Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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On Friday, Sept. 10, students at Jewish Academy of Orlando observed Tashlich. While the younger grades attended a service on campus, grades 3-5 observed Tashlich at Lake Lily. The program, attended by students and their families, included a service with inspirational readings from Jewish sources and concluded with the blowing of the shofar. Afterwards, the students symbolically cast their sins into the water to help usher in new beginnings for the New Year. The student event concluded with a...
(JNS) As Americans gathered this year to remember the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, they did so amid a landscape that is increasingly divided domestically, where hate crimes are at a record high, the Taliban has become the official government of Afghanistan, and experts say that homegrown terror threats continue to be a major security concern. "The issues facing the United States and how we have dealt with them have changed dramatically over the last 20 years," according to Michae...
(JTA) - In a significant move, Israel and the United States have set up a joint team at the national security adviser level to contain Iran, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told U.S. Jewish leaders in a Rosh Hashanah call. Bennett and his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu have vehemently opposed negotiating a deal with Iran to contain its nuclear program. But in his first meeting with Bennett last week, President Joe Biden looked to appease Israel's fears by signaling an openness to using a...
Jewish Academy of Orlando (JAO) announces Theresa Evans as executive director. Evans completes the leadership team of Amy Polacek, principal and Emily Watson, director of Jewish Life. As executive director, Theresa will have primary responsibility for the business operations of the school. This will include, financial and operations management, marketing, special events, fundraising and development efforts, and maintaining public and community relations. She will work side-by-side with JAO...
When asked about the quality I most admire in a leader, the answer is always vision. Perhaps it was the years of working with the former CEO of Central Florida Hillel, the irreplaceable Aaron Weil. Or the general lack of vision I see in so many organizations (Jewish and not), but an inspiring leader who knows the potential of their organization makes me want to sign up, donate and get involved. That is why at our recent board retreat, the Stetson University Hillel student board started with...
Losing a loved one can be very challenging and during the pandemic it has been even worse. Families are often unable to bury their loved ones or get together with friends and family for Shiva. While Zoom funerals and memorial services are better than nothing, they are not the same as in-person gatherings. While the rules have relaxed a bit lately, no one knows for certain what the new normal will be. The Jewish Pavilion is announcing their upcoming free grief support group, which will be held...
(JNS) "Israel is your home away from home," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a message on Sept. 2, ahead of the Jewish New Year. His address was aimed at "the people of Israel and the Jewish people at large," which he referred to as his "extended family." Herzog was previously head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, where, as one of his stated objectives, he worked to provide a platform for all Jewish communities around the world. Today, the Jewish Agency's top position has yet to be...
(JNS) The dramatic escape of six Palestinian terrorists from Gilboa Prison in northern Israel last Monday carries the potential of a broader security escalation, a former defense official has cautioned. Col. (res.) David Hacham, a former Arab-affairs adviser to seven Israeli defense ministers and a senior research associate at the Miryam Institute, told JNS that the breakout could lead to a chain of incidents and an escalation dynamic, although this is not a certainty. He recalled a highly relevant precedent from the 1980s. In May 1987, six...
(JNS) The humiliating Gilboa Prison escape is nothing but a symptom. The flaws that led to it will be investigated, found and corrected, but to rectify the broader structural failure will require Israel to shake up the current law-enforcement system and its security policies. What constitutes this structural failure is the system’s addiction to maintaining “peace and quiet”—at the expense of the appropriate response exhibited by a society that cherishes life—in the face of reckless and violent citizens, criminals, terrorists and enemies a...
“Who shall live and who shall die … who by water and who by fire … who by earthquake and who by plague …” (JTA) — Twenty years ago, people cried when they said these words on Rosh Hashanah, six days after the attacks of Sept. 11. The ancient words suddenly held intense contemporary force. Twenty years later we are being bombarded by climate-related disasters, one after another — each year worse than the last — and again our ancient machzor, the High Holidays prayerbook — carries fresh, urgent force for all of us. Who by water? On the 16t...
(JTA) — On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, in my second year of rabbinical school, while working at my first-ever High Holiday pulpit, I accidentally conceived. I had my first bout of morning sickness in our introductory Talmud course, and my first pregnancy craving during Hebrew Literature and Grammar (I still swear that pickles on pizza is a million-dollar idea). I took my pregnancy test on Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, and whispered the blessing “asher yatzar et ha’adam b’chochmah,” who created human beings with wisdom, when it read positive....
(JTA) — Deborah Lipstadt, recently named by President Joe Biden as the U.S. Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, won’t just combat anti-Semitism but may well eliminate it. And that would be a mistake. To be clear, the Emory University historian is a fierce opponent of Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial, having vanquished the Holocaust denier David Irving in a British court, among other triumphs over bigotry. But over the past few years, Lipstadt has led a campaign to eliminate the hyphen in the word “anti-Semitism,” preferr...
(JTA) — Two nights after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, we were instructed to evacuate our building. There was talk of a potential attack on the nearby Empire State Building. My roommates and I covered our mouths and noses with towels to protect against the still fetid air and walked east from our midtown Manhattan Stern College apartment to get out of the danger zone. Every telephone pole was plastered with hastily printed “MISSING” signs, each with a different smiling face and a phone number to call. When we reached the barricades, staffed by...
