Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA)-Special counsel Robert Mueller's report about Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election was released to Congress and the public Thursday, adding new details to what had been disclosed about its findings by Attorney General William Barr when Mueller concluded his investigation last month. The 448-page document, released after a nearly two-year long inquiry, says Mueller's investigation did not establish the Trump campaign "conspired or coordinated" with the Russian...
Hear a compelling story of a woman's search to find her birth family, and succeeding with the help of a dedicated Orlando Jewish genealogist at the next Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando meeting, Wednesday, May 8. The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando treasurer, Dave Rowitt, will explain how he helped a cousin find and meet her relatives. Rowitt is a talented genealogist, who has compiled much of his family history. Working with his cousin, he has discovered and...
(JTA)—One week after winning election to a fifth term as Israel’s head of state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. Other Jewish people on the list include: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; Jennifer Hyman, whose $1 billion company Rent the Runway allows subscribers to rent designer clothing online; and Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, who started the progressive activism group Indivisible. “Israel grows more prosperous. It grows more powerful,” Time columnist David French wr...
(Nashville, Tenn.)—Evangelical leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore has called out the ill-informed Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for trivializing the memory of the Holocaust by tweeting a statement by Pastor Martin Niemöller in defense of the anti-Semite and Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group collaborator Ilhan Omar. The statement AOC quoted was written by Niemöller who lived under the Nazi regime and used his influence to defend the innocent victims of his government. In contrast, Ilhan Omar is a collaborator of the Muslim Brotherhood whi...
The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center’s Week of Remembrance begins on April 28 from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. with the showing of the documentary film “Shanghai Ghetto,” produced and directed by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann. Narrated by Martin Landau, the film chronicles the story of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s and their lives in the Shanghai Ghetto. This film was awarded the Audience Choice Award and the Human Rights Award at the 2002 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. After the movie there will be a “talk...
Congregation Sinai will host an exciting America Sings Folk Concert with music from the 50s, 60s and 70s starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday night, May 18, at 1200 West Broad Street, Groveland, FL 34736. This concert is open to the entire community. Sinai spiritual leaders Joe and Lynn Goldovitz will provide musical entertainment for all ages. The Goldovitz first met as teenagers singing and playing together in a Rock 'n Roll band. Throughout all this time, music has been their life-long passion....
On Wednesday, May 1, the Men’s Club of Congregation Ohev Shalom will be hosting its annual Holocaust ceremony followed by the Academy Award winning movie, “The Pianist.” The yellow-candle ceremony will be led by Holocaust survivor Abraham Gold. Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” is the biographical drama about Polish Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman’s struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. The event, which will be held at Congregation Ohev Shalom. is free and open to the public. Light refreshments...
The Israeli-American Council is hosting a traditional Moroccan Mimouna celebration with food, drinks, exhibits of Sephardic customs, music and lots of Chametz tomorrow night, April 27, at 8 p.m.—10:30 p.m. Mimouna is a three-century-old North African Jewish celebration held the day after Passover ends, marking the return to eating chametz (leavened foods), which are forbidden throughout the week of Passover. This event will be held at The Roth Family JCC, 851 North Maitland Ave. The cost is $40 per family; $15 per adult; and $10 for children (...
Like to ride a two-wheeler? Please join the Congregation Ohev Shalom Pedalers for their next Sunday bike ride on the popular Seminole Wekiva trail, Sunday May 5, starting at 8:30 a.m. The Pedalers will meet at the San Sebastian Trailhead off of SR 436 in Altamonte Springs and head north for 13 miles through Seminole County to just south of SR 46 near Sanford. Men, women and teens can all participate in this social, non-competitive bike ride. The ride start and ends at the same location. Pedalers who want a shorter ride, can stop at Panera, 7...
Zionist Organization of America has called on the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether federal funds were misused to organize a one-sided “academic” conference, hosted by the University of North Carolina and co-sponsored by Duke University, which was hostile to Israel and blatantly anti-Semitic. ZOA National President Morton A. Klein and Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., director of ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice, sent a letter to Mr. Kenneth L. Marcus, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, highlightin...
(JTA)-Two Jewish billionaires have pledged a total of $122 million toward the restoration of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral, which was ravaged in a fire. Lily Safra, a Brazilian philanthropist, said she would give $22 million to fund the restoration efforts of the iconic church, which was badly damaged Monday, Correio 24 Horas reported. And Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the French owner of L'Oreal, pledged another $100 million, according to CBS. The donations account for about 17 percent of the...
(JNS)—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Tuesday that the Democratic Party has “no taint” of anti-Semitism amid such remarks coming from congressional members, especially Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whom Pelosi said is not an anti-Semite. “I don’t think that the congresswoman is anti-Semitic,” Pelosi told CNN. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t think Rep. Ilhan Omar is anti-Semitic: “I wouldn’t even put those in the same category.” She criticizes President Trump for his tweet, saying he used video of 9/11 “as a political too...
