Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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TEL AVIV (JTA)—He’s had to bite a few bullets to get there, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lead Israel’s next government. Barring a last-minute surprise, Israel’s new governing coalition was to be sworn in this week: a center-right grouping of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud-Beiteinu faction, the centrist Yesh Atid party, the religious nationalist Jewish Home party, the center-left Hatnua led by Tzipi Livni and the tiny, centrist Kadima. In total, the coalition will include 7...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—President Obama believes prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are “bleak,” but he still will urge both sides to avoid unilateral actions that might further damage a process he hopes will be back on track within a year. That was the message Obama delivered last Thursday in a meeting with about 25 Jewish community figures at the White House to discuss his planned trip to Israel later this month. Obama was especially engaged, participants said, when it came to discussing how h...
One of the unsolved mysteries of the Holocaust is “what happened to Raoul Wallenberg?” The Swedish diplomat, credited with saving up to 100,000 Jewish lives, was detained by Soviet authorities in 1945 and subsequently disappeared. As intriguing as his death may seem, the choices he made on behalf of others raises even more questions. What would cause a young man to risk everything—his reputation, his safety, and ultimately his life—in order to rescue strangers? Why would he, but not other diplom...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—When President Obama visits Israel next week, Gavriel Yaakov wants him to jump-start the peace process. “I’m excited,” said Yaakov, 67, sitting in a Tel Aviv mall. “I want negotiations to get to an agreement on a long-term peace with the Palestinians.” Yaakov said he trusts Obama, but his friend, Yossi Cohen, is more skeptical. “I’m not excited,” said Cohen, 64, who charged that the president supports Islamists and “hasn’t done anything” to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. “No one has helped,” Cohen said. “Whoever thinks there...
AIRPORT CITY, Israel (JTA)—An Israeli soldier sits in an office chair in an air-conditioned metal chamber staring at two screens side by side. One shows a map with a moving dot. The other displays a video feed. Next to the soldier are three more identical stations. The soldier isn’t an air traffic controller but a pilot, and his aircraft is called an unmanned aerial system, more commonly known as a drone. Welcome to the next generation of the Israeli Air Force. Israel long has relied on sup...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted nearly 400 Gaza rockets last November alone, with an 85 percent success rate, amid the Israel Defense Forces’ Operation Pillar of Defense. But the brains behind the system isn’t resting on his laurels. “I’m realistic, so I’m not putting all the eggs in one system, [even though] it had much success,” IDF Brig. Gen. Dr. Danny Gold, who had the initial idea for the Iron Dome, said in an interview with JNS.org at the 2013 Americ...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—For U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), closing remarks at the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference publicly marked the start of a new phase in his relationship with the Jewish community. Menendez, the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, follows current Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden in that post. “There will never be any daylight between the United States and Israel on my watch,” he told the AIPAC crowd...
Congregation Ohev Shalom Hebrew school welcomes prospective students and parents to “try us” because we think you will “like us.” On Sunday, April 7 children may come and spend the day in the classroom and parents can schmooze with Education Committee members to see what Ohev Shalom’s Hebrew school is all about. Words can’t describe what takes place at a day of Hebrew school. Children learn in an environment where they are engaged in their learning, teachers work to develop a relationshi...
Tuesday, Feb. 9 was more than just the regular weekly chillin’ and grillin’ barabecue for UCF students at Chabad. Students were fortunate to hear the moving and inspirational story of Leibel Zisman’s journey through the Holocaust. Zisman, who grew up in Kovno, Lithuania, endured the harsh pain of living in several concentration camps and suffered the loss of his mother, father, sister and brother. Yet he persevered through the hardships of war and was eventually liberated, which Zisman belie...
On May 27, 2010 Rabbi David Nesenoff of rabbilive.com recorded the anti-Semitic “slur heard around the world” while visiting the White House for American Jewish Heritage Month. The rabbi and his son, Adam, were standing on the White House lawn when they crossed paths with “dean of the White House Press Corps” Helen Thomas, whom had covered every presidential administration from Eisenhower to Obama. Nesenoff pulled out his flip-camera, and asked Thomas if she had any comments to make about I...
NEW YORK (JTA)—As of 2012, one in 20 Americans is identifying themselves as an atheist, agnostic or unbeliever. According to the research done by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released last year, nearly 33 million Americans list themselves with no religious affiliation. While it’s not specified in the Pew study how many Jews are among the ranks of the nonbelievers, doubtless the cultural landscape of Judaism is also impacted by these larger trends in Western culture. Part of the reason for this shift is the co-opting of what is perc...
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my great-grandfather, Moses Strouse. Not because I am interested that deeply in family trees or have ever visited ancestry.com, but because I am drawn to sociology and am deeply disturbed about the 21st century transitions to large, faceless franchises and stores. Moses Strouse was a Jew from Germany, and he and his sons wound up—of all places—in Columbia City, Ind., not far from Fort Wayne. In all likelihood, they were wondering where to live in between trains from Ellis Island to Chi...
Nervous Jews are worrying if Barack Obama is intent on forcing Israel into a peace process. Leaving aside the issue that being nervous is a chronic condition of being Jewish, an appropriate response to Obama and all the others who think that Israel is not doing enough to make peace with the Palestinians is that peace is already upon us. It is a Jewish peace, to be sure, but peace none the less. Peace is, after all, more a semantic issue, or a matter of comparison, than anything absolute. No one in the world lives in absolute peace. Americans le...
