Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Since the publication more than half a century ago of a landmark article that referenced the "vanishing American Jew," it's been hard to shake that idea as the dominant narrative of American Jewish life. Yet the U.S. Jewish community is the largest in the world, with an estimated 7 million Jews - slightly more than Israel's 6.8 million. And despite a low birthrate, American Jews actually are growing in number, primarily due to three factors: immigration, intermarriage and education. Over the pas...
(JTA) - When Christie Moore rolled up her sleeve to get her COVID-19 vaccine last week, many thoughts went through her mind. Among them: a set of Jewish blessings that rabbis suggested for the occasion. I knew this because Moore shared the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's roundup of rabbinic suggested blessings when she tweeted her vaccine selfie. So I reached out to Moore, a medical oncologist in Portland, Oregon, to learn more about her experience getting vaccinated. We talked about the blessing...
(JTA) — In the final hours of his presidency, Donald Trump awarded clemency to more than a dozen Jews who had been convicted of crimes — but not Sheldon Silver, the disgraced former New York State Assembly speaker. Silver was not on the list of 143 people granted clemency, a traditional act for outgoing presidents. That means the former Democratic power broker will continue serving a prison term on corruption charges. The New York Times reported that Trump abandoned a plan to give clemency to Silver at the urging of New York Republicans and...
(JTA) — At the opening of his trial in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher made several uncharacteristically friendly statements about Jews — a people he had devoted his professional life to demonize. Streicher, editor in chief of the Der Sturmer anti-Semitic weekly, claimed that he’d always viewed German Jews as legitimate compatriots and long supported Zionism. “So the Jewish question was for me solved in Germany, but I believed that another international solution will come, that we should meet with Zionists, listen to their demands,” he said on A...
One-third of early pregnancies end in miscarriage. It is emotionally wrenching for the anticipating parents and there are support groups, and many resources to help them deal with the loss. But what about young children? How does one help a young child who also was expecting a new brother or sister to play with? A Johns Hopkins-trained, board certified OB/GYN, and an associate professor at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, Dr. I. Cori Baill often wished that she had a...
As part of their popular monthly zoom series of guest lectures "Physically apart - Emotionally together," Chabad will be hosting Rabbi Noach and Alti Majesky, Chabad Shluchim in Ghana, Africa. The zoom meeting will take place on Feb. 11, 2021, at 7:30 p.m. and participants will learn what Jewish life is like in Ghana and how this dedicated couple managed to build a community in this third world country. "I'm excited to be speaking with the Orlando Jewish community," said Rabbi Noach Majesky who...
(JTA) - Phil Spector, the massively influential rock composer and producer who murdered a woman and spent his declining years in jail, died at 81. Spector died Saturday at a hospital in French Camp, California, of COVID-19 complications, The New York Times quoted his daughter, Nicole Audrey Spector, as saying. Spector was born into a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York. His father committed suicide when Spector was 8 years old, and his mother moved the family to Los Angeles, where they settled...
(JNS) — Several nominees for U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team acknowledged on Tuesday that the United States isn’t ready to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. On Tuesday morning, Avril Haines, nominee for the director of national intelligence, remarked that Biden said that the United States would re-enter the JCPOA “if Iran comes back into compliance,” but things are “a long ways from that.” She also told the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence...
(JTA) — A Moroccan institution has with official government backing signed an agreement with the U.S. State Department to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the second such agreement in the Arab Middle East. The agreement signed Friday by El Mehdi Boudra, the president of Association Mimouna, and Elan Carr, the State Department’s envoy to combat anti-Semitism, signals the far-reaching ambition of the Trump Administration’s Abraham Accords, to normalize among Arabs the acceptance of not just Israel, but of Zionism. The Memorandum of Understa...
(JTA) — Even without hearing the words, the pictures that animate the “Appreciation Song for President Trump” sung by a group of Hasidic boys clearly spell out the reasons for their appreciation for Donald Trump. “With devotion so strong, you lead us like you know how,” they sing as a photo of Sholom Rubashkin, the former meat processing plant owner whose 27-year prison sentence Trump commuted in December 2017 appears on the screen. “The economy is growing like never before,” they sing against the backdrop of a stock ticker. “The peace th...
(JNS) — In an open letter posted last week to his website, young-adult novelist Barry Lyga called for like-minded colleagues in the industry to join him in blocking the publication of bodies of work written by anyone associated with the outgoing administration in Washington. Titled “No Book Deal for Traitors,” the letter begins, “We all love book publishing, but we have to be honest—our country is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the...
In 1968 Rachel and I made our very first trip to Israel. I have told the story of that trip and what it meant to us. On the flight back to the United States, we confirmed the promise we had made to Adi Ben Orr, our guide in Israel: That we would send our children (toddlers at the time) to meet their Israeli cousins. And so, it came to pass. As each Shipley kid graduated from high school they spent at least the first six weeks of that summer vacation in Israel. And remember — this is a generation before the Gap Year concept was invented. The eff...
