Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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This is a speech given by Hope Adelson at her bat mitzvah at the Congregation of Reform Judaism. At school, before we start our lesson, my class usually talks and jokes a bit. It's a way of getting our brains prepared to do work. I only recently have gone back to school in person. One day, reality was still sinking in. Instead of just clicking a join-conference button, I had to actually walk from class to class, wake up earlier, and experience human contact. I was doing the same thing I always...
A few days before Pesach, Rabbi Yanky Majesky of Chabad North Orlando got a very disturbing phone call. A relatively young Jewish woman had passed away all alone with no known next of kin. The woman on the phone was a co-worker of the deceased and found the rabbi's cell number. A week after the passing they went to clean the apartment and found her beloved cat was still there hiding under her bed. A draft of a will was found which indicated that the rabbi should oversee her funeral arrangements...
More super talents ... Sure, sure ... you knew MAURY POVICH was Jewish. (I didn't). I knew he was married to CONNIE CHUNG, and she converted to Judaism. What I didn't know, is they are both super kosher and attend synagogue regularly and Connie also speaks Yiddish fluently! Now, BERNIE SCHWARTZ I knew! (I even had a crush on him!) What? You didn't know I was talking about Tony Curtis? Well, Bernie was his real name. (We met, we smiled and laughed, but nothing more! (Oh well!). I was friends...
Jews have made their home in Ireland for centuries, and many have risen to be successful and prominent figures in politics, business, and theology. Ireland produced Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel, and Leopold Bloom - the hero of James Joyce's "Ulysses," a canonical Irish text - is a Jew. However, the Irish Jewish community can hardly be called thriving, and Jews have not always been welcomed in this predominantly Catholic country. During the Holocaust, Ireland denied refuge to Jews...
Not everyone in Ireland supported the persecution of the Jews in Europe. The following archived Jewish Telegraphic News article, dated July 2, 1939, is a statement made by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland: A strong resolution protesting against the persecution of Jews by Nazis was unanimously adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland at their annual conference here. The resolution, introduced by the Rev. Professor J.E. Dave states. “The General Assembly deplore and condemn the continued and...
(JTA) - It was an unusual Academy Awards in several ways. Forced to adapt to social distancing protocols, the ceremony was split into different venues but mostly took place in Los Angeles' Union Station. For only the second time in history, a woman won best director - and the first woman of color at that, as the award went to Chloe Zhao for "Nomadland," which also won best picture. And then there was Glenn Close's meme-able dance to the self-explanatory 1988 song "Da Butt." Also notable: a very...
(JNS) - When Rosalyn Gold-Onwude was a college student at Stanford University, she participated on Birthright Israel. Several years later, she went on her second trip-this time, as a staff member on her younger sister's Birthright experience. While participating in the program is not so unusual - more than 600,000 Jewish young people have gone on the free, 10-day trips since the program's founding in 1999 - Gold-Onwude's story is a bit different. She is the only Birthright participant to play...
Part 2 of 2 Laurence Morrell's father passed away right after he graduated from Emory University in Atlanta. "I came back home immediately and had to take over the running of my father's business. My brother was working for Martin-Marietta, so he and my mother would show me where the groves were. Together, we took over the management of 550 acres of citrus. It was mid-summer, the weeds were crotch high, and the heat/humidity was intense that summer," Morrell recalled. Morrell learned about the g...
"It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world"... Yes! That's the name of a movie I watched on television recently. It starred many, many, many, many (I got carried away) Jewish comedians. To name but a few, Leonard Hacker was one. (You may have known him as Buddy Hackett. Brooklyn born (like me), he died in 2003. Also, Milton Berle, Sid Caeser, Carl Reiner and Phil Silvers (to name a few more) ... all from either Manhattan, Brooklyn or the Bronx. (of course!) (What talent! What great comedy minds! Will...
“The Lost Key,” the first and only film ever to explore bedroom intimacy endorsed by leading rabbis worldwide, invites everyone seeking closeness amid our currently disconnected society to screen the film for free beginning on May 22, and then join its ‘Intimacy After the Pandemic’ live virtual panel discussion on May 23, 7 p.m. The panel will discuss marriage, sex, and achieving the highest form of intimacy based on ancient wisdom that was hidden for centuries. RSVP is required and registered guests will be allowed to ask questions anonymo...
(JTA) — In the middle of a racy viral Instagram video that preceded his firing from a broadcasting gig at ESPN, NBA legend Paul Pierce spent over a minute lauding the Jewish ritual of a sit-down Shabbat dinner. Pierce is not Jewish, but during the live-streamed video from his house over the weekend — the Hall of Fame finalist gets massaged by scantily clad women and appears to smoke marijuana while flaunting COVID-19 social distancing protocols — he said the family style of meal on the Jewish Sabbath contrasts with his upbringing. At first...
(JTA) - Growing up, Passover was always a special time of year for David Teyf. It wasn't just about the holiday. It was also the stories his family would tell about the matzah factory they used to operate behind his grandfather's house in Minsk before they left Soviet Belarus in 1979. Teyf, who was born in that house, was 5 when they left that capital city. Now a successful chef, Teyf has few memories of the matzah factory. Yet he has found himself thinking about it more often lately as he...
