Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 91
(JTA)—The impact of the coronavirus on the Jewish world is a study in contrasts. In Israel, where the total death toll as of Tuesday was 238 and the number of new daily infections below 50, the country has significantly eased its lockdown. School has resumed for some grades, businesses have reopened, and on Thursday beaches and outdoor markets reopened. But in many large Jewish communities worldwide, the coronavirus is still wreaking a terrible toll. Among the 8 million Jews living in the Diaspora—more than Israel’s 6.7 million but less than...
MOUNT HERMON, Israel (JTA)-Standing on a peak atop Israel's highest mountain on a dazzlingly bright February morning, I had just stepped into my skis and begun to descend when I heard someone yelling in my direction. A soldier clutching an automatic weapon was running after me. "Hey! You can't go that way," he shouted. "That's a closed military zone." Welcome to Israel's only ski area, wedged into the northernmost corner of the Golan Heights along the Syrian border at an elevation of 6,600 feet....
MODIIN, Israel (JTA)—When our seventh day of quarantine began with a knock on the door from a guy in a hazmat suit, it was almost a relief finally to have a visitor in the house. He had come to test my wife and me for coronavirus. My four children eyed the man warily as he unpacked the testing kits at our dining room table. Barely halfway through a mandatory 14-day quarantine, we were beginning to go a little stir crazy. Our kids, who range in age from 2 to 10, could not attend school or leave home. Our living room was littered with board g...
NEW YORK (JTA)-It costs more per pound than filet mignon. It might be burnt or taste like cardboard. It's so delicate it often breaks in the box, rendering it unfit for Passover ritual use. Yet every year, Jews from Brooklyn to Bnei Brak line up to fork over their hard-earned money to buy boxes and boxes of the stuff. This isn't your regular box of Streit's matzah. We're talking, of course, about handmade shmura matzah: the artisanal, disc-shaped matzahs considered extra special because the...
(JTA)-"Drop your pants" The order came curt and clipped, and it caught me by surprise. What?! "Drop your pants," he repeated sternly. I had been subject to the indignities of Israeli security before, but never this. I was in a holding area of the Israeli Embassy in Amman, Jordan, on my way to a meeting with a senior Israeli official in the building. I had been thoroughly vetted: They knew I was a journalist, I had an appointment with a senior embassy official to talk about Israeli-Jordanian...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is facing growing accusations that his campaign is countenancing anti-Semitism-if not encouraging it outright. Trump's foreign policy slogan, "America First," echoes the World War II-era noninterventionist movement championed by a notorious anti-Semite. During the height of the primary campaign, Trump delayed disavowing the support of white supremacist David Duke. And the candidate has failed to condemn the recent...
UNITED NATIONS (JTA)—It was an incongruous sight: The U.N. General Assembly hall filled to capacity with 1,500 cheering people waving miniature Israeli flags and singing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. No, hell hadn’t frozen over. The occasion was a one-day conference hosted by Israel’s U.N. mission devoted to fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Jewish state. It turns out any U.N. member state can reserve space at the world body’s headquarters in New York—even the iconic General Assembly hall—for events...
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA)-When Jonathan Sarna was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1999 at the age of 44, it changed his life. Already a highly regarded historian at Brandeis University, Sarna was in the midst of writing his seminal study of American Jewish history when he realized with alarm that he might never finish it. He underwent chemotherapy, radiation treatment and surgery. Though he didn't know it at the time, doctors gave him a one-in-five chance of surviving. Then, slowly, the...
JACKSON, N.J. (JTA)-Pinchas Cohen spent most of Monday wandering around Six Flags Great Adventure under a blazing sun, wearing a knee-length black coat and carrying a big box of shmura matzah under his arm. An imposing, Russian-born Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid who now lives in Brooklyn, Cohen came to this amusement park in New Jersey with his 11-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, the two youngest of his nine children, to have some fun on the first day of chol hamoed, the intermediate days of Pass...
(JTA)-Americans have heard a lot about Merrick Garland since President Barack Obama nominated him to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. But there's a lot we still don't know. What are his views on abortion? Will the Republican leadership give him a hearing in the Senate? What was his bar mitzvah Torah portion? Garland may have an extensive judicial record-he has more federal judicial experience (19 years) than any other Supreme Court nominee in history, according to the White House-but...
NEW YORK (JTA)—America’s political system is broken, and the last thing the country needs is another career politician at the helm. With money more than ever a corrupting influence in politics, the White House should be occupied by someone who isn’t beholden to well-funded lobbyists or super PACs. Politicians have a real problem with honesty. The country needs someone authentic who isn’t afraid to speak the truth and disrupt convention, even if it’s not politically correct. If you’re planning to vote for Donald Trump for president, you’ve prob...
NEW YORK (JTA)-For Samir Patel, the term "goy" is no slur. It's a point of pride. Patel is a manager of Suhag Wine & Liquors, a family-owned business in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills, in Queens. He's a Hindu immigrant from India, but the vast majority of his customers are religious Jews, and nearly all the wine and spirits he sells is kosher. Saturday is the store's slowest day for sales, but there's another service Patel provides that makes him indispensable: He's a...
