Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - As of the new year, a total of 1,116 global entities have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Working Definition of Antisemitism. According to the Combat Antisemitism Movement, this includes 18 U.S. states that adopted the IHRA definition via legislative or executive actions in the course of 2022, bringing the total number to 30. American cities such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., El Paso and Wichita have all adopted the definition, as have seven out of the 10...
(JNS) - Israel's Foreign Ministry revealed that it had sent a letter to world leaders calling on them to help secure the release of Israelis being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The letter was sent to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric Egger,and Pope Francis, among others. Hamas released an undated video purportedly of Israeli captive Avera Mengistu, who crossed into the Gaza Strip on his own accord in 2014....
(JNS) — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a case involving religious accommodations in the workplace. An appeal in the case of Groff v. Dejoy was filed by Gerald Groff, an Evangelical postal worker who refused to work on Sundays, his sabbath, going so far as to offer to work make-up shifts and to transfer branches in order to maintain his day of rest. The Pennsylvania man says he was forced from his job in 2019 after the burden was placed on him by the U.S. Postal Service to regularly find replacements following the service’s agr...
(JNS) - POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews revealed on Monday new-found images of the Nazis mercilessly putting down the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. Captured in secret by a Polish firefighter while German forces set fire to the Jewish ghetto, the photographs were recently discovered by the photographer's son in a family member's attic. The photographer, Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski, spent nearly four weeks in the ghetto (most likely between April 21 and May 15, 1943). In a diary he kept...
Join Congregation Ohev Shalom on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023 in welcoming Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Kaufman as the first speaker in the Bernard and Samra Gotlib Jewish Speaker Series. Kaufman will speak about his latest book, "The Last Kings of Shanghai – The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China." Kaufman is the author of two other well-reviewed books, "A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe" and "Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between B...
Assuming that you have hired an aide from a home health care agency, you can expect a lot of support in easing your anxieties. It is the agency’s job to answer your questions in advance and resolve any issues that arise. The key to facilitating your satisfaction and comfort is good communication with the agency management and with your aide. Here are a few tips for establishing positive relationships with your home health care professionals: • Be completely honest about your needs. Overcome any embarrassment or guilt associated with des...
(JNS) — George Washington University responded to the new antisemitism-related complaint against the university, which the Israel education organization StandWithUs filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. “The George Washington University strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred, discrimination and bias in all forms,” the university’s official Instagram account stated. The university further said it was “committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment where all feel safe and free of harassment,...
(JNS) — A recent surge in legal immigration has led to a decrease in Israel’s Jewish majority, according to an analysis of data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Channel 14 reported on Sunday. The Israeli Immigration Policy Center, an NGO established in 2012 to promote immigration policy which serves Israel’s strategic interests, found that last year’s 23-year record in the number of new immigrants had resulted in a 0.3 percent decline in Israel’s Jewish majority, to 73.6 percent from 73.9 percent at the end of 2021. This...
(JNS) — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a vocal defender of the Jewish state, recently rebutted an absurd Holocaust parallel drawn by President Joe Biden. When asked by a reporter whether immigration was a basic human right, Biden responded, “Well, I think it is a human right if your family is being persecuted, if you’re being dealt with in a way—like I thought it was a human right for you know, Jews in Germany to be able to go and escape and get help where they could. But the other side of this is, there’s also, the people in this coun...
(JNS) — Over the past several weeks, the anger of the opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly elected government has reached hysterical, and even apocalyptic, tones. This should seem familiar to Americans, who have grown accustomed to the same kind of fever-pitch discourse ever since the emergence of Donald Trump on the political scene. Indeed, his presidency wasn’t merely opposed by foes; it was “resisted,” with conspiracy theories about his colluding with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election. Since 2020, many on the right are...
I have mentioned before that I volunteer twice a week at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience here in New Orleans. I love the experience of guiding people through over 430 years of the American Southern Jewish Experience. Did you know that the first Jews in America came from Spain in the 1500s? Did you know that they settled in the Caribbean Islands before coming to the U.S.? And that they came through Galveston, Texas as their port of entry some 300 years before the great Northern European Migration to New York? As I guide these...
(JNS) — Theodor Herzl has been with me my whole life. I know that is an odd statement from a Canadian who has lived his entire life in Toronto. I am not related to Herzl and, of course, I never met him. Yet I feel very close to him. My earliest memory of Herzl is of a family visit to his grave in Jerusalem in 1966. I co-wrote and performed in a play about him when I was in seventh grade and organized Herzl-related programming at summer camps in Ontario. When I go to Israel, I revisit his grave to pay my respects. I celebrated my 50th b...
(JNS) — In Mexico City last week, the president of the United States met with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada for what was dubbed the “Three Amigos Summit.” The notion that Joe Biden, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Justin Trudeau resemble Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short—stars of the 1986 cult classic comic film ¡Three Amigos!—seems far fetched. Do these politicians make you laugh? On second thought…. But seriously folks, their Declaration of North America listed “six pillars.” Topping the list (of course):...
