Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The phrase “Judeo-Christian values” was once a familiar part of American civic life. Presidents, educators, clergy, and community leaders used it because they understood a fundamental truth: Christianity did not arise in a vacuum. It grew from the Hebrew Bible, from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and from the moral law first entrusted to the Jewish people. Today, public discourse increasingly speaks only of “Christian values,” as though their Jewish foundation can simply be set aside. Can a tree flourish after severing its own roots?...
Alzheimer’s has become a growing concern as the Baby Boomer generation ages. If you are in your 70s or 80s, or love or care for someone who is, you probably pay closer attention to news about Alzheimer’s disease than you once did. Every misplaced name, every forgotten appointment, every step into a room only to wonder why you went there can raise the same unsettling question: Is this ordinary aging, or is something more serious beginning? At the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference held in London from July 12 through 15, resea...
Israeli scientists have announced a discovery that may someday change the lives of millions of people living with hearing loss. At Tel Aviv University, Prof. Karen Avraham and her research team have identified a biological mechanism that could eventually allow damaged sensory hair cells in the inner ear to regenerate — something long believed impossible in humans. For Avraham, this breakthrough represents the latest chapter in a lifetime devoted to hearing. For decades she has been one of the world’s leading researchers into hereditary hea...
Israeli security officials recently warned that Iran may attempt to influence Israel’s upcoming elections through coordinated disinformation campaigns on social media and other digital platforms. Their warning took me back more than 50 years to a remarkable woman who spent her life studying exactly these tactics — long before the internet, artificial intelligence, bots, or trolls existed. Most Americans have never heard of Natalie Grant Wraga, who preferred to be called Natalie Grant. Yet the...
In these few days following Senator Lindsey Graham’s sudden death after returning from Ukraine, I have heard Jews offering the traditional blessing usually spoken for one of our own: “May Lindsey Graham rest in peace. May his memory be for a blessing.” The words felt fitting. Graham was not Jewish, but he stood firmly with Israel and the Jewish people. He understood that Israel was not only defending itself but also standing against forces that threatened the region and beyond. He wasn’t alone. Some of the greatest friends the Jewish people...
In an Oval Office ceremony Monday morning, July 6, President Donald Trump marked the launch of the Trump Accounts program by ringing the opening bells for both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq from the White House. Lead guests included Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, and his wife, Susan Lieberman Dell, co-founder and board chair of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, along with the presidents of both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Michael Dell was born in...
Across cultures and religions, the doorway is more than wood, hinges, and locks. It marks the boundary between the outside world and the values carried within. That is exactly where the Torah places one of Judaism's most familiar commandments. The Hebrew word mezuzah means "doorpost," referring to the actual frame of the entryway, not to the decorative case. The words inside the mezuzah come from two passages in Deuteronomy: 6:4–9 and 11:13–21. The first begins with the Shema, the central dec...
I recently watched Ancient Skies, a PBS documentary about ancient Babylonia, and wondered: where did this ancient world of sky-watching, calculation, and record-keeping intersect with the story of the Jews exiled from Jerusalem to Babylonia? More than 2,600 years ago, Babylonia was one of the great centers of astronomy, mathematics, record-keeping, and administration in the ancient world. Its achievements are especially striking because they came before telescopes, clocks, calculators, computers, or printed books. Babylonian scholars watched...
With Iran's rulers threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, the modern world is reminded of an ancient truth: geography is power. The Strait is just a narrow channel between Iran and Oman, yet a huge share of the world's oil flows through it. Control that passage and you can rattle global markets, spike prices, and make nations nervous. Why the land of Canaan was so important When God told Abraham to go to the land He would show him, Abraham was being sent to Canaan, one of the great...
As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, a familiar claim has resurfaced. In recent months, I have heard a number of television commentators describe the United States as a "Christian nation," as though that settles the matter. A brief look back is in order, beginning with George Washington and a deadly problem. George Washington and the battle against disease Americans often think of George Washington as a military commander on horseback, crossing the Delaware or...
COVID taught us a word most of us hoped we could forget: “quarantine.” Now the word has returned to the headlines, with passengers exposed to the Andes strain of hantavirus being flown into the United States and elsewhere for monitoring and isolation. While the risk to the public may be low, the practice is routine: separate those who have been exposed, protect the general population, and wait for the danger to pass. That headline made me think of Odessa, once part of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. Odessa was a cosmopolitan por...
Usually, my iPhone recognizes me instantly. But on rare occasions, I am holding my own phone, looking straight at it, and it tells me: “Face Not Recognized.” If you have ever had that moment, you know how unsettling it can feel. What changed? Did I pick up someone else’s phone? Sometimes it is something simple: the tilt of the phone, poor lighting, or a smudge on the lens. But other times it is not so simple. You may be tired, slightly swollen, not well. I find myself wondering: were my glasses off? Was I dehydrated, or just different enoug...
When most people think of Israel, agriculture is not the first thing that comes to mind. Israel is small, much of it is arid, and water has always been scarce. The land in Israel has been farmed for thousands of years. What statehood changed was the scale, the conditions including rapid population growth and limited water, and the methods required to make agriculture work. That meant finding alternatives, moving water across the country, using it more efficiently, and eventually creating new sources through desalination. Out of those...