(JTA)—Israel’s State Archives recently released the previously classified minutes of a 1983 Cabinet meeting during which the government debated the Kahan Commission’s recommendation to fire Defense Minister Ariel Sharon on account of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The killings had taken place some months before, on Sept. 16, 1982, when 150 fighters of the Lebanese Christian Phalanges entered two Palestinian refugee camps and massacred 700 to 800 residents. The Israel Defense Forces, which controlled the area, allowed the Lebanese forces access...
NEW YORK (JTA)—In 1993, one of the great scholars of Russian Jewry, Zvi Gitelman, noted that “since the 1880s, no group of Jews has migrated as often, in as great numbers, and with such important consequences as the Jews of Russia and the FSU. The mass immigration of Russian/Soviet Jews played a great role in shaping the character of the two largest Jewish communities in the world, those of the United States and Israel. American Jewish and Israeli politics, religion, culture, and economics have been, and are still, profoundly influenced by tho...
NEW ORLEANS (JTA)—“Hillel’s not really my thing. That’s not me.” This is not what you want to hear as a first-year Hillel director acclimating to a new campus. Yet when I arrived at Tulane University four years ago, that’s the refrain I heard as I tried to figure out how a Jewish student population that comprised more than 30 percent of the school’s student body could barely turn out 100 students for its largest events. Hillel at Tulane had been built on Jewish communal best practices, but it was not actually reflective of the social and re...
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) Chabad of South Orlando—Monday and Thursday, 8 a.m. 407-354-3660. Congregation Ahavas Yisrael—Monday - Friday, 7 a.m.; Sunday, 8 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 of Orlando—Monday – Friday, 7:45 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Temple Israel—Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-647-3055. FRIDAY, MARCH 15 Light Shabbat candles at 7:16...
Musical Duo “Time Squared” will be performing at the Jewish Pavilion Gala on April 21 at the Marriott, Lake Mary. Gayle Cohen (vocals) and Robert Cohen (instrumentals, vocals), related only by their passion for music, specialize in offering shows customized to meet the particular musical needs of their clients. They perform music from the 1930s through the present including jazz, R&B, Broadway, big band, folk, classic pop and classical. “Time Squared” performs around the country enterta...
Why would someone risk their life to save a stranger? There’s no easy answer to that question. However, it’s one authors love exploring, especially when writing about Germany during the Nazi era. In his wonderful “City of Women” (Amy Eihorn Books/G. P. Putnam’s Sons), David R. Gillham examines the life of Sigrid Schröder, who, at first glance, seems to be a model German citizen. Not only does she have a soldier husband serving on the Russian front, she works as a stenographer in the patent office in Berlin. Although she is not fond of her mot...
Beatrice Rabinovitz of Miami died recently. She was born in Chicago to the late Sarah and Morris Leibowitz. She moved to Miami to be with her daughters, who survive her, Marlene (Richard) Levy of Miami and Donna (late David) Levine also of Miami. Loved ones said she raised her children with total selflessness, unconditional love and constant encouragement and was truly the matriarch of her family. Mrs. Rabinovitz, past president of her Hadassah chapter, was a firm believer in Judaism and a supporter of Jewish causes, said those close to her....
Martin Valeri, of Orlando, passed away on Thursday, March 7, 2013. He was 74 years old. A Philadelphia native, he was born on July 29, 1938, to the late Orlando and Pearl Quell Valeri. He joined the U.S. Navy immediately following high school and later graduated from Temple University, attending school on the G.I. Bill. Always a businessman, he was most recently in automotive sales. Mr. Valeri relocated to the Orlando area from Philadelphia in 1989. He and Ruth Gottlieb Gelfand immediately became active members of the Southwest Orlando Jewish...
Ida VanBaalen, passed away on Friday, March 8, 2013. She was 94 years old. Mrs. VanBaalen was born in Detroit on Feb. 13, 1919, to the late Nathan and Ethel Eagle Fitlow. A high school graduate, Mrs. VanBaalen worked as a secretary in accounting and was a member of Temple Emanu-El of Birmingham, Ala., for over 62 years. Mrs. VanBaalen was married in 1946 to Harold VanBaalen who passed away in 1989. In 2009, she relocated to the Orlando area from Birmingham to be closer to her daughter and family. She is survived by her daughter, Dee Schwartz of...
Celebration Jewish Center CJC’s second night Passover seder dinner service will take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, at Celebration’s Heritage Hall under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Dr. Richard Cowin. Cowin has selected a Haggadah that will allow for a comprehensive—yet expeditious—seder service. Kosher-style cuisine will be prepared by TooJays Catering of Orlando. The seder dinner buffet menu contains traditional Passover favorites for adults and children—gefilte fish/chopped liver, matzah ball soup, 1/4 roasted chicken, carrot tz...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Unlike most economists, Manuel Trajtenberg does not spend his days cloistered in university classrooms and think tanks far from the public eye. The Tel Aviv University professor gained attention in 2011, in the aftermath of massive social protests that gripped Israel, when he led a high-profile committee that recommended a series of wide-ranging economic reforms for the country. Now as chairman of the Israeli Council of Higher Education, the charismatic Trajtenberg has taken up a...
