Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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My past is catching up ... Okay. This is a test. I will be able to tell how old you are by the fact that you remember this entertainer ... David Daniel Kaminsky. (You knew him as Danny Kaye, beloved comedian, singer, dancer, musician, actor, etc.) I used to love him (and still do) and was reminded about him, although he is deceased many years, by a television program about Walt Disney World's 50th anniversary, as he was part of the EPCOT celebration. Danny was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., (like me)...
(JTA) - After a hiatus of more than six years that followed his departure from "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart returned to regular series TV on Thursday night with "The Problem with Jon Stewart." Debuting on Apple TV+, it's a new talk show that will feature in-depth discussion of different political issues, with new episodes debuting every two weeks. The 58-year-old Stewart, of course, is Jewish, and has frequently referenced Judaism throughout his comedy career, including before, during and after...
(JTA) — The familiar Jewish narrative of outsiders struggling to assimilate to their new homeland gets turned on its head in the charming Israeli comedy “Golden Voices.” Here, the strange, unwelcoming new land the Jews face is Israel itself. The year is 1990, and married middle-aged couple Raya and Victor are new immigrants from the Soviet Union, which has just collapsed. With Israel suddenly playing host to an influx of new Russian-speaking migrants, Raya and Victor are our eyes and ears to this culture clash — and in a literal sense, our voi...
(JTA) - Move over, Tevye the dairyman. Make room for Moshkele the thief, the rough and tumble rogue hero from the wrong side of the shtetl in a newly rediscovered work of fiction by Sholom Aleichem. The recent publication of "Moshkele the Thief: A Rediscovered Novel" (Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press), translated from the original Yiddish and with an introduction by Curt Leviant, marks the first ever English-language translation of the novella by perhaps the most popular a...
More surprises ... Of course I've heard of WILLIAM SHATNER, but I never knew he was Jewish. Shatner was born in Montreal, Canada (like my mom). His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from present day Ukraine. (Also like my ancestors). He started out acting in Canada, playing many serious roles. When you think of William Shatner, you automatically think of "Star Trek." (Hey! Captain Kirk!) Incidentally, he is 90 years old and still going strong. Then there is Chaim Witz, musician, singer,...
Every week, one section of the Torah, known as the Torah portion or “parsha,” is designated as a focus of Jewish study and is read aloud in synagogue that Shabbat. The first mention of a scheduled Torah-reading cycle appears in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, where Moses instructs the tribe of Levi and the elders of Israel to gather all the people for a public reading from portions of the Torah once every seven years. The need to read the Torah publicly intensified after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.; Jews were dispersed into oth...
(JNS) — The descendants of two Holocaust survivors and the farmer who hid them from the Nazis in Poland have connected with the help of a recently discovered post-World War II letter. Karolina Jurzyk, 35, said that in 1942, her great-grandfather, Stanislaw Jurzyk Sr., and his wife hid two orphaned sisters, both in their 20s, at their family farm east of Warsaw during the war. That same year, Stanislaw’s wife died in childbirth, leaving him to raise their children alone while still caring for the women. The sisters stayed at the farm for two...
(JTA) - Impossible Foods, the plant-based meat company, is releasing a long-awaited new product - but unlike the wildly popular Impossible Burger, it won't be certified kosher. The largest and most influential certifier of kosher products in the world has declined to endorse Impossible Pork, even though nothing about its ingredients or preparation conflicts with Jewish dietary laws. "The Impossible Pork, we didn't give an 'OU' to it, not because it wasn't kosher per se," said Rabbi Menachem...
This recipe needs very little introduction, because it is just so decadent and delicious: Pumpkin challah. Cinnamon rolls. Sweet glaze. This is the autumn comfort food of your dreams, or at least mine. You can use this method to make cinnamon rolls using any flavor or recipe of challah you like. Just roll out your dough, schmear it with softened butter (or margarine), cinnamon sugar and roll it up to bake. It's gooey, spicy and the pumpkin flavor is delightful but not overwhelming. If you are...
(JNS) — Netflix has acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company, giving it rights to all the works by the late British children’s author, who was openly anti-Israel and had a history of making antisemitic remarks. Dahl’s books have been translated into 63 languages, and more than 300 million copies of them have been sold worldwide. He created iconic characters such as Matilda, the BFG, the Fantastic Mr. Fox, Willy Wonka and the Twits. Netflix said on Wednesday that the acquisition builds on the partnership it started with RDSC in 2018 to create a num...
Each year the Jewish community celebrates Sukkot together ... this year Chabad of Altamonte Springs brought it to the community. The Chabad of Altamonte Springs Sukkah Mobile visited homes or businesses for a 15-minute safe, socially distant, private Sukkah celebration for families. Shake the lulav, enjoy a fresh baked kosher bite, and enjoy the warmth and joy of the Sukkah! The Sukkah Mobile was generously sponsored by Darryl Baumstein of Construction Services, in loving memory of Roz...
“Fradel’s Story,” my third book since 2016, is especially sweet as it was co-written with my mother, Frances Cohen. Ever since I could remember, my mother was the family storyteller. Give her an opening, and Fran, or “Fradel” as she was known to her close family, would regale any audience with family stories of her grandparents’ and parents’ lives in Russia, her early years of marriage to “My Bill” Cohen, and their life in small towns in the North Country. She told of raising four children, watc...
(JTA) - This Friday, following a pandemic delay, Apple TV+ will debut "Foundation," the first-ever screen adaptation of Isaac Asimov's bestselling, award-winning science-fiction book series. First announced in 2018 and produced in association with Skydance Television, the TV show is one of the Apple streaming service's most expensive and ambitious productions to date. The series, which follows a mathematician struggling to convince a galactic federation that their society is on the brink of coll...
