Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - David Horowitz, a former '60s radical turned right-wing firebrand who decried what he called the "the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values," died Tuesday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 86. His death was announced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the think tank he founded with Peter Collier in 1988. A self-described agnostic Jew who wrote in 2016 that he had never been to Israel, he nonetheless became one of the fiercest critics o... Full story
(JNS) - Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, died on Monday morning at the Vatican at the age of 88. He passed away at 7:35 a.m. local time, according to the Vatican. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Francis became the first Jesuit pope and the first from the Americas when elected in 2013. His papacy was marked by reform efforts, calls for social justice and outreach to marginalized communities. He also faced mounting criticism over...
(JTA) - George Orwell disliked peace propaganda as much as he disliked war propaganda. Like war propaganda, he wrote, peace propaganda "concentrates on putting forward a 'case,' obscuring the opponent's point of view and avoiding awkward questions." I spent an Orwellian few days watching new documentaries about Oct. 7 and its aftermath, specifically on how the Hamas attacks in Israel and the fallout from Israel's war in Gaza played out in the United States. "October 8," a film about how American...
(JTA) - Peter Yarrow, one-third of the hit-making 1960s folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, and a Jewish activist who promoted Israeli-Palestinian coexistence and other progressive causes, died Tuesday at age 86. The longtime resident of Manhattan's Upper West Side entered hospice last month. The cause of death was bladder cancer. Yarrow was a Cornell graduate playing in Greenwich Village clubs during the early 1960s folk revival when manager and musical impresario Albert Grossman, who also...
(JTA) - "A Complete Unknown," the new Bob Dylan biopic set in the early 1960s, ends years before the singer's controversial "gospel" period. Starting with 1979's "Slow Train Coming," Dylan recorded three albums exploring his apparent embrace of Christianity. For his 1980 tour, he played gospel music exclusively. It was a confusing time for Dylan's Jewish fans. As the movie suggests only obliquely, the guitar-carrying hitchhiker who tried to pass himself off as a former carnival barker was...
(JTA) — Last December, in a column about the Jewish books of 2023, I predicted that “next year’s list will include a slew of books dealing with the crisis in Israel or will be read through the lens of the war.” It was an easy call: If this year’s nonfiction Jewish authors didn’t focus directly on the tragedy or aftermath of Oct. 7 — Israeli journalist Lee Yaron in “10/7: 100 Human Stories,” massacre survivor Amir Tibon in “The Gates of Gaza” and Adam Kirsch in “On Settler Colonialism: Id...
(JTA) — In 2001, Yom Kippur fell on Sept. 26, two weeks after the terror attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. By then, the major denominations had already written special prayers to be said during Yizkor, a prayer service in memory of the dead. The Reform movement posted a prayer in the style of the liturgy said for Jewish “martyrs” and Holocaust victims during the traditional service. “Remember all those who were lost in the terror of that day,” it read. “Grant their families peace and comfort for Your name’s sake.” Yom Ki...
(JTA) - Lee Yaron was in New York on Oct. 7, doing a fellowship at Columbia University, when news broke of an unimaginable attack on southern Israel by Hamas. Like many Israelis living abroad, she felt helpless and frustrated. Unlike most Israelis, she is a journalist, a longtime contributor to the Israeli daily Haaretz, and she had an outlet for her fear and anger. Within days, she was on a plane to Israel, where she spent the next four months interviewing survivors, first-responders and...
(JTA) - Hundreds of mourners gathered in Rishon Lezion, Israel, Tuesday night for the funeral of Jordan Cooper, 26, an American-born "lone soldier" who had died the day before from a severe allergic reaction. His parents, Marla Covin Cooper and Ross Cooper, younger brother Ethan and grandfather Jerry were visiting him in Israel when he died, and ahead of his funeral a request went out to the public saying that they were inviting members of the public to "come and accompany him on his final...
(JTA) - Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive Holocaust survivor and Israeli military veteran who charmed and educated millions of listeners as the taboo-breaking radio sex therapist "Dr. Ruth," died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 96. Her program, "Sexually Speaking,'" which launched in 1980 on the now defunct WYNY-FM, broke broadcasting taboos about talking about sex and helped make her the most famous sex therapist in the world - albeit one with a motherly demeanor and thick German...
(JTA) - STOCKBRIDGE, Massachusetts - There's a delightful "what if" moment at the start of "What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine," a new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum. In 1964, MAD commissioned Rockwell himself to paint a portrait of Alfred E. Neuman, the humor magazine's gap-toothed mascot, as he might have looked in real life. Correspondence featured in the exhibit suggests that Rockwell - grand master of gentle, folksy, even cornball Americana - was close to signing on...