Dear Editor: As we approach the holiest period of the Jewish calendar, it becomes increasingly difficult to control one’s reaction to the noisy pronouncement of “progressive Jewish leaders.” As specifically named by Mr. Sales in his article in the Heritage (August 27) these anti-Zionists condemn AIPAC ads targeting the ‘squad” members of congress about their enthusiasm for Muslim terrorists and condemnation of Israel. These well-financed J-Street associates and “spiritual leaders” (i.e., rabbis) want to delegitimize the Jewish State just li...
MORNING MINYANS (Please note, because of the coronavirus, some minyans have been canceled or held virtually.) 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. Congr...
(JTA) - Rabbi Raziel Cohen doesn't want you to have to draw a gun in synagogue. But if you must, he doesn't want you to waste precious time unbuttoning your kapota, a type of jacket worn by men in the Chabad Hasidic community on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. So Cohen, a firearms instructor who goes by the moniker "The Tactical Rabbi," worked with Shaul Snovsky, who sells kapotas in South Florida, to create the Tactical Kapota. The jacket, which looks like any other kapota, closes with snaps...
Great works of art often become so present in our everyday lives - the "Mona Lisa" on a mug, "The Starry Night" on a sweater, Basquiat in Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Tiffany campaign - that it's easy to forget how fragile the originals are. These images that populate our collective consciousness all started as a single destructible canvas. But most museums don't highlight the life these artworks have had as physical objects - often because that history is wrapped up in colonialism and theft. At the...
JERUSALEM (JTA) - Amit Zakoon's flower business started with a seed - literally - but it quickly grew into one of Jerusalem's premier purveyors of luxury sukkahs. "We work for all the rich and famous," Zakoon, the owner and CEO of Yarok Yarok Events Design, told JTA. Studio Ya Ya, as Zakoon's clients call the business, is known for executing weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs and parties for Jerusalem's A-list, including visiting U.S. presidents (from Bush to Obama) to big-time philanthropists like the...
NEW YORK (JTA) - The holiday of Sukkot isn't complete without a lulav and an etrog, the four species that Jews are commanded to wave on the harvest holiday. But according to a new book, it wasn't until the Second Temple period that Jews started using the lemon-like etrog as part of their Sukkot celebrations. In ancient times, people would simply use whichever fruits they had harvested in that season, such as pomegranates, grapes, dates and figs, says Rabbi David Moster, who has been researching...
Surprise! Surprise!... Did you know that Golden Globe, Prime Time Emmy and an Academy Award... all for best actress, were earned by fabulous actress HELEN HUNT? Did you also know that her paternal grandparents were from German-Jewish folks. Like me, Helen grew up in New York City from the age of three. I recently saw her on television discussing her career. (You may have also.) And you probably have heard of actress, Milena Markovna Kunis. NO? (How about MILA KUNIS?) Mila, born in Soviet...
(JNS) Algeria’s decision last week to sever diplomatic ties with its neighbor, Morocco, put the spotlight on the strengthening Israeli-Moroccan relations that were born out of the Abraham Accords. Prof. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, an expert on North Africa and senior fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, told JNS that Algeria and Morocco have been “geopolitical and ideological rivals for more than a half-century on the morrow of attaining independence.” The future of Spain’s ex-colony, Western S...
VACAVILLE, Calif. (JTA) – Soon after Jon Grobman was released from prison, where he had once thought he would die, he headed back inside voluntarily - this time with canine sidekicks. Grobman was returning as the newest hire of a nonprofit group, Paws for Life K9 Rescue, that had been instrumental in his own long and difficult road to redemption. He won't easily forget the words of the judge who sentenced him to life without parole. "If I felt that you had any promise to ever amount to a...
(JNS) Arizona moved to divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, over the ice-cream maker’s decision to stop selling its products in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem, becoming the first state to take such action. Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee announced last Tuesday that the state will pull some $143 million of investments from the multinational firm by Sept. 21. “As Arizona Treasurer, I’ve divested all state funds from Ben & Jerry’s for boycotting Israel,” Yee announced on Twitter. “Israel is and will continue to b...
(JTA) — If there’s one thing Rabbi Sholom Lipskar wants to remember from the aftermath of the Surfside condo collapse in June, it’s the small cards that he distributed to the first responders and search-and-rescue teams working at the site. Inscribed with Psalm 23, a psalm often recited in times of trouble that begins with the words “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” the cards were meant to protect and inspire those charged with extracting survivors and, later, recovering bodies. Lipskar estimated that he gave out as many as 800 of...
Submitted by the family Sidney W. Bressler, 96, passed away peacefully on Mon, Aug 23, 2021 in Winter Park, Fl. Born Feb 25 1925 to Beatrice & Benjamin Bressler in New York City and raised in Brooklyn. Graduated Lowell Textile Institute in 1949. He served in the U.S. Army in WWII as an aviation engineer on a PBY, amphibious aircraft, in the Pacific. The highlight of his military career was on the morning of August 6, 1945 when his crew landed in the Sea of Japan five miles off the east coast of...