"Mike Etzkin was a 'Newspaper Guy' through and through. He could write a good story, lay out the paper, and then write the headlines. "He could do it all," said Loraine O'Connell about her former Orlando Sentinel co-worker and spouse of 26 years. Etzkin died on Aug. 17, 2021, in Altamonte Springs, Fla., at the age of 74. After retiring from the Sentinel in 2007, he served as an award-winning editor of the Heritage Florida Jewish News until 2013. O'Connell added, "Mike will always be remembered...
Wow! A favorite of mine ... One of my sons, a marketing manager, recently worked in New York City for a weekend. He met some very famous people and one of them was a favorite of mine, LARRY DAVID, who happens to be Jewish (but you knew that!) I loved Larry way back when he was one of the creators of "Seinfeld," most everyone's favorite television series. Then when his own TV show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was established, I fell in love with Larry David, especially his humor. (It hit home every ti...
Under a perfectly blue sky, the campers gathered around Lillian Feldman-Hill as she showed them how to create a combustible mixture using water, soap and butane. Then she demonstrated how to blow huge fireballs with just cornstarch and a blowtorch. Welcome to Camp Nai Nai Nai, a Jewish summer camp experience for adults. Held on Labor Day weekend just before Rosh Hashanah, the camp drew some 100 adults in their 20s and 30s from throughout North America to have fun, make new friends and do...
(JTA) - Were it not for Rudolph Vrba and Alfréd Wexler, would the world today know the true extent of the mass murder the Nazis inflicted during the Holocaust? The two men, both Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz, secretly recorded fastidious notes about details of the death camp unknown to the outside world. These included schematics of the gas chambers, the Nazis' use of the deadly chemical Zyklon-B, the number of prisoners being brought in to their deaths every day and the planned...
(JTA) - Meryl Jaffe says she's like any Jewish parent keeping track of her kids on social media, except it can be terrifying. When she heard President Joe Biden deployed 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan, she had a gut feeling that her son Matt - she calls him Matthew - was among them. Her family was tracking the U.S. Marine Corps on social media to verify their suspicions. "Matthew's sister, Rebecca, saw it on one of the Marine websites that she follows on Instagram. And she said, 'I think this is...
(JTA) — During the High Holidays, I always make my family’s recipe for a dessert called turte, which is similar to Greek baklava. Rather than walnuts, however, it’s made with almonds and drenched with a thick sugar syrup instead of honey. Turte is a specialty from the eastern part of Romania called Moldavia, where my grandparents were born, and is sometimes made with thin pancakes. My grandma made it with strudel dough. I recall watching her make her own dough for this dish, as well as her fabulous potato strudel, laying the paper-thin dough...
(JTA) - It turns out that Batman's hometown of Gotham City has a historically Jewish neighborhood, complete with a synagogue. And for this year's High Holidays, at least one masked superhero will be worshipping there. Her name is Whistle, a.k.a. Willow Zimmerman, and she's a Jewish superhero - DC Comics' first to be explicitly created as Jewish in 44 years. She's an activist-turned-masked-crusader who draws inspiration from Jewish teachings; she develops the ability to talk to dogs; and she's...
(JTA) - The adventurers arrived at Morgur's Mound, an archaeological site ringed with dragon bones. There they stumbled upon some treasure: a fire giant's gold-plated tooth. They grabbed the tooth and tried to leave the site, but suddenly the ground began to shake. "Four animated thunder beast skeletons erupt from the mound and attack you," the dungeon master said. "You desecrated a holy site, and these are the guardians of the holy site. Everybody roll initiative." "Are you allowed to roll on...
How could we ever forget?... I’m sure (at least I hope) we will never forget what happened to our country on September 11th, especially to my beloved New York City. I refer to the World Trade Center, of course. (Since I write this column about 2 weeks in advance of publication. I am writing it on September 11th, a day and tragedy that will live on in infamy.) I lost my cousin, Alan Feinberg, in tower one of the Twin Towers that day. He was a firefighter with the 9th battalion in Manhattan. He was bravely rescuing people when the building c...
'Sanatorium pod klepsydra' ('The Hourglass Sanatorium'), directed by Wojciech Has and starring Jan Nowicki and Tadeusz Kondra, is one of the most imaginative films to come out of the 1970s. It is both an adaptation and an "anti" adaptation of the Polish Jewish author Bruno Schulz' short story collections, 'The Street of Crocodiles (1934)' and 'Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (1937)'. Although most of the dialogue is ripped directly from the page, it is arranged in a way that is both...
(JTA) - Of all the people to interview on Rosh Hashanah, the Israeli writer and director Hagai Levi is especially fitting. A respected creator in Israeli and American TV, he is known for shows that dramatize two people talking in a room, much as we were doing ourselves, albeit over Zoom. HBO's "In Treatment," for example, the American version of his Israeli show "BeTipul," is comprised entirely of sessions between therapist and patient. "Scenes From a Marriage," Levi's latest for HBO and...
(JTA) — If you know any young children or fidgety adults, chances are you’ve seen, heard, or coveted a handheld piece of dimpled silicone known as a “pop-it.” The must-have toy was originally created in the 1970s by an Israeli couple with a penchant for playthings, according to a BBC report that calls the pop-it “an overnight sensation more than 40 years in the making.” Theo and Ora Coster created more than 150 toys and games through their company, Theora Design, including some that immediately became popular worldwide, such as “Guess Who?...
