Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA)-The Atlanta Jewish community broke a Guinness World Record after creating an Israeli flag out of edible cookies. The flag assembled by volunteers on Sunday used about 117,000 cookies and stretched to 3,224 feet across the plastic-covered floor of the Heritage Hall in Congregation Beth Jacob. It was created to celebrate Israel's 70th birthday. The previous record-holder was a flag to mark Pakistan's 70th. The new record-holder is 32 percent larger, the Atlanta Jewish Times reported. The...
In the June 2018 issue of Orlando Magazine, 23 women are named as the magazine's 2018 Women of the Year. The magazine asked for nominees of women who are making a positive impact on the community, and readers responded with a plethora of recommendations. Former Jewish Pavilion Marketing Director Julie Dorsey Capps and Pavilion CFO Penny D'Agostino immediately sent in their nomination of Nancy Ludin, executive director of The Jewish Pavilion. Both women told Ludin about the nomination, so she...
TOP Jewish Foundation has announced that Ellen Weiss was selected to fulfill the role of executive director effective May 2. The leadership transition is relatively seamless as Weiss has been on the TOP staff since the beginning of 2016 and, most recently, served as the Foundation's associate executive director working alongside Emilie Socash, TOP's former executive director. "Ellen is assuming the role of executive director at a critical point in our growth. We are confident in her ability to...
Palestinians from the Gaza Strip once again launched burning kites at civilian communities on the Israeli side of the border Tuesday, setting hundreds of dunams of farmland alight adjacent to Kibbutz Nir Am, Sapir College and Netiv Ha'Asara. In response, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) announced Tuesday that it will sue Hamas in international legal court for the massive environmental damages inflicted on JNF land surrounding the Gaza border. The area has been hit hard in the last two months with...
The Jewish Pavilion Gala committee is in full swing, planning a festive and memorable celebration to mark the organization's 18th-Chai-anniversary. Since chai means "life" in Hebrew, the slogan for the Oct. 28 gala is "To Life!" It will be a celebration of the spark of Jewish life and culture that the Jewish Pavilion brings to hundreds of seniors living in elder care and independent living facilities in Central Florida. It all started 18 years ago when Sheryl and Julian Meitin, with aging...
On May 10, the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida celebrated its annual Dinner of Tribute honoring Jeffrey Miller and Ted Maines. The event was a tremendous success with more than 625 people in attendance and raising more than $400,000 to benefit the Holocaust Center's educational and cultural programs. The Tess Wise White Rose Award is given annually to community leaders who exemplify the ideals, courage and compassion of Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans who, along with...
In partnership with JFS Orlando, the Legal Aid Society of the Orange County Bar Association, Inc. now offers free confidential legal consultations to JFS Orlando clients. JFS Orlando and The Legal Aid Society have enjoyed a great partnership for several years. Prior to becoming a judge, Attorney J. Leonard Fleet concentrated his law practice in the fields of criminal law, civil rights, and appellate matters. Several of his cases resulted in changes in Florida law, many drawing national attention. He has been a strong advocate for the...
NEW YORK-Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain has taken his own life, according to the television network CNN for which Bourdain took viewers around the world for the "Parts Unknown" series. He was 61. CNN said Bourdain was in Strasbourg filming an upcoming segment in the series. It said that Bourdain was found unresponsive Friday morning by friend and chef Eric Ripert. It called his death a suicide. "It is with extraordinary sadness we can confirm the death of our friend and colleague, Anthony...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Of the more than 60 deaths that occurred during the recent clashes between Israel and Palestinians at the Gaza border, none was as divisive as that of Layla Ghandour. Ghandour, an 8-month-old girl, died after an uncle, himself only 12, brought her to the edge of the protest zone, where she was reported to have inhaled Israeli tear gas. Palestinians immediately raised Ghandour as a symbol of Israeli oppression, elevating the infant to the status of martyr and blaming the Israeli a...
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Monday that the media should either figure out a better way to deal with the border protests or stop its negative coverage of the Jewish state. Addressing a media conference in Jerusalem, Friedman said that news outlets have been unfair in their coverage of the deadly protests on the Gaza border over the past few months. He advised reporters to “keep your mouths shut” unless they know better than Israel how to deal with the demonstrations. Some criticism of Israel may be legitimate, Friedman all...
(JNS)—There was a time when defending religious freedom was at the top of the Jewish agenda. Jews understood that as a religious minority, our rights could only be defended when those of other religious faiths are also respected. Though anti-Semitism is on the rise elsewhere, American Jews don’t worry anymore about their government seeking to restrict their rights to practice their religion. Nor should they. Arguments about reasonable accommodation for Jewish religious observances are no longer a matter of much dispute. The widespread acc...
(JNS)—The cancellation of an event as well-publicized in the media as the World Cup soccer warm-up match between Argentina and Israel requires an immediate PR counterattack from Israel and the Jewish world. What unfortunately succeeded in frightening superstar Lionel Messi and the other members of the Argentine soccer team is a mix of lies and death threats against the players. This is what the BDS movement is in its entirety: an arsenal of intimidation and lies disguised as justice, and supported mostly by Europeans. The game between A...
