the menorah outside Chabad of the Bluegrass, police told the local TV station. When someone from the community tried to urge the driver away, the driver accelerated, dragging the community member and running over his leg, according to a detailed account on Chabad of the Bluegrass’ Facebook page.

“Someone yelled, ‘Call 911,’ and he said, ‘First let’s light the menorah, I’m not going to allow that to stop us from celebrating our faith and spreading the light, which is the very message of Chanukah,’” Rabbi Shlomo Litvin told WKYT. “Anything can be used for spirituality or negativity. Anything that happens to you, how you react is what that thing is.”

The incident drew swift condemnation from local and state officials, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who decried the incident in tweets Sunday afternoon.

Chabad of the Bluegrass reported vandalism, including to its menorah, multiple times in recent months. Litvin also launched a community education effort this summer after “white power” flyers were distributed in Lexington, home to the University of Kentucky.

‘Jews to the graves,’ Ukrainian ultranationalist shouted as he toppled Kyiv Chanukah menorah

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — A Ukrainian ultranationalist filmed himself toppling a Chanukah menorah in downtown Kyiv while shouting about death to Jews.

The man, identified by the Ukrainian media as Andrey Rachkov, a provocateur with a criminal record, is the subject of a police investigation after video of the vandalism emerged on Thursday, the Ukrainian news site Zik reported Saturday.

Rachkov posted the video of his actions on Facebook, adding: “How to treat foreigners who are engaged in usurpation of power, occupation of territories, genocide.”

As he toppled the large menorah, he shouted: “To Ukrainians the power, Jews to the graves.”

Rachkov attempted to topple another menorah elsewhere in Kyiv but failed to bring it down because it was bolted to the ground, Zik reported.

Ukrainian nationalists have repeatedly targeted Jews in their protests against Ukraine’s Jewish president, Vlodymyr Zelensky.

Scarlett Johansson criticized for being a Zionist after supporting jailed human rights workers in Egypt

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson’s recent intervention on behalf of civil rights in Egypt is prompting a mixed response there, ranging from gratitude to anti-Semitism.

Johansson, who is Jewish, was one of several celebrities to weigh in earlier this month against the arrest of four employees of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo human rights organization. They were swept up amid a wave of arrests of critics of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

“They all face bogus charges that could lead to many more years in prison. In fact, their only crime has been to stand up for the dignity of Egyptians,” Johansson said in the video published on the group’s YouTube page Dec. 1. Amnesty International launched a separate campaign for their release.

Three of the four workers have since been released. While some Egyptians have thanked Johansson for getting involved, others have suggested that she criticized Egypt’s leadership because she is Jewish.

Nashat al-Dihi, a presenter and commentator on TeN TV, said she “supports the Zionist products and it is well known that she is Jewish and that she’s on the Israelis’ side,” Mako News reported. Johansson drew criticism in 2014 after she appeared in an ad for SodaStream when the Israeli company had a factor in the West Bank.

El-Sissi took power in a 2014 coup that ended the short term in power of Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. They were elected following a revolution.

The pro-Western dictator has jailed thousands of people deemed by his regime as Muslim extremists, as well as other critics.

Montreal Jewish nursing home’s residents and staff will be first in Quebec to get COVID-19 vaccine

By David Lazarus

MONTREAL (JTA) — Among the first Canadians to receive the COVID-19 vaccine will be residents and staff at a Jewish nursing home where dozens of residents have died of the disease.

The Donald Berman Maimonides Geriatric Centre could begin vaccinations as early as Friday night, according to reports in the Canadian media.

The public facility in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Cote St. Luc was made a priority because of its status as a “hot red zone,” Francine Dupuis, a Montreal health official, told the Montreal Gazette.

Family members of Maimonides residents received emails in French on Thursday notifying them of the vaccine’s imminent arrival and asking for their consent.

Joyce Shanks told the newspaper that her 81-year-old father, Harvey Stoliar, had chosen to get the vaccine.

“I told him that six weeks from now I want to say ‘you made it through the pandemic, all miracles are welcome on Chanukah,’” said Shanks, who leads an advocacy group for families of Maimonides residents.