(JTA) Houston mourns a ‘PR Fairy’ killed in a fall Susan Farb Morris was spending Father’s Day weekend in Galveston, Texas with her husband, children and grandchildren when the balcony of the vacation home on which she was standing collapsed. She died of her injuries on June 14, at 68. Her death shocked her hometown Houston community where, as the founder and president of Susan Farb Morris Public Relations, she was known as “The PR Fairy.” In addition to arts and corporate clients, Morris wo...
(JTA) — Morrie Markoff, who was born to Jewish parents in an East Harlem tenement in 1914 and lived to become what was believed to be the oldest man in the United States, died June 3 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 110. Markoff’s remarkable lifespan was matched by his remarkable lucidity: After he turned 100, Markoff became an avid blogger and author and saw his scrap metal sculpture exhibited at a Los Angeles gallery. His memoir, “Keep Breathing: Recollections from a 103-year-old,” was published in 2017. The Brain Donor Project, a nonprof...
(JTA) — David Wolpe has been called one of the most quoted rabbis in the United States, and not always to his advantage. As senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, one of the largest and most visible Conservative pulpits in the country, the decisions he makes and things he says are often treated as bellwethers of centrist American Jewry. When he questioned the historicity of the Exodus story or began performing same-sex marriages, for example, he made front-page news. Wolpe has also led an unusually diverse synagogue, with pews filled b...
(JTA) — A few days after the comedian Dave Chappelle appeared to justify the never-ending appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories, this sentence appeared in the New York Times: “Bankman-Fried is already drawing comparisons to Bernie Madoff.” I’ll explain: Sam Bankman-Fried is the 30-year-old founder of FTX, the crypto-currency exchange that vaporized overnight, leaving more than 1 million creditors on the hook. Bernie Madoff, is, of course, Bernie Madoff, the financier who defrauded thousands of investors through a multibillion-dollar Ponzi s...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) - If you watched television in the 1970s and early 1980s, chances are you can sing a few bars of "Look for the Union Label," a jingle sung on commercials for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. The infectious song was meant to prop up what was then the sagging American-made clothing industry, and the ads featured actual union members singing the praises of union-made garments. The song was more memorable than effective: Labor unions never recovered...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s editor in chief, Andrew Silow-Carroll, and its opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, shared their thoughts on a recent New York Times article answering “some of the most difficult questions” about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Andrew Silow-Carroll: Hey Laura, I wonder what you thought about The New York Times explainer on BDS. The Times usually hears it from both sides when they set out to provide what they consider a balanced view of a controversial aspect of the Isr... Full story
What does it mean to be a member of a “tribe”? I get an inkling during weeks like these, when the majority of the world is consumed by a quadrennial soccer tournament, and a small slice is convulsed over the abduction of three teenage boys. L’havdil, I know. But somehow both events — one celebratory and somewhat artificial, the other horrific and as real as it gets — turn disparate, even feuding individuals into a unified mass. The impulse is to gather with others like ourselves, wrap ourselves in the symbols of our tribes, and celebrate... Full story
Patternicity” is what scientists call the human tendency to find meaning in random events (seeing patterns where none exist—like faces in the clouds or Jesus in a potato chip—is known as “apophonia”). Connecting the dots can lead to false conclusions (“Paul is dead!”), brilliant insights (“E=mc2”), or the latest Malcolm Gladwell bestseller. I spent Sunday at Limmud NY, the annual festival of Jewish learning, sampling classes on Israel, Jewish spirituality, anti-Semitism, and even Israeli comedy. And though it is not the coincidence of th... Full story
A few years back, the following clue appeared in the New York Times crossword puzzle: “Curly ethnic hairstyle, colloquially.” The answer? “JEWFRO.” The word made Patrick Merrell, the Times’ puzzle blogger at the time, anxious. “JEWFRO! Really? Is that something we can say?” he wrote. Don’t worry, Mr. Merrell—most Jews that I know have embraced the word (if not the hairstyle), and this (straight-haired) Jew approves. I suspect it’s the use of “Jew” as an adjective—a la Archie Bunker talking about “Jew lawyers”—that makes people... Full story
When it comes to an even-handed look at Israel, the forthcoming film “The Attack” doesn’t sound very promising. Based on a novel by an Algerian army officer, directed and co-written by a Lebanese Arab and tackling a Tel Aviv cafe bombing from the perspective of a terrorist’s family, you might expect “The Attack” to show up as the Al Jazeera movie of the week. In fact, “The Attack” is a nuanced, intimate look at the complicated identities of Israel’s Arab citizens. And its reception in the Arab world is a case study in the failure of Israel... Full story
