Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - This year's Grammy Awards will almost certainly be different from past years, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. But despite the lack of details surrounding the ceremony, it's still taking place, and as usual, several Jewish artists made the nominations list, which was announced Tuesday. Ranging all the way from the sister rock band Haim to comedian Tiffany Haddish, these are the Jewish artists who made the biggest impact on the recording industry this year. The big awards Leading the...
Former Orlando Jewish community resident and daughter of Arnold Stein, Lori Erlich, has sent Heritage an update about the progress of Kehilat Yonatan, the Reform/Progressive synagogue and cultural/education center in Hod Hasharon, Israel. Kehilat Yonatan was founded in 2001 and is named in the memory of Rabbi Michael Boyden's son, Israel Defense Forces paratrooper Yonatan Boyden, who was killed in action in Lebanon in 1993. In 2014, Erlich and her husband, Moshe, visited the Heritage office to...
After a comprehensive search, the Congregation Ohev Shalom Board selected Rachel Rosenberg O'Brien to be executive director of the synagogue. She will assume her duties on Jan. 4, 2021. Steve Brownstein has been the acting executive director since 2013. O'Brien, who has 20 years experience in management, comes to COS from Austin, Texas, where she is involved with Hadassah and her synagogue. "We were immediately impressed by her ability to run a business with multiple stakeholders, identify and...
(JTA) - As Israel received its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Twitter that he aimed to be the first person in the country to receive the inoculation. "We brought the vaccines to Israel! I intend to be the first in Israel to get vaccinated, to set an example for all Israeli citizens," Netanyahu tweeted. Recent surveys of Israelis found that a majority are fearful of the vaccines and would not want to be included in the first set of...
(ISRAEL21c via JNS) - In preparation for the flu season and the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines needing special refrigeration, three mobile vaccination caravans were commissioned by Magen David Adom, Israel's national organization responsible for emergency pre-hospital medical care and blood services. Stationed at the National Operations Center in Kiryat Ono, near Tel Aviv, the six-meter (19.6-foot) caravans can offer flu vaccinations and coronavirus testing around the country until the COVID-19...
As part of their monthly guest speakers via zoom "Physically Apart - Emotionally Together," Chabads of North and Greater Orlando invite you to hear the fascinating story of Genie Milgrom on Wednesday, Dec. 23, at 7:30 p.m. Genie will share her journey back in time as she crossed the globe in search of her Crypto-Jewish ancestors. Genie Milgrom was born in Havana, Cuba, into a Roman Catholic Family of Spanish Ancestry. According to Jewish law, one's Jewishness is determined by their maternal...
"Jeopardy!" fans have been hard hit by the loss of Alex Trebek, who died of cancer on Nov. 8 at age 80. But because the show films in advance - and Trebek kept filming until a week before his passing - the beloved longtime host is still with us until Dec. 25. Just why are we writing about this iconic game show? Well, Jewish questions and guests are not exactly rare on "Jeopardy!". But on Monday night, Nov. 30, the show had an entire category dedicated to Yiddish. The clueless contestants were...
Congregation Sinai helps our community celebrate all Jewish holidays with special events and virtual services. Congregation Sinai has been serving the Jewish Community of Central Florida for the past 17 years. Many services and annual holiday events are open and free to the entire community. For more information about their holiday services, new membership, educational programs, Friday night Shabbat services are held every Friday night starting at 7:30 p.m. Healing Services are held on the...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) — The Knesset still has not dispersed, and a date for the next election has not been set. But the turmoil in the anti-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu camp continued unabated and even intensified over the weekend. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz is fighting Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid; Moshe Ya’alon is squabbling with both of them; and the names Gadi Eizenkot and Ron Huldai are being bandied about in an ultimate effort to replace Netanyahu as premier. The former political allies, Gantz and Lapid, visited the tel...
(JNS) — Israel’s National Security Council has issued a warning to the country’s citizens abroad to take special security precautions. “In light of the threats that have been made recently by Iranian elements, and given the past involvement of Iranian elements in terrorist attacks in various countries, there is concern that Iran will try to act in this manner against Israeli targets,” the NSC’s Counter-Terrorism Division said in a statement on Thursday. “Possible arenas for this action are both countries close to Iran (such as Georgia, Azer...
(JNS) — Ahead of the three-year anniversary of U.S. President Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, more than three-dozen Republican members of Congress have called for language in an upcoming must-pass appropriations bill that would prohibit American funding from being used to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Jerusalem. In a Dec. 4 letter, a group of 43 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Chu...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to appoint six individuals to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Those named to the council, which is the governing body of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., include David Marchick, who served as the Deputy U.S. Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton administration; Republican strategist Jeffrey Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Strategies; U.S. International Development Finance Corporation CEO Adam S. Boehler; Miami Beach investor Jimmy Resnick; former U...
(JNS) — A group of 122 Palestinian academics, journalists, writers and filmmakers signed a letter last month taking issue with the widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of anti-Semitism. Their statement has gotten a lot of attention and been rightly criticized as both disingenuous and illegitimate since it is absurd for a group that is the object of prejudice, as is the case with the Jews, to be denied the right to define the hatred that is directed at them. But as much as the Palestinian p...