The facility will receive two boxes of 975 doses each of the Pfizer vaccine, according to the Gazette. That’s more than 3% of the 30,000 initial doses that Canada is due to receive imminently.

Less than two weeks ago, 20 residents at Maimonides, which has 325 beds, were moved to other facilities as Maimonides tried to stop a second wave of infections that thus far has killed eight residents. Dozens of Maimonides residents died this spring in the pandemic’s first wave.

Polish diplomat in Istanbul rescued hundreds of Jews from the Holocaust, report says

By Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) – A Polish diplomat serving in Turkey during World War II helped save hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis by issuing them false certificates that identified them as Christians, an Israeli newspaper revealed in an expose published Friday.

Wojciech Rychlewicz, then a consul in Istanbul, provided the documents to the European refugees at no pay. They could then obtain visas in countries that had policies in place to prevent Jewish refugees from entering, Israel Hayom reported in a story by its Europe correspondent, Eldad Beck.

Rychlewicz, who died in 1964, has not been recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations, the title conferred by Israel to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust, and has not been written about before, Beck wrote.

Bob Meth, a Jewish physician from Los Angeles, has been key to the effort to document Rychlewicz’s actions. His grandfather, Szymon (Simon) Wang, obtained Brazilian visas using one of the false certificates. They stated that Simon was a “Catholic born into a Catholic family” of Józef and Maria Wang, as was as his entire family and his brother’s family who also came to Istanbul.

Rychlewicz never applied for recognition for his actions or advertised them, according to the report.

Jakub Kumoch, Poland’s ambassador to Poland, said he has discovered hundreds of nearly identical documents in archives.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, is looking into the new information, according to the Israel Hayom report.

The table used to stop Monsey attacker is turned into a menorah stand

By Shira Hanau

(JTA) — When a masked man entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, on the seventh night of Chanukah last year, Joseph Gluck thought quickly. He picked up a coffee table and threw it at the attacker, who subsequently followed Gluck outside the house before trying to enter a synagogue next door. The door was locked and the intruder fled.

That coffee table turned defensive weapon has been turned into a dreidel-shaped menorah stand to memorialize Monsey’s own Chanukah miracle. Emblazoned on its sides are the Hebrew words marked on dreidels typically in Israel — “A big miracle happened here.” (Most outside of Israel are engraved with “a big miracle happened there,” referring to the miracle of the Chanukah story in which the oil in the Temple lasted for eight days.) In the case of the stand, the miracle is even closer to home.

Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, a leader in Monsey and a member of the Rockland County Human Rights Commission, posted a photo of the coffee table and the menorah stand to Twitter on Friday. That table, by the way, broke after Gluck’s heave at the intruder.

One guest at the Chanukah celebration was severely injured in the attack and subsequently died of his injuries.

Jerusalem’s archeological tunneling efforts win top award

By Naama Barak

(ISRAEL21c via JNS) — Jerusalem’s Old City can now add another global feather to its cap: The archeological tunneling to explore and excavate its history has just won worldwide recognition by the International Tunneling and Underground Space Association.

Coming in at first place in the “Oddities of the Underground” category in the ITA’s sixth annual contest, the Old City digs were noted as “Tunneling in the service of archaeology,” and beat Norway’s Spiral Tunnel (Drammen) to the top spot.

“The sensitive environment demands great dexterity and flexibility. Unexpected finds can lead to sudden changes in the direction of excavation, often accompanied by low overburden heights and difficult ground conditions,” the ITA says of the Jerusalem digs.

“Due to site complexity derived from small excavation area and risks of shallow tunneling in urban area, special excavation technologies are executed, such as custom-made drill machines adapted to small spaces,” it added.

“In addition to that, special measures are to be taken in order to consider the archaeological findings and to protect them during excavation. Unlike conventional excavation in which the muck is being moved away, the nature of this project is to keep the muck for further research by scientists.”

Winners in other categories focused on construction and railroads, such as the Sydney Metro City & Southwest Project in Australia and the Chengdu-Guiyang High-Speed Railway in China. The Young Tunneller of the Year was Josh Barry from Australia.

Overall, the online competition received 52 entries from 23 countries.

This article was first published by ISRAEL21c.