(JNS) — Last week, I woke up one morning in my Nazareth home and was astonished to discover I was living under a racist, apartheid regime whose only purpose is “the promotion and perpetuation of the superiority of one group of people — the Jews.” I rubbed my eyes, read the story in greater depth, and calmed down as soon as I realized the reports were based on yet another report by the left-wing NGO B’Tselem. The problem is that this report has spread like wildfire around the world, and the propaganda is working. B’Tselem, which presents itself...
(JNS) — Ahlam Tamimi’s name will not appear among the list of those whom President Donald Trump pardons during his final hours in office. But the Palestinian arch-terrorist might as well be—because successive U.S. administrations have treated her as if she is immune from prosecution. Tamimi played a major role in the August 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. Fifteen people were killed, including American citizens Malki Roth and Shoshana Greenbaum, and four Americans were among the 122 people who were injured. Tamimi was captured by...
(JNS) — Gratitude is literally written into our Jewish identity. In the book of Genesis, when our foremother Leah gives birth to her last son, she says: “ ‘This time I will give thanks to the Lord’; therefore she called his name, Yehuda.” It is because of Yehuda that we Jews are named yehudim in Hebrew. And it is in the spirit of Yehuda that we give thanks for kinship, for friendship, for courage, for the triumph of truth. U.S. President Donald Trump represents all of these things. And today, as he departs the White House, he deserves...
Dear Editor: In Roz Fuchs’s, “Holocaust Center is continuing the work Tess Wise started” opinion piece (Jan. 15, 2021), I feel compelled to respond. The problem so many people from around the country are having with the “Uprooting Prejudice” exhibit at the HMREC is it’s glorifying a riot instigated by the BLM Movement, which is anti-Semitic. The HMREC’s mission is Holocaust education and to fight the evils of anti-Semitism, not promote anti-Semitic groups inside their hallowed halls. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs wrote in a talking poi...
Dear Editor: Holocaust museums must stop worrying about “genocides” around the world and start emphasizing the Nazi Holocaust and its connection to today’s anti-Semitism. The same is true for Holocaust Commissions. Please continue protesting. I am seriously concerned that our educational systems and many of our teachers and professors are poorly prepared and they are teaching by emotion, not by accurate information. They are rewriting history with lies. I am extremely disappointed in the Jewish community that takes its struggle to ident...
MORNING MINYANS (Please note, because of the coronavirus, some minyans have been canceled or held virtually.) Chabad of North Orlando is 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.,...
(JTA) — Among the flurry of actions Joe Biden took on his very first day as president are several with special resonance for Jewish voters. Biden reportedly plans to issue several executive orders and multiple legislation proposals shortly after he is inaugurated on Wednesday. Many will reverse the policies of the Trump administration. Biden will reportedly seek to rejoin the Paris climate accord, enact new measures aimed at combating the coronavirus pandemic (including a mask mandate in federal government buildings) and extend pandemic limits...
(JNS) - Following a district-wide recount, Republican Iowa State Sen. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won one of the closest races for a federal office in American history, defeating fellow state Sen. Rita Hart, a Democrat, by just six votes in the state's 2nd Congressional District in the Nov. 3 election for the U.S. House of Representatives to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack. Miller-Meeks, 65, an ophthalmologist who won on her fourth try running for Congress, served as a nurse and...
(JNS) Marilyn Strickland, the former Democratic mayor of Tacoma, Wash., easily won over her Democratic opponent, Washington state Rep. Beth Doglio, in the Nov. 3 U.S. House of Representatives election in the state’s 10th Congressional District to succeed Democratic Rep. Denny Heck, who successfully ran to become the state’s lieutenant governor. Strickland, 58, who is married with two stepdaughters, was born in the South Korean capital, Seoul, in 1962 and moved with her family to Tacoma five years later. Before serving as mayor from 2010 to 201...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson, whose contribution to Israel and Jewish life throughout the world, was laid to rest on Friday in a private ceremony in Jerusalem with close family members present. He passed away on Jan. 11 at the age of 87. Dr. Miriam Adelson, his wife and partner in so many of his projects, eulogized him as someone who could not be replaced due to his sheer impact on so many levels. "It may seem strange, here in Jerusalem, the heart of...
Emma Simone Bressler, daughter of Hillary Bressler of Maitland, will be called the Torah as a bat mitzvah on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021, at their home in Maitland. Emma is in the seventh grade at Maitland Middle School. She is a graduate of the Jewish Academy of Orlando and The Roth Family JCC. Her hobbies and interests include listening to music, going to the beach, traveling, fashion design, TikTok and socializing with friends. Sharing in the family's simcha will be Emma's brother, Levi;...
No surprise ... One of my favorite actors who has since passed, Jerome Silberman, was Jewish. You may know him as Gene Wilder. He also was once married to Gilda Radner, another Jew and another of my favorites, who made me adore the television show "Saturday Night Live." She passed away many years ago and much too young! And someone I consider absolute genius, Dr. Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through di...
(ISRAEL21c via JNS) - A new species of bee unique to the sand dunes of Israel's coastal plains has been identified and described by Alain Pauly, a taxonomist from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The species was named Lasioglossum dorchini in tribute to the Israeli bee researcher Achik Dorchin of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University. This new type of bee is especially exciting because a decline in the world bee population is putting crop...
