Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 13 of 13
BUDAPEST (JTA)—Architecture and built heritage can be powerful symbols. Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the most famous and familiar buildings in the world, visited by an astonishing 30,000 people a day, or 13 million people a year. It is embedded in global collective consciousness and immortalized around the world in a zillion holiday snaps, videos, works of fine art and memories. My Facebook and Twitter feeds this week have been full of posts grieving over the great cathedral’s fiery fate and...
CASALE MONFERRATO, Italy (JTA)-It's always Chanukah in this picturesque town in northern Italy's Piedmont region. Jews have lived in Casale Monferrato for more than 500 years, with the community reaching its peak of 850 members at about the time Jews here were granted civil rights in 1848. The town still boasts one of Italy's most ornate synagogues, a rococo gem that dates to the 16th century. These days, only two Jewish families live in Casale. The synagogue, which is part of a larger museum...
(JTA)-When you share a name with someone you respect and admire, you always try to live up to the connection, because sometimes outsiders aren't aware of the difference. That's how it was for decades with me and Ruth Gruber, the noted photojournalist, reporter and author who died last week at age 105 after a remarkable life and career. From my first international byline, when I was a young intern at the Associated Press in Rome in the 1970s (when Ruth was already in her 60s), right up to a...
KRAKOW, Poland (JTA)-For the sixth year in a row, the seven synagogues in Krakow's historic Jewish district, Kazimierz, opened their doors for 7@Nite-or the Night of the Synagogues, a one-night mini-festival aimed at bolstering Jewish pride and promoting Jewish awareness among the public. Each synagogue-from the Gothic Old Synagogue, now a Jewish historical museum, to the ornate 19th century Tempel Synagogue, used for both services and cultural events-hosted an exhibit, concert, film or other...
(JTA)-Pawel Sawicki gets to his desk every morning by 7, but he works no regular office job. Sawicki is an information officer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial and Museum, the sprawling complex in southern Poland that encompasses the largest and most notorious Nazi death camp. More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered there. "I look out my window and see barbed wire and barracks," Sawicki told JTA. "It's never just a job. You have to find ways to deal with the emotions."...
CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA)-Renowned for its gracious architecture and signature Southern charm, Charleston is increasingly celebrated as a foodie heaven. The trouble is, in a city whose culinary specialties embrace (and glorify) oysters, she-crab soup, and shrimp and grits, the burgeoning restaurant scene is nearly off limits to those who keep kosher. But things are set to improve for the kosher-observant later this year, when the College of Charleston opens a $1 million kosher vegetarian dining...
BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA)—It isn’t every day that Jewish organizations reject funding for Holocaust commemorations. But that’s what happened in Hungary this spring when Jewish groups refused nearly $1 million in special state grants to protest what they see as the government’s whitewashing of Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust. “We wanted to send a very strong message to the government that we are interested in truthful, not symbolic, remembrance, and this is something money cannot buy,” sai...
ROME (JTA)-With a rabbi and a Muslim sheik as his travel companions, Pope Francis headed to the Middle East with what he hoped to be a powerful message of interfaith respect. It was the first time that leaders of other faiths were part of an official papal delegation. The aim was to send "an extremely strong and explicit signal" about interfaith dialogue and the "normality" of having friends of other religions, chief Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters. Starting last...
BUDAPEST (JTA)—There’s a new Jewish heroine on the block, a tough but tender Israeli who does undercover work for the United Nations and stars in a new series of thrillers by the British author and journalist Adam LeBor. The first installment, “The Geneva Option,” was released in the United Kingdom in April and recently hit U.S. booksellers. It spins a tale of corporate greed, international corruption and insidious plans for mass murder, with intrigue spanning the globe from New York to central...
WARSAW, Poland (JTA)—In Warsaw, sirens wailed and church bells rang to mark the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a valiant but failed revolt by Jewish fighters against the Nazi occupiers who already had deported hundreds of thousands of Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp. An official commemoration, held April 19 in a plaza between the monument honoring the ghetto heroes and the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, was attended by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski an...
WARSAW, Poland (JTA)—Krzysztof Sliwinski, a longtime Catholic activist in Jewish-Polish relations, gazed wide-eyed at the swooping interior of this city’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Nearly two decades in the making, the more than $100 million institution officially opened to the public last week amid a month of high-profile, state-sponsored events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. “It’s incredible, incredible, incredible how things have changed,” Sliwinski...
ROME (JTA)—When the white smoke rose last week at the Vatican, signaling to the world that the College of Cardinals had chosen a new pope, Catholics weren’t the only ones waiting with bated breath. Jews, too, were eager to see whether the new pontiff would be someone familiar with their concerns. Would he be a non-European unfamiliar with the Jewish people and the weighty legacy of the Holocaust? Would he carry on the legacy of his immediate predecessors and work to further Jewish-Catholic relat...
ROME (JTA)—Pope Benedict XVI’s eight-year reign as head of the world’s 1 billion Catholics sometimes was a bumpy one for the Vatican’s relations with Israel and the wider Jewish community. But it was also a period in which relations were consolidated and fervent pledges made to continue interfaith dialogue and bilateral cooperation. Both elements were evident in the tributes that flowed from Jewish leaders following the surprise announcement Monday that due to his advanced age and weakeni...
