Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 30
(JNS) - It's been three years since Hanna and Shamshy Schlager traded their home in New York for a new one in Modi'in, Israel. It's been a good three years, they'll tell you, a time of growth, not the least of which was adding a third child to their family. But that first year was not without its challenges, including arranging for bank accounts and credit cards, insurance policies - not to mention the paperwork around setting up his private psychology practice. "All of a sudden, you need to...
(JNS) - They're baaaaack! If you're in Israel this month, you can't miss the clusters of them downing falafel on Jerusalem's Ben-Yehuda Street, cooling off in the Dead Sea, climbing Masada at sunrise or slipping prayers between the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. After more than a year of pandemic silence, the Birthrighters have returned with all the gusto of young adults who'd waited out the year of coronavirus restrictions with visions of Israel dancing in their heads. Take Conor...
(JNS) - Anyone who still believes that ignorance is bliss hasn't seen how easily it can be turned into hate. Nov. 9 marked 82 years since Kristallnacht, "the Night of Broken Glass." A night when authorities looked away or even aided the anti-Semitic mobs fanning out across Germany and Austria. Twenty-four hours later, hundreds of Jews were dead, thousands more had been beaten and tens of thousands arrested. And thousands of Jewish schools, hospitals and businesses had been destroyed and 267...
(JNS) - The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, better known as HIAS, was for the better part of a century responsible for helping settle generations of Jewish refugees in their new homes in the United States. From 1881 through the release of Jews from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the organization worked not only to resettle the new arrivals, but was involved in assisting them legally as well. Yet in a way, HIAS was a product of its own success and the success of the American Jewish...
(JNS)-It wasn't so long ago when life was so over-the-top busy that you longed for some quiet unstructured time with your children. The coronavirus pandemic has granted that wish. And then some. With no end in sight of QT (Quality Time), many schools have come to a parent's rescue with online classes through a range of technologies many of us had never heard of two weeks ago. Ironically, those screens that were once the bane of a parent's existence-the computers, lap tops, cell phones and...
(JNS)-"Happy are those who dwell in Your house."-Psalm 84 It's official. Israel has been named the 13th happiest country in the world. So says the 2019 United Nations World Happiness Report, which ranks no less than 156 countries using such factors as income, social-support networks and life expectancy. Topping the list was Finland, with the United States lagging behind Israel as the 19th happiest, and South Sudan bringing up the rear at No. 156 (arguably, the most miserable). In search of some...
(JNS)-Nothing really prepares you for the Smoky smile and the twinkle in an eye undimmed by nearly a century on earth. And when Harold "Smoky" Simon grins at you, it's hard to remember that, at 99, the man is one of a dwindling club: the heroes of Israel's War of Independence. "Unhappily, that's true," he says in an accent reflecting his South African roots. "We were an endangered species, but now even that is sadly coming to an end." Simon went on to help found not only the infant country's air...
(JNS)-When you visit Nachal Prat, you can almost feel what it was like to be a seventh-century Israelite leading your donkey, its saddle bags full of water, to Jerusalem. Nachal Prat, often referred to by its Arab name, Wadi Kelt, is nothing less than "a hidden gem both for its beauty and its sense of the past visible in every stone here." So says Daniel Gutman, a tour guide who has been leading groups around Israel for the last decade. "It's in a place like Nachal Prat that the past comes...
(JNS)-Jews have long been known as the people of the book, but fresh evidence has emerged that they're also the people of the letter. Of the millions of Jews who were taken to their deaths during the Holocaust on cattle cars, we will never know how many of them scribbled last words to loved ones, addressed them and tossed them out the train window, hoping against hope that someone would find them and send them on. It's safe to assume that very few of these desperate attempts to communicate were...
(JNS)-You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll feel what it's like to breathe the air of Israel on a daily basis. You'll also see this tiny sliver of land through the eyes of the 51 olim (new immigrant) bloggers whose experiences Akiva Gersh packed into "Becoming Israeli: The Hysterical, Inspiring and Challenging Sides of Making Aliyah." Warning: Don't be surprised if you find yourself pulling out your suitcase and throwing in your Naot sandals, the family photos and a year's supply of Ziploc bags....
(JNS)—For generations, lighting the Chanukah candles together has been the stuff that makes lifelong memories. But today’s far-flung families are increasingly challenged to share the sight of the candles aglow, the sound of the blessings and traditional songs sung by old and young alike, the feel of a perfect dreidel spin, and the smell and taste of latkes fresh from the pan. Long-distance offspring may be away at college, on a gap-year program, studying in a seminary or yeshivah, a lone sol...
(JNS)-If you've ever been in Israel for Yom Hazikaron-the Memorial Day for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the Jewish homeland-chances are you will never forget it. Even if you somehow miss the official ceremonies honoring the fallen, there's no way to sleep through the siren sounding across the Jewish state at 8 p.m. and then again at 11 the next morning. At that moment, Israelis everywhere freeze in mid-air-mid-bank deposit, mid-math lesson, mid-email or mid-carpool-while traffic...
(JNS)-Passover is called the holiday of freedom for good reason. Every year for the last 3,000 or so years-wherever we are and in whatever form of bondage we find ourselves-we manage to celebrate our liberation after 210 years of serving Pharaoh, complete with the horror of watching our infant sons thrown into the Nile. Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, runs this year from tonight through Saturday, April 7 (after Shabbat). It is, after all, the Jewish holiday most redolent of freedom. In the space...
