Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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LOS ANGELES (JTA)-For Rosh Hashanah, many of us eat an apple dipped in honey as an auspicious sign for a sweet new year. The symbolism is clear, and the ritual as easy to pull off as squeezing a bear-shaped plastic bottle of honey. But what kind of a year could you expect from eating leeks, spinach and a fish head? A year of being a contestant on "Chopped"? Many Sephardic Jews practice a custom at Rosh Hashanah dinner called "yehi ratzones"-"may it be God's will"-which calls for a kind of...
(JTA)—Building up to Sukkot, with its temporary, shaky sukkah, it’s easy to forget that the holiday comes with something more substantial: its own book, Ecclesiastes—Kohelet in Hebrew—which is read during the festival and gives us a solid sampling of earthly wisdom. “A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven,” Kohelet famously tells us, which this year brings to mind the campaign season. And though in the last few months we do seem to have experienced “everything,” I think we can all agree that not much of it...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-For Rosh Hashanah, many of us eat an apple dipped in honey as an auspicious sign for a sweet new year. The symbolism is clear, and the ritual as easy to pull off as squeezing a bear-shaped plastic bottle of honey. But what kind of a year could you expect from eating leeks, spinach and a fish head? A year of being a contestant on "Chopped"? Many Sephardic Jews practice a custom at Rosh Hashanah dinner called "yehi ratzones"-"may it be God's will"-which calls for a kind of...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-Can the essence of Passover fit into a box? Fans of Manischewitz and Streit's will undoubtedly answer, "Yes, in a matzah box." But a successful Kickstarter campaign called Hello Mazel aims to reinvent that box, promising a package filled with Passover-related "Jewish awesomeness" that will be delivered to your door (or someone else's). The project was a smash on Kickstarter, to the tune of more than $152,021 with 1,395 backers. Investors who pledged a minimum of $45 will...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-It's no miracle that I know the exact minute that Rosh Hashanah is coming; my trusty Jewish calendar hanging on the refrigerator tells me. While it doesn't actually speak to me like my friend Marcy's Jewish calendar computer program, my old-fashioned paper version not only provides me the eve of when Rosh Hashanah begins, Sept. 13, and the precise moment, 6:44 p.m., but a lesson in klal Yisrael, literally "the whole of Israel." And it's all for free. Unlike the mezuzah, there...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-Who is the Haman in your life? The person, like the bad guy in the Megillah Esther that we read on Purim, schemes to bring you down. When we get to the place in the Megillah where Haman is forced to lead Mordechai though the streets of Shushan, saying, "This is what is done for the man whom the king desires to honor," might we insert ourselves-like a video game-into an updated version of the story? Imagining that a seriously negative person in our life is pushing our car down...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-What can a buck get you on Chanukah? Maybe a gold mesh bag of chocolate coins or a lighter for your menorah. But Jewish continuity? At Chanukah time, when we get so wrapped up in gift giving, I propose that it's a single dollar of gelt (Yiddish for money) that has the power to keep on giving beyond eight nights. Chanukah gelt referred originally in Europe and later America to coins given as gifts to children and adults. Today, gelt brings to mind the chocolate coins wrapped in...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-As we prepare for our Thanksgiving feasts, a 90-year-old Jewish man named Arnold Abbott is stirring the pot in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., about hunger and homelessness in America. Or is it that Abbott, who in defiance of a controversial new city ordinance has been cited several times for feeding the homeless outdoors, is just asking us to pay more than lip service to our Jewish ideals? The ordinance limits where outdoor feeding sites can be located and requires permits. Groups...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-With a borscht-curdling geshrei, Halloween this year falls on Shabbat. On a Friday night, trick-or-treaters, even Jewish ones, will be knocking. Should we open the door? Or should we be spooked about joining the celebration? After reading that on Oct. 31, Urban Adama, a Jewish-oriented educational farm and community center in Berkeley, Calif., would be holding a "Challahween Kabbalat Shabbat"-chanting and meditation plus a potluck dinner and Halloween dessert candy bar-I...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—As we ushered in Sukkot, was there a blood moon rising? John Hagee, the San Antonio pastor who wrote the book “Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change,” would have us believe so. Hagee predicts that because of a cycle of four lunar eclipses called a tetrad—two this year and next on Passover and Sukkot—that something big is about to happen, like the Rapture. The eclipse was seen throughout much of the world on Oct. 7 and 8—the latter the eve of Sukkot. It was visible throughout much of the United States on Oct. 8, but on...