(JNS) — The divisive organization Jewish Voice for Peace co-hosted a panel on Dec. 15 headlined “Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice.” The panel — which featured figures such as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, who have themselves engaged in extensive anti-Semitic rhetoric, alongside outspoken Israel critic Peter Beinart — has been received with a mixture of shock, dismay and outright bewilderment. The inclusion of these participants in a panel on anti-Semitism is both comically counterpr...
(JNS) — Open question: Is there any enemy nation or power, from Communist China to Qatar, that isn’t buying up academia? It’s one thing when wealthy enemy nations like China and Qatar do it, but the whole thing reaches a new level of obscene absurdity when it’s a terrorist entity that we fund with our tax dollars that’s doing it. It’s not often that I’m surprised, but Mitchell Bard’s research in The Spectator turned up something I didn’t even imagine existed: “A new study that I compiled for the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise found tha...
The Uprooting Prejudice exhibit, at the Maitland Holocaust Center of Florida, is in part promoting the Black Lives Matter movement, which is irrefutably anti-Semitic and responsible for targeting synagogues and destroying Jewish-owned businesses during the George Floyd inspired riots. This exhibit, occupying the hallowed halls of our Holocaust Memorial Center has resulted in well-deserved negative national attention. The Aug. 28, 2020, Jerusalem Post reported, “On Wednesday night, the 93-year-old Los Angeles synagogue’s driveway was gra...
(JNS) — The Washington Post is at it again. The editorial board of the newspaper just cannot refrain from attacking Israel. Its Dec. 6 commentary, “Netanyahu’s reaction to Biden’s victory is appalling,” offers more proof of the board’s anti-Israel bias. Jackson Diehl, the Post’s deputy opinion-page editor, is upset. The reason? “When U.S. media designated” former U.S. Vice President Joe “Biden the winner on Nov. 7,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “delayed until the next day before publicly congratulating him.” Worse still, Dieh...
Dear Editor: I protest an exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center in Maitland, Florida, honoring George Floyd. My parents, Jacob and Rachel Rosenberg, were survivors of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. A George Floyd Exhibit has no place in a Holocaust Museum which should be dedicated to memorialize and remember the lessons of the Holocaust, namely that Hitler wanted to wipe out an entire people simply because they were Jewish. Anti-Semitism cannot be tolerated. The museum claims to use the lessons of...
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.,...
(JNS) — A key body of the European Union adopted a declaration on Wednesday to combat anti-Semitism. The Council of the European Union is comprised of government ministers from the 27 E.U. member-states, who meet to make laws and coordinate policies. The ministers have the authority to commit their governments to the actions agreed upon by the council, its main decision-making body. The declaration makes the fight against anti-Semitism a priority of Europe’s executive branch. The declaration calls anti-Semitism “an attack on European value...
(JNS) - In addition to Kat Cammack being one of a record number of Republican women elected to Congress this past election, she will serve as the youngest Republican woman on Capitol Hill when the 117th Congress begins on Jan. 3. She easily defeated Democrat Adam Christensen, 57.1 percent to 42.9 percent, respectively, in the Nov. 3 U.S. House of Representatives race in Florida's 3rd Congressional District to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Ted Yoho, whom she served as his deputy chief of...
EAST POULTNEY, Vt. (Bennington Banner via JTA) - The autumn leaves crunched underfoot as Netanel Crispe walked uphill toward the northwest corner of the small cemetery. He stopped and examined a toppled headstone. "The last time I was here this was standing up," he said, regarding the weathered, gray stone. "At least it hasn't broken." Crispe brushed away the leaves to reveal a carving at the top of the stone: two raised hands, the gesture used in the delivery of the Birkat Kohanim, Judaism's...
Here is more proof ... Proof that Jewish people were fabulous composer/lyricists and many of their songs live on ... no matter what the subject! (It never ceases to amaze me.) For instance, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nippin' at your nose ..." The Christmas Song. It was written by Mel Tormé, a singer, also known as "The Velvet Fog." Melvin Howard Tormé was the son of Jewish/polish immigrants. I had the pleasure of meeting him once. And I also had the pleasure of meeting f...
From the time Keith Dvorchik was a young boy, he has moved no less than eight times and has had a variety of careers all of which prepared him for his job as CEO of The Roth Family JCC and executive director of The Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando. "When I was four or five years old, my parents moved from Gainesville, Fla., to Hummelstown, a small town near Hershey, Pennsylvania. A year later we moved to the eastern shore of the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where I spent...
(J., The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) - Here's something to do during the long nights of Chanukah under lockdown - become a goblin with a jelly doughnut launcher. That's one option if you play Chanukah Goblins, a tabletop role-playing game by the indie game designer Max Fefer that makes its debut on Thursday, the holiday's first night. Some of the proceeds will go to charity. Fefer said the game, created during the pandemic, is all about finding a way to let your imagination run...