(JNS)-Why is this year going to be different from all other years? Because this year, you can stump your guests with the meaning behind many of the mysterious rites that comprise the Passover seder. Let's face it, you finally wrap up those frenzied days of cleaning and cooking. And then your guests arrive (Passover is an even bigger family reunion than Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year), and by the time you pass out the Haggadahs and the seder actually begins, you often slog through it on autop...
BOSTON-Rabbi Rick Jacobs used his pulpit to compare the difficulties between Israel and Reform Jews to those of Joseph and his brothers in last week's Torah portion of Vayeshev. It was a huge congregation Jacobs was addressing: the record-breaking 6,000 Reform Jews gathered in Boston for the Union for Reform Judaism's 74th North American Biennial General Assembly. But it was President Donald Trump's announcement that the U.S. has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and will be moving its...
This is a story about the power of letters to span both years and miles, and to unite the hearts of children and their parents when powers they can't control force them apart. More than a dozen years ago in Worcester, Mass., Prof. Deborah Dwork got a letter from a man in Switzerland she'd never heard of. Ulrich Luz told her about something he'd discovered packed away in a suitcase among his late aunt's belongings that might be of interest to Dwork. Indeed it was-so much so that she is now...
With the publication of a new edition of the Hebrew Bible under his belt, Rabbi Naphtali (Tuly) Weisz is set to manifest his vision for honoring and nurturing evangelical Christian support for Jews and the Jewish homeland. It wasn't so long ago that Christians weren't always viewed as a Jew's best friend. But that's not how things are playing out today, says Weisz, the former pulpit rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Columbus, Ohio. Ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at...
Their pictures and their names are burned on our hearts-victims of terrorism whose final moments we can't even imagine. It's in precisely these times that the job of spiritual leaders is both most challenging and most needed. All across Israel, rabbis are being asked to make whatever sense can be made of the ongoing wave of Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli Jews doing the kinds of regular things people do daily: going to work, dropping off the kids, visiting friends, going shopping,...
It was a brave-some may argue foolhardy-lot who recently braved the August heat of the Negev desert to walk a short segment of the Israel National Trail (INT) at around noontime. But the nearly 100 young men in blue Israel Defense Forces t-shirts didn't appear to mind the blazing white heat. They were on the INT (Shvil Yisra'el in Hebrew, though to most Israelis it's just "the Shvil") to train. "We get lots of practice on different altitudes," says Aaron Lion, 20. "The Shvil is a really good...
To appreciate how much Israelis love Elvis Presley, you just have to hear three generations of the Mizrachi family of Rehovot crooning, "Wise men say only fools rush in...but I can't help falling in love with you." The Mizrachis-mom Aliza, sons Asaf and Yehoram, and granddaughter Kahila-had just downed some American-style burgers at the Elvis Inn, a restaurant, convenience store, and gas station that proudly claims to be the only Israeli institution devoted to The King. And they were busy...
Never in the 23 years of Natan Glassman's volunteering at an Israel Defense Forces army base has he seen anything like the outpouring of love and respect garnered by American veteran Brian Mast. "Brian was a celebrity here, and everyone wanted to be with him, from the old ladies who volunteer at the base to the generals," says Glassman. "He's a hero but as we saw, a very humble one." The "hero" Glassman describes is a 34-year-old Christian, a full-time Harvard University student, and a father...
There are few subjects in Israel these days that arouse greater passion than prayer rights at the Temple Mount. The dramatic uptick in Palestinian terror attacks on Jews in Jerusalem in recent weeks, including Tuesday’s killing of four at a synagogue in Har Nof, has raised the temperature of the long-simmering debate over control of the holy site to a boiling point. Rabbi Yehudah Glick, a promoter of Jewish access to the Temple Mount, is still recovering from being shot by an Arab gunman on Oct. 29. Increased Muslim riots have prompted p...
Among the things that Jewish women value most about the mikveh (ritual bath) experience is the feeling of seclusion, sanctity, and safety. "But the need to feel respected and comfortable is the most important," says Chaya Sett, who since making aliyah from Brooklyn has been a self-described "regular" in the mikvehs of Jerusalem's Old City. "It has to be a very safe place in your life because it's also when you are at your most vulnerable." Sett speaks for many mikveh-going women in the wake of...
JERUSALEM-As the afternoon sun showers Jerusalem with gold, Ammunition Hill looks like any of the city's other 22 light rail stops. Since 2011, untold numbers of Israelis-Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike-have been catching the train every nine minutes or so along the 8.6-mile route through Jerusalem's main shopping streets and many residential neighborhoods. In fact, for the commuters, college students, and shoppers getting off and on here, there is little to indicate that a terrorist attack...
Regarding Shavuot-when Jews from around the world celebrate the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai-Rabbi Chayim Vital wrote on behalf of his master Rabbi Isaac Ben Solomon Luria ("Ha'Ari), "Know that one who does not sleep at all on this night, even for one moment, but rather immerses himself in [the waters of] Torah the entire night, can be assured that he will live out his year; no injury will befall him during this year." That level of protection is certainly a draw, but those who have...