After hearing of the apparent suicide of Robin Williams, I remembered laughing harder, and deeper than I ever had at a comedian when I first saw him perform at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in 1977. During his set at the Sunset Boulevard club—where newcomer, Jay Leno, also performed that evening--there were no tedious joke set-ups, or tired shtickiness to his approach to stand-up, just a flinging out of a blend of Shakespearian references, observations, plays on words and thoughts that Williams had spun together in the mad juicer that was h...
Editor’s note: This article was received too late for the Aug. 1 issue and Tisha b’Av was Aug. 4, but Edmon Rodman’s message here is too important to pass over just because of deadlines. LOS ANGELES (JTA)—After weeks of missiles falling on Israel and bombs dropping on Gaza, we land on Tisha b’Av. With the day-to-day images of explosions and tunnels so fresh, I wondered how they might connect to my mid-summer night’s struggle with the somber holiday’s relevance. Tisha b’Av, this year starting on the evening of Aug. 4, is a day on which we are...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-Part "God Bless America," part "Shabbat Shalom," the Fourth of July this year falls on a Friday. In this land of religious freedom, how do we plan to observe both? As the sun sets over the "fruited plain," will we be lighting Shabbat candles and fireworks? How will the Sabbath Queen look in red, white and blue? Those who traditionally observe the Sabbath by not kindling fire surely will take a pass on the "rockets' red glare." But for many U.S. Jews and congregations, the day r...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-At future Passovers, if we consider the Jewish implications of the recent hit movie "Her," we all could be using a talking computer operating system with artificial intelligence to lead our seders. But I can't wait that long. Tired of running my own seders-they've grown ever more complicated as my guests study up about the seder beforehand and persist in asking pesky questions that I cannot answer-I needed a cool digital maven to run our yearly Haggadah-fest. After all, I reaso...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—If the Pilgrims are lighting menorahs and the Maccabees are chasing turkeys, it must be Thanksgivukkah, as some have come to call the confluence of Thanksgiving and Chanukah that will happen this year on Nov. 28. It’s a rare event, one that won’t occur again until 2070 and then in 2165. Beyond that, because the Jewish lunisolar (lunar with solar adjustments) calendar is very slowly getting out of sync with the solar calendar, the Chanukah-Thanksgiving confluence won’t happen again by one calculation until the year 79811—when t...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—On Yom Kippur, when we beat our chests during the confession, maybe we should be knocking instead on our heads. After all, isn’t that where all the trouble starts? On this most physically demanding of Jewish days, Jewish tradition has us beat the heart side of our chests, as if to say this is the source of our falling short. During the Viddui—the confessional portion of the service composed of the Ashamnu and Al Chait—some of us tap, some of us rap, some of us pound really...
Inviting the museum visitor down hallways and through rooms of rendered memories and memorials, the Gary Baseman show at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles uses a design based on the artist’s Jewish childhood home to offer up a retrospective of his extended family of characters, related artworks, and family memorabilia. The show’s title, “The Door is Always Open,” is taken from a remark Baseman’s Yiddish speaking father made while explaining his attitude about hospitality: “Gary, th...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—On Yom Kippur, we ask “Who by fire?” Sadly, this year at Tisha b’Av we already know who—the 19 firefighters who perished in Arizona. “This is as dark a day as I can remember,” Gov. Jan Brewer said in a statement. Unknowingly, the governor connected me to the mood of the Ninth of Av, the Jewish day of mourning that begins this year on the evening of July 15. Each year we come from the sun of summer unprepared for this darkest day on the Jewish calendar. With the itinerary of vacation days on our minds, we reluctantly s...