Israel’s president praises Bahrain’s King Hamad for making peace with Israel

(JNS) — Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Monday praised Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his “brave and historic decision to establish a warm peace with Israel.”

In a phone conversation with Al Khalifa ahead of Bahrain’s National Day, which falls on Dec. 16, Rivlin said the recent signing of the Abraham Accords was “already a model for other countries in our region,” according to a statement from his office.

“We have chosen to invest from the very beginning in cooperation in the fields of economy, innovation and health,” he said. “I am full of hope that the Palestinians will also take steps to build mutual trust, cooperation and peace.”

Earlier on Monday, Rivlin welcomed a delegation of opinion-leaders and activists from Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, greeting them both in Arabic and in Hebrew.

“Peace is made between peoples and nations,” he told the delegation, led by Amit Deri of the Sharaka Project. “Your visit here is another step in the path of building warm relations between our countries.”

The Sharaka (Arabic for “cooperation”) Project “aims to lead social initiatives that bring Israel’s voice to strengthen familiarity with the State of Israel in the Arab world, and create cooperation between young people in Israel and Arab states.”

One member of the delegation, Majid Al Sarrah from the University of Dubai, said “to visit Israel for the first time as part of a delegation is a historic moment. Israel is a prime example of tolerance in the region. This is a new era of peace and stability between peoples.”

Another participant, Mashaal a-Shamri from Bahrain, expressed a similar sentiment, saying “as a Bahraini woman visiting Israel, it is a great honor for me to meet the president. We see Israel as a place of peace, success and coexistence.”

Israel formalizes ties with Bhutan, the nation seeking ‘gross national happiness’

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) — Israel and Bhutan, a small Buddhist majority Himalayan kingdom snuggled between India and China, have established full diplomatic ties.

Ron Malka, the Israeli ambassador to India, posted photos on Twitter Saturday of the signing ceremony.

Bhutan and Israel already have cordial, informal ties. Bhutan has over the last 20 years emerged from centuries of cultural and diplomatic isolation, although it has long accepted development assistance from other countries, including agricultural training from Israel since 1982.

The constitutional monarchy is famous for a national policy that eschews materialism and instead seeks “gross national happiness.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the announcement was “the additional fruit of the peace agreements,” although it’s not clear how ties with the remote Buddhist nation are related to the flurry of agreements Israel has signed in recent months with Sunni Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

Israel edges closer to third lockdown as daily COVID-19 infections cross 2,000

By Assaf Golan

(Israel Hayom via JNS) — More than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Israel on Monday, the highest recorded in Israel since Oct. 15. According to Israeli Health Ministry data, the coronavirus morbidity rate was 3.2 percent.

Deputy Health Ministry director Itamar Grotto told Army Radio in an interview on Tuesday that the high number of infections was a sign Israel was moving towards a third lockdown.

“We hope this was a one-time anomaly,” he said.

With regard to the pending rollout of Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, Grotto said that it would take months before the country would start to see the impact of the inoculations.

At a government meeting last week, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said the goal of the government’s efforts to stop the spread of the virus was to achieve a reproduction rate of one or less and to have fewer than 1,000 people diagnosed with COVID-19 per day.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Omar, Tlaib, Sarsour join CAIR in virtual ‘vote-a-thon’ ahead of Georgia runoffs

(JNS) — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), along with former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsou, all of whom support the anti-Israel BDS movement, joined a virtual “vote-a-thon” hosted by the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Georgia Muslim Voter Project ahead of the Jan. 5 Senate runoffs in the state.

Although CAIR, a nonpartisan nonprofit, does not endorse candidates, the event was an opportunity for Omar and Sarsour to promote the Democratic candidates in the runoffs, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The organizers also raised money through ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and progressive groups.

CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case that proved connections to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas and other radical Islamic entities. Sarsour has a history of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and other bigotry.

Omar has perpetuated anti-Semitic tropes on social media that has been criticized by Jewish, pro-Israel and other organizations, in addition to members of Congress. She also introduced a resolution in Congress that promotes boycotts of Israel, likening them to boycotts of Nazi Germany.

Since taking office in January 2019, Tlaib has been accused of peddling an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agenda.