SALT LAKE CITY (JTA)-When Robb Abrams first moved to this mountain city from the New York area six years ago, he loved the idea of living in an outdoorsman's paradise. But there was one thing in particular he found very troubling: He couldn't find a decent bagel anywhere. What began as a casual hunt quickly turned into an obsession-and, eventually, a profession. A technology executive by training, Abrams had limited experience in the kitchen. Until his wife's career at Goldman Sachs precipitated...
SALT LAKE CITY (JTA)-It's Friday afternoon at the McGillis School in Salt Lake City, and students from the third through fifth grades are gathered for the weekly Shabbat celebration. They read and discuss a passage about humility by former British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Then a blonde girl with braided hair prepares to light the candles. A hush falls over the room as the flames are kindled, and the students recite the practiced benediction in unison: "As we bless this source of light, the...
MANCHESTER, N.H. (JTA)-Michael Harris probably isn't your typical New Hampshire Republican. A 71-year-old from Hollis and president of his synagogue in nearby Nashua, Harris isn't sure who he would support if the general election came down to the two iconoclasts on either side, Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. While the brash real estate mogul running as a Republican and the independent lawmaker from Vermont seeking the Democratic nomination might seem like polar opposites, there are a...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Though it’s been more than a year since Rabbi Barry Freundel was hauled away in handcuffs for installing secret cameras at his synagogue’s mikvah, his crime still casts a shadow over his longtime Orthodox congregation, Kesher Israel. Three civil lawsuits are pending against Kesher by women who presumably used the ritual bath adjacent to his Washington synagogue and were filmed by the rabbi while undressing (the women are identified as Jane Does in the lawsuits). The congregation, which is struggling financially, has yet to be...
(JTA)-Since the mass shooting in the California city of San Bernardino, U.S. authorities have been piecing together what might have led Syed Farook and his wife, Tafsheen Malik, to gun down 14 of Farook's colleagues at a holiday party for county health department employees. The attack raises a host of questions. Here are five to consider. 1. In Israel, armed civilians stop terrorist attacks. Should that be a model for America? Opponents of gun regulation argue that attacks like the one in San Be...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Mikvah night has an unusual meaning in the Ozur Bass household. As for many observant Jewish women, it’s the night each month that Janet Ozur Bass immerses in the mikvah ritual bath following menstruation. Once she emerges from the water, husband and wife may resume the physical intimacy traditionally forbidden while a woman is menstruating. But in the Ozur Bass household, mikvah night is double duty: Instead of just Janet going, her husband, Henrique, immerses in the mikvah, too. “I can’t begin to tell you how spiritual it is,...
SECAUCUS, N.J. (JTA)-Welch's is coming to seder this year. For decades, America's kosher grape juice market has been dominated by Kedem, whose sweet libations come in concord, blush, white, peach, diet and a variety of sparkling flavors. But with U.S. sales flat when it comes to non-kosher grape juice, Welch's, America's largest grape juice company, is muscling its way into the kosher market. Starting in January, Welch's will begin selling 100 percent grape juice certified by the Orthodox Union...
NEW YORK (JTA)-They were called "so-called" refugees, told they were alien to American culture and warned against as potential enemies of the United States. This heated anti-refugee rhetoric in America was directed against Jews trying to flee Europe, not Mexicans or Syrians. Back in the 1930s and '40s, the fear was of Nazi and Communist infiltrators sneaking in along with the refugees rather than the Islamic militants or Mexican criminals that some fear today. Here's a snapshot of what...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Some 3,000 Jews gathered in Washington Nov. 8-10 for the annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. If you’re a little fuzzy on what Jewish federations are and what they do, you’re not alone. Here’s a primer. What’s a Jewish federation? Jewish federations are centralized charities run by local Jewish communities around the United States. In each community, the federation raises money from local sources and then funds a variety of local, national and international needs—everything from elder housing for...
ORLANDO (JTA)-Growing up in a traditional Jewish household, Joan Cubell didn't really know much about Reform Judaism. But after obtaining ordination a few years ago from a little-known rabbinical institute in suburban New York, Cubell decided to make her home in the Reform movement. First she got a job as the leader of the Reform Temple Beth Shira in Boca Raton, Florida, and more recently she launched her own start-up congregation in Boca, Beit Kulam, Hebrew for House of Everyone. "Reform's the...
BERLIN (JTA)—Israel’s government is in cahoots with Syrian President Bashar Assad. America wants to keep the Syrian civil war going for as long as possible. Russia is outmaneuvering the United States on the global stage. Those are some of the viewpoints you’re likely to hear if you talk politics with Syrians pouring out of their war-torn country and into Europe. When I went to Berlin recently to write about the wave of migrants arriving in Germany, one of the questions I was most curious about was something that had nagged at me since the r...
NEW YORK (JTA)-As 5775 winds to a close, here's a look back on the highs and lows (and everything in between) of the year that was. September 2014 At the annual U.N. General Assembly, President Barack Obama focuses his speech on the ISIS, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likens Iran to ISIS and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blames the West's blunders for fomenting the terrorists of ISIS. Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issues a scathing attack against Israel...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Among the expansive field of 2016 Republican presidential candidates on display in the party's first debates, Donald Trump may be the most closely connected to the Jewish people. Trump is from New York, works in professions saturated with Jews and long has been a vocal supporter of Israel. His daughter and two grandchildren are Jewish, the executive vice president of his organization is Jewish-and Trump certainly has chutzpah. But you won't find Jewish donors of influence in...
