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

(JTA)—Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign never recovered after he was caught on video telling a group of millionaires that 47 percent of Americans will always vote for Democrats because they don’t take “personal responsibility” for their liv...

(JTA)—Last week Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said that if Hillary Clinton asked him to be her running mate, he’d take the job. “If Hillary Clinton came to me and said, ‘Al, I really need you to be my vice president, to run with me,’ I would say yes,...

WASHINGTON (JTA)—I am trying to imagine a conversation between Donald Trump’s people and a delegation of Reform rabbis and lay leaders. Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the Reform movement’s man in Washington, told me that Trump’s people have agreed to a “staff-...

Two of my favorite television shows are about what I think it’s fair to call the “New America.” In Master of None, on Netflix, Indian-American comedian Aziz Ansari plays a struggling actor in a very real and recognizable New York. His best frien...

December 22, 2015 I didn’t cry when I first saw the Western Wall, but I bawled like a baby when I first visited Ellis Island. I thought about this over the weekend as I watched Brooklyn, director John Crowley’s emotionally devastating adaptation of C...

From the attacks in Paris to the deadly toll of terror in Israel, events of the past week have reminded us of the wide gap between Jews and the rest of the world. As if we needed any reminding. Following the rampage in Paris, which left over 140...

Let’s assume—despite evidence that polling on the issue was at best “quick and dirty,” according to one prominent analyst—that the Jewish establishment was out of step with most American Jews in opposing the Iran agreement. And let’s agree with...

The history of Jewish democracy is scattered with congresses, parliaments, unions, councils, sejms, and kahals—all attempts to govern or speak for an unruly body of people who shared a common culture but lacked genuine political autonomy. Various g...

There’s a lovely Jewish tradition of honoring the dead by engaging in Torah study. You can devote any number of mitzvot in the memory of the departed, but studying Torah is said to have particular mystical power. Tradition says it elevates the n...

I always had a soft spot for the comedian Anne Meara, in large part because she looked a lot like my mother, of blessed memory. Similar cheek bones, the wide smile, a deep dimple in her left cheek. My mother was usually there, too, on her side of...

At some point in the life of the average adult, the conversation shifts from “How are the kids?” to “What’s happening with your parents?” If you’re lucky, you can talk about two silver-haired retirees, enjoying their relative good health, the...

I once heard a rabbi, a noted proponent of a Greater Israel, make a plea to his congregation for bipartisan empathy. This was just a few years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, when both the Right’s dreams for an unchecked settlement m...

On Monday night I clicked over from a nail-biting, extra-innings Mets game to CNN’s coverage of the crisis in Israel. In short: Mets win, Israel loses. While SNY.tv kept showing a did-he, didn’t-he replay of a disputed play at second, CNN looped a v...

During the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof, Perchik, the student revolutionary, breaks with tradition by crossing from the men’s side to the women’s side to dance with Tevye’s daughter Hodel. On stage it plays like a breakthrough; even the r...

n 1906, Abraham Cahan was looking to boost the circulation of the Forward, the Yiddish daily that he edited. Warheit, a rival for the affections of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, had begun to publish letters from readers seeking advice. Not to be...

In Woody Allen’s Sleeper, the hero wakes up from cryogenic sleep to find out a war has wiped out the world as he knew it. “Over 100 years ago,” a doctor tells him, “a man named Albert Shanker got a hold of a nuclear warhead.” Allen knew this incr...

Above all, [the new Pew survey of American Jews] vindicates a thesis championed by the late sociologist Gary Tobin. He argued that calling up a random stranger and asking right off the bat about their religion is a sure way to get a false reading....

In the museum attached to Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, there is an exhibit called “Free2Choose.” Videos pose various scenarios: Should YouTube ban Holocaust denial? Should public schools allow Muslim girls to wear head scarves? The visitors are...

My second-favorite joke about Jewish newspapers takes place in New York in the 1930s. Two Jews are sitting on a bench; Leo is reading the Yiddish paper, Morris is reading the Nazi tabloid Der Sturmer. Leo glares at his friend, asking, “How can you re...

“Of making many lists there is no end, and much blogging wearies the eyeballs.” Ecclesiastes doesn’t say that, exactly—but might have had the author lived to see the proliferation of lists ranking the most influential rabbis and other Jews. The lat...

By Andrew Silow-Carroll New Jersey Jewish News First, let’s take a deep breath. Stephen Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott of Israel may be infuriating, but it’s not the end of the world. On balance, I’ll prefer to remember it as a we...

How much Islamophobia is just enough? That’s probably the least sensitive way to pose a question that has been bothering me lately. The Boston Marathon bombings gave a new boost to the cottage industry of “anti-jihad” activists, like Pamela Gelle...

At a synagogue talk I recently gave, the topic turned to the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens. A woman in the audience was obviously upset. “You talk about the Israeli Arabs, but how much more should we give them?” she asked. “They have schools...

Here’s a Jewish joke I just made up: The pro-Israel activist goes to see a doctor. The doctor says, “I have some good news and some bad news.” The pro-Israel activist says, “Just give me the bad news.” If that made you smile, even a little, t...

Is Nate Silver destroying our ability to argue? When I was a kid, my parents would have what I would call “encyclopedia” arguments. Say, did FDR die on April 12 or April 13? They would marshal personal history (“My cousin’s birthday was April 12”), d...