The term nakba, originally coined to describe the magnitude of the self-inflicted Palestinian and Arab defeat in the 1948 war, has become in recent decades a synonym for Palestinian victimhood, with failed aggressors transformed into hapless victims and vice versa. Israel should do its utmost to uproot this false narrative by exposing its patently false historical basis. Nowadays, the failed Palestinian Arab attempt to destroy the State of Israel at birth, and the attendant flight of some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, has come to be known internat...
(JNS)—The Conservative and Reform rabbinical leadership, along with affiliated lay groups and tepid pro-Israel groups, have revealed their elitist contempt for democracy and disdain for Zionism by appealing to U.S. President Donald Trump to force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to break his electoral pledges. They did this in a letter sent to a Jewish publication on Friday, Apr. 12, in which they called on Trump to stop Netanyahu from extending sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Why not ask Trump for what t...
(JNS)—Dear (Former?) Friends, To: The ADL, Ameinu, ARZA, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Israel Policy Forum, MERCAZ USA, National Council of Jewish Women, Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform Judaism and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Your letter to U.S. President Donald Trump expressing your belief that peace must be “based on the principle of a negotiated two-state solution,” that it “is the only formulation to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will ensure Israel’s future as Jewish, democratic and secure,...
(JNS)—Socialism is cool again, thanks not least to septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders and millennial Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC). Socialism has been cool before, of course, notably during the Great Depression, and what became known as the ’60s, the era of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, hippies and the (old) New Left. As a reporter for my high school newspaper in the later period, I interviewed Earl Browder, who had been general secretary of the Communist Party USA during the 1930s. He coined the slogan: “Communism is 20th...
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...
(JNS)—In the space of 48 hours last week, four Jewish Democrats in Congress denounced Israel’s prime minister, two more Democrats wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post denouncing Israel’s prime minister, and 10 Jewish liberal groups issued a statement denouncing Israel’s prime minister. What a remarkable coincidence! The allegedly spontaneous three-pronged media assault began with Representatives Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), on the op-ed page of The Washington Post on April 10, absurdly accusing Israeli Prime M...
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) 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 of Orlando—Monday—Friday, 7:45 a.m.—8:30 a.m. Temple Israe...
(JNS)—The local affiliates of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cornell and Binghamton universities in New York state have been promoting images created by a Palestinian terrorist organization on their respective social-media pages. Ahead of an expected BDS vote in late April, Cornell SJP hosted a recent teach-in titled “From Ferguson to Palestine: A Conversation Surrounding Struggle,” featuring an event flyer that appeared to depict a rifle and explicitly mentions the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to CAMER...
(JTA)-Pete Buttigieg has a word he likes to use to describe Vice President Mike Pence: "Pharisee." Jewish scholars would like him to stop doing that. Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, running a dark horse campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has advanced the idea of liberal candidates using religious language to talk about their values. The flip side of that, Buttigieg says, is that Republican leaders don't practice the religious values they preach. He...
Jewish Academy of Orlando held a Disney-themed Passover model seder for its students, parents and guests. The students told the story of Passover in a traditional way with the four questions, traditional meal, and songs. The Disney-themed costumes, songs, and decorations added to the excitement. Students dressed as their favorite Disney characters including Peter Pan, Mickey, Captain Hook, and the princesses; even the faculty and staff participated. From the Mickey Mouse Club to Pocahontas and...
By Ariel Ben Solomon (JNS)—The Mideast peace plan soon to be presented by the U.S. administration is likely not going to get very far upon its initial presentation, but it could provide Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump with an opportunity to alter the dynamics of the conflict. Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, told JNS in an exclusive interview that the Palestinian Authority “will definitely reject” the upcoming U.S. backed peace plan, and that past Palestinian behavior does...
Remembering is the essence of Passover: Each year on the holiday, we hold seders to retell the stirring story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt and passage from slavery to freedom. Not all of Orlando's Jewish seniors in living facilities are able to attend a family Seder, but many had the opportunity to recall the Passover story, sing its songs and experience the flavors of the festive meal at Jewish Pavilion seders and other Passover programs all over town this month. For Jewish Pavilion staff...
A family filled with pride and rightly so... The family of the late Henri Landwirth, nationally renowned Orlando philanthropist and Holocaust survivor who created Give Kids the World and Dignity U Wear, will travel to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., on April 28 to create a legacy for Landwirth, and to participate in Days of Remembrance, America's annual national commemoration of the Holocaust. Each year, the Museum leads the nation in remembering the victims of...
