Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
There are certain topics that make even the boldest dinner guests squirm in their seats. Circumcision tops that list. Just saying the word makes people shift positions. Yet for Jews, it has always been more than a medical procedure — it’s a sacred act, a covenant sealed in flesh. According to the Book of Genesis, God’s command was explicit: “This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a si...
There are a variety of spellings of the game of mahjong. Heritage uses the AP Stylebook format, unless used in a specific name like the National Mah Jongg League. Few games have managed to be both ancient and newly fashionable, but mahjong is one of them. Mahjong is a tile-based game of skill and strategy, played with 152 engraved tiles, racks, dice, and chips. Its roots in China stretch back centuries, but it gained popularity in the United States during the 1920s. It was Jewish women who adopted it early and made it their own, turning the...
As I went on my nightly dog walk with a neighbor couple, the wife who is a dedicated fifth-grade teacher mentioned a troubling new problem at her school. She said the principal had told her of a new trend he was seeing — boys were being reported for threatening another with “I’ll shoot you,” not in play but with a tone that chilled her. It wasn’t roughhousing anymore, she said — it was an echo from somewhere darker. Her husband introduced a term I’d never heard before: stochastic terrorism. He said it described the way inflammatory words from p...
About 10 years ago, as a volunteer program director for the Jewish Pavilion, I put together a program about Yiddish — its words, humor, and heart — and took it “on the road” to a dozen assisted-living and nursing facilities across West Orange County. The residents loved it. We laughed our way through bupkes, kvetch, schlep, mensch, and dozens of other favorites. Many in the audience still remembered those words from their parents or childhood neighbors. The program was a great schtick, and now it has brought back memories of my childho...
I was born Gloria Bernardi, but my father was born Jacob Moses Schwartzman. When he came to America and became an opera singer in the years just before World War I, it was a time of smoldering antisemitism. He decided that the name Giacomo Bernardi would look better on theatre marquees than Jacob Moses Schwartzman. Bernardi became a name that opened doors, soothed suspicion, and allowed him to move between two worlds. And that’s what names often do — change to fit the times. They can protect, disguise, or celebrate who we are — and who we ho...
The Torah is direct: eat this, not that; separate milk and meat, based on the verse “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21); and remove leaven from the home before Passover. Leviticus and Deuteronomy do not say “to prevent parasites” or “to avoid food poisoning.” Rabbis treated these as chukim — decrees beyond human reasoning. To follow them was to show trust in God’s wisdom. Over the centuries, rabbis of old cautioned against searching for purely practical motives in these laws. They feared that if pe...
Sharm el-Sheikh, October 9 (U.S. time): Israel and Hamas signed a first-phase agreement that promises a pause in fighting, a partial Israeli pullback, and hostage–prisoner exchanges, with releases expected shortly after Israeli cabinet ratification. Much to hope for. But peace isn’t just paperwork — it rests on trust and, not to be forgotten, on what children are taught. As President Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” There are three sobering clues from recent history which explain why verification can’t be a footnote, it’s the whole bal...
People often talk about “trading a Palestinian state for peace,” yet few know the history of this land. While Gaza fills headlines, another phrase is hitting the headlines lately: the “Occupied West Bank.” The West Bank is the heartland of ancient Israel and Judah, including Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. It was seized by Jordan in 1948 and then captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The West Bank has never been a Palestinian state; before 1948 it was part of the British Mandate, and before that it was under Ottoman rule. Biblica...
