Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(New York Jewish Week via JTA) - "Welcome back to live theater!" Yoni Vendriger says, standing before the audience before the show begins. It is, I realize, the first time I've seen a play in a theater since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Except the theater, in this case, is an apartment in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the "stage" is, for most of the show, the living room couch. About 15 of us make up the audience, most of them friends of the apartment's r...
It started with a question for Jonathan Gold. Chanukah 2011 was nearing, and a friend sent a query to Ask Mr. Gold, the advice column of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic renowned for putting Los Angeles on the map as a destination for culinary diversity. She told Gold that she wanted to participate in the Chanukah tradition of eating foods fried in oil, but didn't want to smell up her apartment frying latkes Instead, she sought the city's best churros. A tradition was born. One night...
(The Nosher via JTA) — Everyone loves potato latkes, but no one likes the mess of frying them or the guilt associated with eating them. These latkes are baked in the oven and easily won over my kids. You do need to watch them so they don’t burn; they were done at different times in different ovens. And my pickled applesauce is basically a tangy-spicy applesauce, which we also eat like eating with schnitzel. Note: Latkes may be made 2 days in advance and reheated in the oven or frozen; app...
This is a fun and colorful Chanukah cookie activity with beautiful results. Main ingredients 1/4 teaspoon Haddar Baking Powder 1/2 cup softened butter 1/2 cup crushed hard candy 1 large egg 1 and 1/2 cups Mishpacha All Purpose Flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon Gefen Vanilla Extract Prepare the cookies Using a mixer, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually add dry...
As if you didn't already know ... How about that Jacob Rodney Cohen (with a name like Cohen) was Jewish. Of course you did, even though he is known globally as comedian Rodney Dangerfield! Such a funny man will never be forgotten. I even end this column with some of his brilliant one liners ... don't remember him? "I don't get no respect!" (One of his comical lines). Now you probably do! Speaking of memories ... Recently on television, they played a documentary on the life of British...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) - If you watched television in the 1970s and early 1980s, chances are you can sing a few bars of "Look for the Union Label," a jingle sung on commercials for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. The infectious song was meant to prop up what was then the sagging American-made clothing industry, and the ads featured actual union members singing the praises of union-made garments. The song was more memorable than effective: Labor unions never recovered...
Over seven years ago, Martin Scorsese unveiled his series “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema” at the Lincoln Center, highlighting works mostly made between the 1950s and the 1970s. During this time, Poland produced such masterpieces as Andrzej Wajda’s “Ashes and Diamonds,” Wojciech Has’ “The Hourglass Sanatorium” (previously covered in this series), Janusz Morgenstern’s “To Kill this Love,” among so many others. Many of these films reflected on life in post-World War II as well as the struggle to cope with the horrors that took place. Director...
Jewish cooking in my family has always been an act of revival and reconnection. My family, though very dedicated to Judaism, has very few Jewish recipes that have been preserved throughout the generations. Growing up, I felt disconnected from Jewish culture. I hadn’t heard of many Jewish dishes, and I certainly didn’t know how to make them. I knew that about a quarter of my Jewish roots were Sephardic and the rest Ashkenazi — and that’s about all I knew. I didn’t know how to celebrate the festive Jewish holidays and, ultimately, I just didn...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Marty Markowitz, the former borough president of Brooklyn, has never listened to the popular podcast called “The Shrink Next Door.” He’s only vaguely aware that it’s now a TV series with an A-list cast. He does know, however, that he and the main character share the exact same name. “‘The Shrink Next Door’?” he said when a reporter called Friday. After hearing a brief description of the story, he said, “The one with Marty Markowitz?” “Shrink,” which premieres on Friday on Apple TV+, is based on the true story o...
On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, synagogues, Jewish schools and Jewish-owned businesses were targeted in violent riots throughout Nazi Germany. This map shows many of the synagogues destroyed on Kristallnacht. At least 267 synagogues were burned down or destroyed in the pogroms, which is known as Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.” The map shows the extent of the damage. Jewish institutions and businesses were desecrated, torched and looted by Nazi paramilitary troops and civilian sym...
(JTA) - "Deck the halls with matzo balls"? Chanukah menorahs with 12 candles? Products with misfired Chanukah messages have been drawing gripes for years, but this year major retailers are responding quickly to customer complaints about Chanukah products they say are culturally inappropriate or misinformed. It took just one day from when the Instagram account Chanukah Fails posted about Target's Chanukah "Countdown Calendar" before the major retailer changed the product description to "Happy...
In most Jewish holidays, wine gets the spotlight. Chanukah is not one of those holidays! When it comes to Chanukah, it's all about the fried foods like latkes and jelly donuts. Sure, wine enthusiasts might say "I can pair latkes with Champagne," but can they really? As a certified cicerone, the beer version of a wine sommelier, all I want with my oily golden potato pancakes is a crisp Vienna Lager, Hazy Pale Ale, or to crack open any of the beers in my Hoppy Chanukah Craft Beer-a-day Box from...
Ingredients 1 large russet potato, peeled 1 large zucchini, peeled 1/2 head of cauliflower 1/2 yellow onion 1 clove of garlic, finely minced 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper Vegetable oil for frying Preparation: Grate together potato, zucchini, cauliflower, and onion. Use a food processor to make this step faster. Wrap the vegetable mixture in a cheesecloth or a lightweight kitchen towel and squeeze out as much liquid...
