Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NY Times best-selling author Kristin Harmel will be the guest speaker at the 20th Annual Literary Luncheon on March 5 at the Interlachen Country Club in Winter Park. Doors will be open at 10:15 am. so guests may peruse the Silent Auction items and make bids. Lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m. The event is sponsored by the Orlando/Winter Park American Association of University Women and its proceeds go to benefit scholarships and legal advocacy for women and girls. Favorite author and Orlandoan...
(JNS) — Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman was warned by a U.S. State Department staffer in 2017 not to be “so Jewish,” Breitbart has revealed. Friedman reportedly recounts the anti-Semitic episodes in his new book, Sledgehammer: How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, set to be released on Feb. 8. The book centers on how the White House under former President Donald Trump successfully achieved the Abraham Accords and a new era of peace in the region. The excerpt from the book that was shared by Breit...
(JNS) - For Eli Lunzer, the road to Super Bowl Super LVI started weeks before the team match-ups were determined. Lunzer will arrive in Los Angeles for a nonstop week of work before the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams players even get to SoFi Stadium for kickoff, scheduled for Sunday at 6:30 p.m. EST. And he will work around the clock, except for Shabbat, for a solid week. "I am a shadchan," says Lunzer, using the Yiddish word for "matchmaker." Meaning, he explains, "I connect brands,...
I visited Ephraim Kholmyansky in Moscow in October 1987. It was my second trip to the USSR to help encourage Jews, bringing hope, make personal connections, and smuggle in a small amount of things to help them but that could have had me in some big trouble with the KGB. I knew about Kholmynasky before as I spent much of my early adulthood engrossed in the movement to free Soviet Jews. So, for me, when we met, I was meeting one of my heroes. But as much as I thought I knew Kholmynasky through my...
Hollywood has a lot of Jews! ... For instance, while watching the STEPHEN COLBERT television show recently, his guest was actor ADRIEN BRODY. I first saw Adrien in the movie "The Pianist" and I fell in love with him and his rare talent. He won an Academy Award for that performance as Best Actor. Of course he has appeared and acted in other movies but "The Pianist" stood out for me. Of course, Adrien Brody is Jewish, the son of a Polish-Jewish man and a mother who was half Catholic from her dad,...
By My Jewish Learning The prevailing stereotypes of Jews as bookish, nerdy, or business-minded have led to a widespread assumption that, on the whole, Jews are not good at sports. Some may be surprised to learn, therefore, that Jews have in fact frequently been well represented in the Olympics where many have medalled. For example, between 1968 and 2016, a total of 41 Jews won olympic medals (27 of them gold) - in swimming alone! This was thanks in no small measure to swimmer Mark Spitz, the...
Rachel B., a 37-year-old Jewish mother of four, endured years of emotional and physical abuse from her husband. She hoped that ending her marriage was the answer but was afraid of the unknown. She knew that she needed a Jewish divorce, a GET — but she didn’t know her legal rights to obtain a Divorce - could her husband take the kids away from her, how would she support herself, would she be able to re-marry one day, should she proceed through the civil courts or a Beis Din (Jewish court of law) first? In Rachel’s close-knit Jewish community, th...
Oy such talent! ... I'm referring to all the stars I write about. For instance, SARAH SILVERMAN. SARAH is an American comedian, actress, and writer. Her comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics, including racism, sexism, homophobia, politics (politics gives me heartburn!) and religion, sometimes having her comic character endorse them in a satirical or deadpan fashion. Sarah was a writer and a performer on "Saturday Night Live" and also she starred and produced "The Sarah Silverma...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) – The historic New York City synagogue that controls the equally historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Is-land moved to terminate the lease of the congregation that worships there. But don’t call it an eviction, leaders of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York say: They describe the filing as an effort to restructure the board of Congregation Jeshuat Israel, which has met at Touro for 120 years, and install a new slate of officers who will “ensure that Touro Syn-agogue is properly maintained into the f...
Mel Pearlman sent the Heritage two photos from days gone by. The first photo is of Heritage columnists (left to right) Mel Pearlman, Jim Shipley and Wolf Blitzer — yes Blitzer was once a syndicated regular Heritage columnist. With them on the far right is Heritage publisher Jeff Gaeser. The date of this photo is not known. The second photo is another undated, unknown event. Some of the men are Rabbi Larry Halpern, Dick Appelbaum, Mel Pearlman and Charles Schwartz. If anyone knows when this event took place, what it was about and who the o...
“Jonathan Feldstein did an excellent job of the overall history of Gush Etzion [Heritage, Jan. 21 issue ‘The rise and fall and rise again of Gush Etzion’],” a Heritage reader wrote. He continued, “There’s just one thing I thought might be interesting and that is how it got the name Gush Etzion.” The reader explained that Gush means “block” so it’s the “block of Etzion.” Where did the word “Etzion” come from? The reader went on to explain it comes from Shmuel Yosef Holtzman (or Holzman). Holtzman was a Jewish businessman of German extra...
(JTA) - "P.O. Box 1142" was the only name the Jewish GIs were given as to their destination. The American World War II soldiers, many of them refugees from Europe, assumed they would be flying overseas to fight Nazis. Instead, they were taken to an off-the-grid compound in rural Virginia - to look after Nazis. "Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis," an animated documentary from Israeli directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, tells the story of a group of Jewish American veterans whose sole...
