Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
Once again, I repeat, "getting old is not for sissies ...(me) I am astounded by all the famous folks that I didn't know were Jewish. For instance, WILLIAM SHATNER. I just learned that he was from Montreal, Canada (where my mom was born! His ancestry is identical to mine ... Canada, Russia, Ukraine, maybe Austria, maybe Poland.) He is about 90 years old ... NOT ME!! And, because I'm thinking about me (what else is new?), I want to mention two of my favorite songwriters who are also Jewish ......
"A Place at the Table" tells the story of two middle-school girls, Elizabeth and Sara - one Jewish and one Muslim - whose friendship begins in a South Asian cooking class taught by Sara's mother. Elizabeth is a budding chef and Sara is the new kid in school. Both girls have mothers who are studying to become American citizens, and as the girls gravitate toward each other, they must learn to ask awkward questions, be open to honest answers and comfortable standing up for each other even at the ex...
(JTA) - When Rayhan Asat attended a Passover seder last month, its contours seemed familiar and different at once - especially the tradition of leaving a seat empty at the table. It reminded Asat, a lawyer, of leaving a seat empty for her brother, Ekpar, at her graduation from Harvard Law School in 2016. Ekpar, a member of China's Uighur minority, had been "disappeared" by the Chinese government. Jewish World Watch, an anti-genocide group that hosted the online seder for Uighurs on March 30,...
(Crescent City Jewish News via JNS) - Rabbi Peter Hyman was announced as the recipient of the Bronze Wolf Award, the highest Scouting award in the world and the only one given by the World Scout Committee, on March 30. It acknowledges the significant work of an individual to the World Scout Movement. Hyman became the 377th individual to have received this award since it was first established in 1935. The founder of the Scouting movement, Lord Robert Smyth Baden-Powell, was the initial...
Long-time philanthropist, community leader and dedicated Zionist, Bruce Gould has a new role - producer of a documentary portraying the complex and consequential life of the late Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, whose 1977 meeting in Jerusalem with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was an act of unprecedented courage and a turning point for the Jewish state. The film is debuting in Florida at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, running virtually from April 14-29. Titled "Upheaval: The Journey of...
*Mattan Segev-Frank is a man with a mission. And while he has singlehandedly already begun making an impact, he knows that the issues he is concerned about are much larger than any single person. They require governments and international authorities to take decisive steps. My first encounter with Mattan, a genealogy researcher and an MA student of the History of the Jewish People at the Tel Aviv University, was in a Jewish genealogy Facebook group when he shared his dismay at stolen historic...
On Thursday, April 15 at 7 p.m., EDT, The Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Hayesod and additional partners will host a one-hour virtual event to mark Israel’s 73rd Independence Day. The event will begin with a farewell address by His Excellency Reuven Rivlin, president of Israel, and include a look back on his legacy as the Jewish State’s 10th president. It will also feature special appearances by Israeli Olympic-gold-medal-hopefuls who are on their way to Tokyo this summer, Jewish athletes from aro...
SUMTER COUNTY, Fla. (JTA) - When Ellen Faulkner told her friends that she was moving to The Villages, the sprawling senior community in Central Florida, they cautioned her: There was no Jewish life there. Faulkner hadn't noticed that during her visit, which was made at the urging of a high school classmate who told her rapturously about what it was like to live in the 55-plus community that's home to 125,000 self-described "Villagers." She had been captivated by the free concerts, huge crowds...
There is no end... I am surprised (and delighted) one after another, as I look up famous people and find that they are Jewish! For instance, actress GWYNETH PALTROW, Academy Award and Golden Globe recipient, the daughter of actress BLYTHE DANNER and producer, director BRUCE PALTROW. Her dad was Jewish and she and her younger brother were brought up in the religion. Her ancestry claimed many rabbis. Of course, comedians Jack Benny and George Jessel ... and so many other comedians were Jewish....
(JNS) - On a blustery day in late January, Holocaust survivor *Sami Steigmann, 81, made his debut on Clubhouse - the buzzy, audio-based, social-media platform that launched in the venture capital and Hollywood communities last spring and now connects millions of "regular" folk with celebrities for spontaneous conversations. Steigmann, who lives below the poverty line in Harlem, N.Y., was preparing to speak outside the United Nations on International Holocaust Remembrance Day for an "End Jew...
(JTA) - Folk musician and record archivist Nathan Salsburg lives on a 40-acre former tree farm in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, with fellow songwriter Joan Shelley. Shelley is not Jewish, but she and Salsburg - who has a complicated relationship with his Jewishness dating back to childhood - began observing Shabbat in the last year. "We don't turn everything off," Salsburg jokes. "But we light the Shabbat candles and say HaMotzi and drink wine. We'd like to keep it going. But I don't...
The omer refers to the 49-day period between the second night of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot. This period marks the beginning of the barley harvest when, in ancient times, Jews would bring the first sheaves to the Temple as a means of thanking God for the harvest. The word omer literally means “sheaf” and refers to these early offerings. The Torah itself dictates the counting of the seven weeks following Passover: “You shall count from the eve of the second day of Pesach, when an omer of grain is to be brought as an offering, seven...
Pampushky are fluffy, soft Ukrainian garlic bread rolls. Ukraine was known as the "breadbasket" of the Soviet Union, and both garlic and bread are staples of the cuisine. These rolls are traditionally served alongside borscht; the garlic's sharpness compliments the sweetness of its beets. Garlic and bread is such a common side to borscht that my own grandparents would often simply eat slices of brown bread and whole raw cloves of garlic with their soup. I was first inspired to make pampushky...
You love challah. You love pizza. It might be time to combine these two cherished carbs together in one pan. If you often make big batches of challah, this recipe will be quite easy to throw together as a fun appetizer, or even an indulgent weeknight dinner. You can set aside around 1 pound of dough to make the pizza dip challah, which is about half of this recipe. But you can use any challah recipe you prefer. If you don't have a cast iron pan, you can use any 8- or 9-inch cake pan that you...
(JTA) - There's never been a great, definitive American movie about a bar mitzvah. And after "Donny's Bar Mitzvah," a new movie that arrived this week on Amazon Prime and iTunes, there still hasn't been. The film, directed by Jonathan Kaufman (referred to in the media notes as "Jonny Comebacks"), is an indie comedy set entirely during the bar mitzvah party of Donny Drucker (played by Steele Stebbins), a boy from a highly dysfunctional family, in 1998 Michigan. It's something of a festival of...
In the “International March of the Living to hold virtual 2021 march,” in the March 26 issue, Dan Kosky, who sent the press release, stated that there were a couple of errors brought to his attention: • The Virtual March will premiere Thursday April 8, on Israel media at 3 p.m. IRL (In Real Life), followed by the global broadcast at 10 a.m. EDT / 4 p.m. CDT / 5 p.m. IRL and will be followed immediately by an online memorial ceremony with the first torch of remembrance lit by President Rivlin.” • There will be numerous medical associati...
"Hate on the rise"... This is something I usually don't write about, but I am so bothered that I can't help it. It's about Blacks, Hispanics, Latinos, Asians and Jews. I am a white Jew ... I can hide my Judaism. But why should any of us have to? Once again, I will mention my experience as a young child about 4 or 5 years old. I learned to say the "Hail Mary" and "Our Father," and I pretended to be Christian because I didn't want to keep being beaten up by Jew-hating kids. Sure, my skin color is...