Latkes are far more popular during Hanukkah than donuts here in the U.S. While you can find latkes in the freezer section of almost every major supermarket, good quality sufganiyot are much harder to come by, and lots of people I know have a fear of using yeast to make dough like donut dough. But there is an easier way to make sufganiyot, and it comes in a can: biscuit dough. What can these doughy babies not do? Using canned biscuits, you can either make full-sized sufganiyot, or smaller, donut...
Who knew? Of course I did ... First of all, author Daniel Keyes (born Daniel Korzenstein) was my first cousin. His mom, my aunt Betty, and my mom, Sally, were sisters. Danny's little sister, GAIL, and I were (and still are), extremely close. (She feels like a sister to me.) Danny wrote the famous book "Flowers For Algernon" which became required reading in some New York City schools. He also wrote "The Minds of Billy Milligan" and other successful books. What people didn't know (but we in the fa...
Chanukah can be a great time for simple and fun family art projects. There is a custom for each member of the family to have his/her own menorah. This year, why not make your own? You can buy lots of small votive candles (yahrtzeit candles are an inexpensive way to do this) and decorate the glass with a collage of colorful pieces of tissue paper. When the votives are lit, light shines through the tissue paper like stained glass. This is a great hanukkiyah for the Friday night of the holiday, when the candles are supposed to burn for at least...
By (Alma via JTA) -- Chanukah season means latkes, menorahs and the retelling of the classic story about Judah and the Maccabees. But there's a woman from a few hundred years before Judah was around who is just as important to this story. This Chanukah, let's bring this forgotten biblical badass back into the spotlight. She's not mentioned in the Torah. Her earliest known stories aren't even in Hebrew; they're in Greek. And she's on the fringes of medieval texts, at best. And though her story...
For Jewish children, the excitement of Chanukah is often connected to the promise of receiving gifts — usually one for each of the eight nights. For parents, however, the gift-buying and gift-giving can start to feel like a long-running episode of the Home Shopping Network, leading some of us to wonder: What messages are we imparting to our children during this time of year? While our daughters were growing up, my husband and I paused to consider the values we wished to encourage during Chanukah. Agreeing on “quality family time” as a main goal...
(JTA) - Even when Arthur Kurzweil sits by himself in his study, he doesn't feel that he's alone. After all, he has the dreidels - all 4,000 of them. Kurzweil, 70, is a prolific author and editor who has written books about Judaism and magic and his car rides with Talmud scholar Adin Steinsaltz, as well as the Kabbalah and Torah installments in the "... for Dummies" series. His most significant contribution to Jewish publishing, however, may be his books and teaching about Jewish genealogy: He ha...
(JTA) - "Arthur's Perfect Christmas," the 2000 TV movie, begins with Arthur sitting at the piano in his jammies singing about how this Christmas is going to be magical - the best one yet. It's clear what holiday is center stage in Arthur's world. But it's the B plot about the show's Jewish character Francine that speaks to a legitimate Jewish experience - truer than any current kids' Chanukah specials on TV. Francine's best friend, Muffy, refuses to accept that Francine can't attend her...
These potato latkes are so good that posting the recipe alone is a mitzvah of the highest order. The Festival of Lights refers to a lamp in the temple that was supposed to have only enough oil to last the Maccabees one night, but instead lasted for eight. The holiday celebrates the miracle of the oil, so fried foods are often featured at Hanukkah feasts. Problem is, most potato pancakes, or latkes, are awful. Luckily for you, these are amazing. Ingredients 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) - One of the first images of "The Shrink Next Door," the limited series premiering Friday on Apple TV+, is of a smiling man wearing a huge kippah, chatting at a party in the Hamptons. The party, viewers will later find out, is being held at the summer home of Marty Markowitz, a garment district merchant whose life becomes increasingly dominated by his psychiatrist, Isaac "Ike" Herschkopf. The series is based on a true story that was first told in a popular 2019...
(JNS) - It was basically the complete opposite of what they expected. A group of German Jews who fled Hitler and Nazi Germany, and who signed up to be American soldiers, wanted to exact revenge. Instead, they were told to be nice to the Nazis, play sports with them and keep them happy. Arno Mayer thought he was on the side that was gonna "beat the s**t out the Germans," he explains in the newly released Netflix documentary "Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis." Peter Weiss also expected to...
Who knew?... In all my 48 years did I ever know that Emma Lazarus, the lady who wrote the verse on the Statue Of Liberty, was Jewish? (Okay... shut up about my age!) Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish causes. She was born in New York City and is buried in Brooklyn at Beth Olam cemetery. Of course we all heard of her. She wrote "The New Colossus," the lines inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Like my departed...
(JNS) - The Jewish co-creators of the comic book superhero Superman will be posthumously inducted into the Jewish American Hall of Fame in a virtual ceremony that will take place in November. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster developed the superhero as well as his companion characters Clark Kent, Lois Lane and others. It took them six years to find a publisher and they eventually sold their idea to DC Comics for only $130. Their comic strip became so popular that in 1939 Superman became the first...