(JTA) - Golden Globes fans may have noticed something different this year: The annual entertainment awards were not announced on TV, and not for COVID-19 reasons. NBC dropped the broadcast over the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's diversity problem - none of the 87 members of the Globes' awards body are Black. (The one celebrity to release a video referencing involvement in the awards this year was Jewish actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who highlighted the HFPA's charity efforts.) But the...
Before I write any further: let me say OOPS! ... I wrote in a recent column that Amy Schneider, a contestant on "Jeopardy" was Jewish. She claims not to be. So sorry! (She also claims not to be a man.) Great Jewish talent ... The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Harpo, Groucho, Chico and Zeppo were the names we knew them by. All have since passed away. (I loved them all ... but especially Gr...
(JTA) — There’s a good chance that when you logged on to Twitter today, you were met with tweets showing off grids of yellow, green and black squares. There’s also a good chance that you posted a similar grid. Many of the more than 2 million people who have taken to playing the Wordle word game online have been posting their results, either boasting of their victories or lamenting how they’ve been stumped. The suddenly and wildly popular game, an invention of Brooklyn-based software designer Josh Wardle, asks players to guess a five-le...
On Jan. 29, 1972, I left Viet Nam — my tour was cut from one year to 6 months due to the Nixon ordered troop reduction. I traveled by transport cargo plane (bench seats) to Tokyo. Left Tokyo Jan. 31, arrived in San Francisco Feb. 1, and transferred to Ft. Dix, NJ, for discharge arriving there Feb. 3, 1972. Three and one-half years of service, and I can say, without hesitation, that I would do it again. I learned much, matured, had experiences that could have never been duplicated: Marc’s Brit Milah, February 1970, was the first in Aug...
(JTA) - A team of researchers said they have identified the person who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis 80 years ago: a Jewish notary forced to work for the Nazis. The man identified by a cold-case team that has been working for six years to identify the persons responsible for the discovery of the Franks by Nazi authorities in occupied Amsterdam was Arnold van den Bergh, a notary and a member of the Jewish Council, which the Nazis established to better control Dutch Jews. The...
When Federation CEO Keith Dvorchik went to Israel last October, one of the places he visited was Hebron, the beautiful city where the Jewish patriarch Abraham and matriarch Sarah, as well as Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah and Joseph are buried. As Dvorchik relaxed with others in the group, he learned that the soldiers who guard the tomb have no place to relax when they are off duty. The IDF soldiers, known as the Golani Brigade, serve a 3-month rotation at Hebron, guarding not just the tomb but also the city. Their “base” is built out of...
From the title onward, it is evident that director Paul Mazursky's "Enemies, A Love Story" is anything but your typical run of the mill love story. Ron Silver is magnificent as the tragic Herman Broder, a man who just so happens to wind up being married to three women at once. As one would expect, he isn't a very happy person. But how did we get to this, exactly? When we are first introduced to him, we see he is a man living two lives. In one life, he lives in Brooklyn and is married to the youn...
I must confess that I am a hoarder. I strongly believe in keeping things "in case I need them in the future." I'm not a messy hoarder, and I usually know where to find what I have carefully put away, but I am always reluctant to let go of anything that is in good condition even if it has no immediate use. It is the year of the corona. I have plenty of time to ponder on the vexing question: "What is the difference between being a hoarder, a careful housewife or a respectable collector?" All...
I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted ... For many years I've been told that we look alike. Also for many years I've been told that we sound alike. I do know we are both funny ... but she was a comedian and I was a dancer and now (still) a vocalist. Also, she is deceased and I am (at least for now) still alive! Have you guessed who I'm referring to? Joan Molinsky is her name and she (like me) was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. Now do you know? Of course you do! Joan Rivers was her...
In a country whose biblical and modern history are intertwined and covered with dramatic events taking place at locations everywhere, Gush Etzion is among the most significant. Gush Etzion is the Judean mountain region between Jerusalem and Hebron. It sits at elevations between 2500-3000 feet, made extra beautiful by terraced hilltops and a range of crops including vineyards and olive trees, and ancient paths that were the biblical highways, which pilgrims and traders would transverse in religio...
(JNS) - Every age has its own narrative myth about those who acquire great wealth. In the 21st century, the prevailing story is that of the nerd who parlays technological genius into billions. The Big Tech oligarchs who make their way onto the Forbes' billionaire list are envied and feared. But with only a few conspicuous exceptions, their posh lifestyles, liberal politics and donations to fashionable and politically correct charities generally protect them from the worst abuse that pop culture...
By With new COVID variants, seemingly never-ending vaccines, mandates causing tensions between government and citizens, and travel restrictions forcing the separation of families and friends this winter, there is a prevalent feeling of uncertainty. The upcoming holiday of Tu B'shevat reminds us that despite it all, the Jewish people are always a nation with hope. Tu B'shevat, the 15th day of the Jewish month of Shevat, is a unique holiday. According to the Talmud (Rosh Hashana 2a), Tu B'Shevat...
Marvin Friedman was called to the Torah for the second time in his life as a bar mitzvah on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022, at Chabad of Greater Orlando. Friedman was first called to the Torah in 1955 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The following is a letter Friedman, a graduate of MIT, shared with MIT Hillel news. A renewal of my Jewish identity By Marvin Friedman I am 80 years old and just celebrated my second bar mitzvah. This was all about reestablishing my identity as a Jew. On Jan. 8, 2022, I was called to...