(JNS)—When it comes to the Palestinian “original sin” theory of Israel’s creation, there are two key milestones: the flight of approximately 750,000 Arab refugees during the 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 conquest of eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War. The events of 1948 are known in Arabic as the nakba (“catastrophe”) and the events of 1967 are called the naksa (“setback”). This week, with the 51st anniversary of the Six-Day War upon us, Palestinians will mark “Naksa Day” on June 5 with protest...
With the recent passage of the Taylor Force Act, Congress called on the Palestinian Authority “to stop payments for acts of terrorism (...) and to repeal the laws authorizing such payments.” In response, the Palestinian Authority reaffirmed its “national right” to financially support terrorists and has even increased its budget to do so. This is a blatant disregard of U.S. policy, and it’s time for the Treasury Department to target the administrators of the “Pay to Slay” practice for sanctions. United States Executive Order 13224 gives the Tre...
(JNS)—To the editor: Do you want to know why most American Jews don’t believe what you publish about Israel? An article in The Washington Post this week explains it all. It had to do with a Palestinian Arab rock-thrower murdering an Israeli man. The facts of what happened are beyond dispute. On May 24, Israeli soldiers entered al-Amari, a neighborhood near the Palestinian Authority capital city of Ramallah, in pursuit of terrorists. Residents took to their rooftops and began hurling objects at the soldiers. A chunk of concrete thrown by a Pal...
I return to the continuing one-man battle that I have been trying to wage in recent years. As a tour guide, I have visited Yad Vashem many hundreds of times, both the former and the current version. Many structural and technical innovations have upgraded the visiting experience. However, one very glaring content change has caught my eye now for a while and it leaves me no rest. I am asking for yet another attempt to draw the attention to the whitewashing of our history. I will not be silenced by the forces of political correctness, especially i...
I have never been able to understand why Jews are so wedded to the Democratic Party. First, FDR and his anti-Semitic Congress refused to allow the S.S. St. Louis to land at Key West, thereby relegating hundreds of Hungarian Jews to the concentration camps. Now we see that not one Democrat attended the opening of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem—not Chuck Schumer, not Bernie Sanders, not Dianne Feinstein. Furthermore, it would appear that the progressive liberals, who seem to have taken over the party, care less and less about Israel. I can o...
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 I...
For decades, Rabbi Yotav Eliach, esteemed principal of Rambam Mesivta High School in Long Island, has accumulated his teachings, writings, and those of many other scholars and rabbinical authorities, tracking the history of Israel. His mission was not just to chronicle the dispossession and repossession of a people, as Walter Laqueur did in "A History of Zionism," but to go beyond. Rabbi Eliach completes the circle and ties in the religious component-spiritual Judaism itself. The result is a...
JERUSALEM-It's easy to spot Iris Yifrach as she walks through the crowds in a packed shopping mall in central Israel. And it's not just because she's wearing a bright yellow blouse and matching headscarf. Yifrach has been a public figure since June 2014, when her 19-year-old son, Eyal, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists in the West Bank. For 18 days that month, Israel and Jewish communities worldwide were gripped by his June 12 disappearance along with two Jewish 16-year-olds,...
About Sephardic Jews... My late spouse was Sephardic. His ancestry dates all the way back to Barcelona, Spain, and his family spoke Ladino (Spanish). This article from the World Jewish Congress digest caught my eye: "The World Jewish Congress welcomed a recent agreement between Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, aimed at combating anti-Semitism through education. FCJE is the representative body of the Spanish Jewish community and...
(JTA)-Seven Supreme Court justices sided with a Colorado baker in his legal fight with a gay couple. And seven major Jewish groups weighed in on the decision. Six of the Jewish groups disagreed with the decision. But one Jewish organization, the Orthodox Union, dissented from the rest, calling the ruling a victory for religious freedom. "Too many pundits and politicians have lately engaged in rhetoric that seeks to paint religious liberty in a negative light, especially as they seek to advance p...
(JNS)-Author Michael Chabon ignited controversy in the Jewish world following his May 14 commencement speech at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles with students and prominent Reform rabbis criticizing the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist for his take on Jewish inner-marriage and various Israeli security policies. "Security is an invention of humanity's jailers," he said to the audience of young people. "Anywhere you look, it is and has always been a hand of...
(JTA)—Israelis want nothing more than for their country to be considered normal. That may have to wait. A much-anticipated soccer game between the Argentine and Israeli national teams was cancelled Wednesday because, Israeli and Argentine officials say, of physical threats made to the Argentine players—including megastar forward Lionel Messi. The exhibition game was set for Saturday night in Jerusalem, less than a week before the beginning of the World Cup. Beyond the disappointment of tens of thousands of Israeli soccer fans, the can...
Bertha Weinstein, age 88, of Winter Park, passed away on Wednesday, June 6, 2018, at her residence. She was born in New York City on Aug. 7, 1929, to the late Abraham and Lillian Ruderman Bialek. A homemaker, Mrs. Weinstein was a high school graduate and was married for 63 years to her late husband, Mark, who passed away on May 1, 2013. As an avocation, Mrs. Weinstein taught modern dance for many years. She relocated to the Orlando area in 2015 from New York. Mrs. Weinstein is survived by her sons, Irwin (Patricia) Weinstein of Winter Park, Eri...