(JTA) — In the late 1800s, the Ottoman Empire was looking to conscript men into its army, including the several thousand young Jewish ones who were living in the city of Baghdad. The Jewish community didn’t like the idea of the imperial forces taking away its young men, so it arranged to pay authorities for exemptions. Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin of Baghdad documented the exemptions, carefully jotting each down name in medieval Rashi script. In the following decades, many of those names vanished or morphed as the Jews living there dispersed acr...
(JTA) - It was only about a week into lockdown last spring when Elana Brody took out her keyboard piano for a jam session. It was late at night, so it made sense that the new melody that came to her then was "B'shem Hashem" a part of the Shema. "It was kind of natural to want to sing this prayer because it's a bedtime prayer," Brody said, calling it an "incantation" of sorts. The words call on four angels to surround her - Michael to the right, Gabriel to the left, Uriel in front and Raphael beh...
(Israel21C via JNS) - Jerusalem is a city of history. Much of that history can be found in the ancient structures of the Old City. However, there's an aspect of Jerusalem's history that is much more subtly integrated into its geography: its street names. Many roads throughout the capital city are named after important figures in local and Jewish history. While there are obvious ones, such as Herzl Street and Balfour Street, many names on street signs pay tribute to lesser-known personalities....
(JTA) — Last year at this time, the message out of Jewish summer camps was one of doom and gloom. In April 2020, the Union for Reform Judaism announced that COVID would force a closure of its camps for the summer, affecting some 10,000 kids. In May, the Conservative movement’s Ramah camps across the country followed suit. This year, the outlook could not be more different. Camps in the United States are opening again with a combination of testing and vaccinations, along with a better understanding of how COVID-19 spreads. “It’s absolutely exhau...
The Torah tells us that Sarah, the matriarch of the Jewish people, laughed when told she’d give birth in her old age. Since that moment, it seems, Jews have continued laughing — at themselves and their predicaments, at each other, even at God. And beneath that laughter, and the humor that sparked it, lies the story of the Jewish people throughout the age. History Jewish humor as a genre got its start in 19th-century Eastern Europe, where Yiddish folk tales found the humor in the often-difficult everyday life of the shtetl (village). The gre...
Part 1 of 2 Laurence Morrell is very proud that he considers himself, "the last of the Jewish rednecks." He's proud because he's worked hard outside in the elements, in the fields of orange groves that once dotted the landscape of central Florida. In the scheme of things, it wasn't that long ago. At 78, he has been a part of the early migrations of Jews in the Orlando area. His grandfather, Abraham M. Bornstein, was in the textile industry in Lodz, Poland, before coming to Paterson, N.J.,...
More famous Jewish talents... If you're as old as me, you will remember actress Marion Levy. NO! YOU DON'T REMEMBER HER? How about if I use her entertainment name? Surely, you've heard of Paulette Goddard. Paulette was a famous star in her day. Her dad was a Russian/Jew (weren't all of our ancestors? Only kidding, of course.) She was once married to Charlie Chaplin for about 6 years. Very famous, very famous! How about GLORIA STEINEM? She is super famous! (Best of all, she's older than me!) Glor...
(JTA) - A mere 43 years after her death, Golda Meir is ready for her close-up. Just a month after it was announced that the Israeli star Shira Haas would portray Meir in a TV series, The Hollywood Reporter revealed this week that Oscar winner Helen Mirren would portray Israel's only female prime minister in an upcoming biopic. While Haas, who is best known for her star turn in the miniseries "Unorthodox," is Jewish, Mirren is not. But she did win international acclaim (and the Academy Award) for...
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) - Growing up, Aaron Bendich would spend lots of time with his grandfather Max in the North Bronx, in a house "filled to the brim" with records, videotapes and CDs. Among Max's collection were recordings of Yiddish songs and other Jewish music. Fast forward a few years and Aaron is the manager of the radio station at Vassar College and taking Yiddish classes. Inevitably he started a show featuring Yiddish music and spent his free time scouring thrift shops and used...
Husband to the Queen for 74 years, Prince Philip was deeply proud of his mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. "I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special," Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, once said about his mother who rescued a family of Jews during the Shoah. "She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in...
(JTA) - Holocaust remembrance day programs in Jewish communities have stuck to a familiar form for decades, featuring Holocaust survivors sharing their stories followed by the lighting of yahrzeit candles and the recitation of commemorative prayers. But that model of memorial faces a problem that is growing more pressing each year: the dwindling number of survivors still living and able to share accounts of their painful past. That reality drove Michal Govrin, an Israeli writer and professor,...
(JTA) — Drawing a line between its mission of Holocaust remembrance and the ravages inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, the March of the Living honored Dr. Anthony Fauci with an award for “moral courage in medicine” on the eve of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust commemoration day. The award to Fauci, who for decades has been the top U.S. official handling infectious diseases, culminated in an online program on Wednesday called “Medicine and Morality.” In his acceptance remarks, Fauci referred to Maimonides, the medieval Jewish scholar and...
When Aaron Feinblatt moved to Israel in late February 2020, just as the first signs of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak were emerging, only one person wore a mask on his aliyah flight. Feinblatt had no idea that masks would soon become the norm for him and everyone else, nor how COVID-19 would affect the first year in his new home. "I got here two weeks before the country completely shut down," he said. "With all the lockdowns and restrictions in the last year, I feel like I have been...