Throughout Jewish history, the genizah and the ghetto, two very different institutions, served as powerful means of preserving Jewish thought and Jewish life. One preserved what was written while the other preserved those who were learning. Let’s look at how both preserved Jewish thinking. The Genizah: A refusal to discard The practice grew out of Jewish law rooted in Deuteronomy and developed in rabbinic tradition, which forbade destroying writings containing the name of G-d. Such materials were set aside in a genizah rather than casually d...
Attending the first-night Seder for Passover this year, a light bulb went off as we read from the Haggadah. There are so many questions! The children’s Haggadah at the second Seder seemed to have even more. It is not just the Four Questions. The Haggadah keeps asking: Why matzah? Why bitter herbs? What does this service mean to you? Why the rush to leave Egypt? It even turns inward and asks something deeper: What does this story mean to me, right now? That was proof enough to me that Jewish children are trained early to ask, probe, compare, and...
On March 19, 2026, Iran’s regime publicly hanged 19-year-old Saleh Mohammadi, a rising wrestler on Iran’s national team and a bronze medalist at the 2024 Saitiev Cup in Russia. He was accused by Iranian authorities of killing two police officers during the January anti-government protests in Qom. Mohammadi was charged with moharebeh (waging war against God), and executed with two other young men, Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi. Human rights groups say the proceedings were grossly unfair, mar...
I went to the dermatologist today to have the first of two skin cancers removed — one on my face, the other on my neck. As she worked, I asked whether I should finally spring for tinted windows in my car. She smiled gently and said, “You can, but the roots of these growths go back more than 20 years.” That sentence landed like a rock. Twenty years? I had thought of all the times I had driven lately with the Florida sun blazing through my window or walked the dog “just for a minute” without a hat or sunscreen. The damage, my dermatolo...
A few years ago, while walking my dog at night, I tripped over the raised edge of a sidewalk and fell hard — my cellphone landing about six feet away in the grass. Before I had time to gather my senses Siri, speaking through my Apple Watch, asked me a question: “Did you fall?” “Yes.” “Are you hurt?” “Yes.” “Would you like me to call for help?” “Yes.” Within seconds an emergency dispatcher was speaking to me through my watch. “Where are you?” the dispatcher asked. While my location had already been transmitted, the dispatcher wanted further cla...
We live in an age of advanced imaging, targeted therapies, robotic surgery, and medications that a generation ago would have seemed miraculous. About 75 percent of physicians are U.S. medical school graduates. Roughly one quarter earned their degrees abroad, with India among the largest sources of international medical graduates. Many patients now see a range of specialists. Yet some harm today is caused not by illness, but by the care meant to treat it. The word for this is iatrogenic — harm that results from medical care. This includes a...
When cold weather arrives and the air turns sharp enough to sting, some Jewish households still turn to the kitchen. Long before health insurance, urgent-care clinics, or online medical advice, healing came from bubbling pots, simple ingredients, and slow cooking. Food has always been more than sustenance: It is how people manage to stay upright when illness, hunger, and winter close in. Grandmothers do not need nutrition charts to know what works. Nutrition writers today speak of probiotics, antioxidants, collagen, and immune-supporting foods...
The Bridge Theatre Company recently gave a performance that left the audience silent in the way only truth can silence a room — and then rose to its feet as one. “Anne & Emmett,” performed at the Pargh Event Center at the Rosen JCC, was gripping, flawless, and unrelenting. The audience in the packed auditorium gave a standing ovation at the end, but what mattered just as much was what did not happen that afternoon: no one left. Every seat remained filled as the house lights came up and the cast, director, and board stayed for an extended conve...
On Jan. 30, 2026, President Donald J. Trump announced his nomination of Kevin Maxwell Warsh to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Jerome Powell when Powell’s term concludes in May. Warsh was born in Albany, New York,[13] to a Jewish family, the youngest of three children of Judith and Robert Warsh. Warsh, 55, brings to the nomination a rare depth of experience in both public service and financial markets. A former Federal Reserve governor (2006–2011), he was the youngest member — confirmed at age 35 — ever appoint...
A certain Jewish skill gets pronounced obsolete—right up until institutions seize up and diplomacy turns rigid. The skill is “shtadlanut,” Jewish intercession: the disciplined ability of a trusted person, operating outside the spotlight, to gain access to decision-makers and quietly shift an outcome before positions calcify and failure becomes inevitable. Shtadlanut depends on one condition: silence. It works only when negotiations are shielded from spectacle, attribution, and public pressure. Once the process is pulled into the open for appla...
When the federal buildings in Washington, D.C., finally empty out and the capital quiets down for the night, Howard Lutnick is often still working. Colleagues in the administration say he routinely puts in 19-hour days, a stamina that belies his being in his mid-60s. Recently, Lutnick remarked publicly on President Trump’s famously short sleep schedule — about four to five hours a night — expressing admiration for the president’s constitution and noting that he himself needs closer to six. But for Lutnick, this relentless pace reflects somethi...
The Schvitz offered a kind of restoration that beats anything offered today. In the late 1960s and early '70s, when my sister, Vicky, or I came down with a bad cold, my father had an unconventional cure: He would drop us off at the, better known to Clevelanders as the Schvitz. It was a men-only institution every day of the week except Wednesday, which was Ladies' Night. Vicky and I checked in, stripped down, stowed our clothes in lockers, and wrapped ourselves in the signature Schvitz uniform: a...