(JNS) — The Palestinian Authority and its supporters have a new enemy: the Louvre. The world’s most-visited museum, the famous French institution that holds some of the greatest works of art and antiquities, is likely to find itself on anti-Israel boycott lists around the world. This is because among the Louvre’s storied collections is a slab of stone with an inscription that affirms the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. The stone, known as the Mesha Stele, was first discovered in 1868 near the Dead Sea, but its i...
MORNING MINYANS Chabad of North Orlando and Chabad of Altamonte Springs are holding in-person minyans. Chabad of South Orlando — Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. and 10 minutes before sunset; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 8:15 a.m., 407-354-3660. Congregation Ahavas Yisrael — Monday - Friday, 7:30 a.m.; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-644-2500. Congregation Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Daytona — Monday, 8 a.m.; Thursday, 8 a.m., 904-672-9300. Congregation Ohev Shalom — Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-298-4650. GOBOR Community Minyan at Jewish Academy...
(New York Jewish Week) - While hiding from the Nazis, the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon began a series of autobiographical paintings and texts with a painfully simple description of her aunt, and namesake's, suicide: "Scene 1: 1913. One November day, a young girl named Charlotte Knarre leaves her parents' home and jumps into the water." Intense and memorable, that image is the launching point for "Life? or Theatre?", a series of hundreds of gouaches Salomon made between 1940 and 1942....
(New York Jewish Week) — Regular listeners of Conan O’Brien’s podcast generally expect to hear the comedian interview A-listers such as Michelle Obama and “Fleishman Is in Trouble” star Lizzy Caplan. But the former late-night host interviews “regular” people, too, and sandwiched between two recent episodes — featuring “The Office” star Ed Helms and “You” star Penn Badgely — listeners can hear O’Brien crack jokes about Jewish life with a New York rabbi. David Schuck, who is the rabbi at New Rochelle’s Conservative Beth El Synagogue Center, app...
HAIFA - On a recent chilly morning, six Israeli Druze women gathered in a room at the University of Haifa library to discuss the joys and frustrations of living in a modern, Jewish, largely secular country. Chatting in Arabic and Hebrew, many of the women, all students at the university, spoke about the challenges of balancing their traditional Druze identity with their modern Israeli aspirations. "I spend two hours each way to come to school. But my education is so important, I'd do it even if...
(JNS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday stressed the importance of bilateral relations with the United States in a meeting with top officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Netanyahu met with AIPAC President Betsy Korn, CEO Howard Kohr and Israel Director Cameron Brown. The Israeli leader also emphasized that the country's main struggle has been-and remains-against Iran. Netanyahu earlier this month addressed the AIPAC Political Leadership Forum,...
Maybe it's the home comfort it exudes, maybe it's how easy it is to make, but for a variety of, mostly inexplicable, reasons, banana bread has become everyone's quarantine darling. There were a couple of weeks where I couldn't scroll through Instagram without seeing at least three loaves on my feed. Google confirmed it: Banana bread searches are way up compared to other baked goods. I'll be honest: I didn't get on board until recently. Besides for having a serious aversion to all things banana,...
(JNS) - In a speech on border security and enforcement Thursday, President Joe Biden compared asylum seekers at America's southern border to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The remark came in response to a question about whether Biden viewed migration as a human right. "Well I think it is a human right if your family is being persecuted," Biden said. "I thought it was a human right for, you know, Jews in Germany to be able to go [...] escape and get help where they could." Vice President Kamala...
ISTANBUL (JTA) — “Shtisel,” a TV series about haredi Orthodox Jews that became an international phenomenon after Netflix picked it up in 2018, is getting a Muslim makeover for Turkish audiences, according to Turkish media. A new show titled “Ömer” has begun production and will premiere sometime in 2023 on Turkey’s STAR TV, Turkish media reported. Not much is known about the show’s plot. A trailer depicts the protagonist Ömer, played by Selahattin Paşali, standing at the precipice of a m...
(JNS) - An exhibition of Holocaust-era items from the collections of Yad Vashem whose stories are intertwined with Jews from Germany will open in the Bundestag next week, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jerusalem-based Holocaust remembrance center announced Tuesday. The exhibition, titled "Sixteen Objects," was inaugurated on Jan. 24 by the Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, on his first-ever visit to Germany, and Bundestag President Bärbel Bas. Initiated by the German...
(JTA) — Heirs of a German-Jewish banker are suing a Japanese insurance company for the return of one of Vincent van Gogh’s famed “Sunflowers” paintings or at least $750 million in punitive damages. In December, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning and Florence Von Kesselstatt, heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, filed a 98-page complaint with an Illinois federal court alleging that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell the painting in 1934 as the result of “racially exclusionary Nazi policies and concomitant coercion calculate...
Ms. Ida Bessie “Betty” Goldfarb, 104, of Orlando died Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023 at Dr. Phillips Assisted Living following a brief illness. Ms. Goldfarb was born Nov. 3, 1918 in Hartford, Connecticut to the late David and Lena (Brodin) Mashman and moved to the Central Florida area in 2016. Ms. Goldfarb is survived by her devoted daughter, Beverly (Michael) Gordon of Orlando, Florida; grandchildren — Jill (Michael) Weinstein of Atlanta, Georgia and Jeremy Gordon of Orlando, Florida; great-grandchildren — Avery, Sam, A.J., Oscar, Reese; and niece,... Full story
