Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1676 - 1700 of 4419
A message from KEITH DVORCHIK, CEO of Jewish Federation... "As the wind blew and the rain fell recently, I found it symbolic of the changes we have been dealing with over the past 6 weeks. Storms roll in, creating chaos, and then leave, allowing us to regroup and move forward. During these uncertain times, it has been amazing to see our synagogues and agencies join together to provide for the needs of our community. It's been exciting to see the interest level in programming increase and more... Full story
TORONTO (JTA)-The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is shaking the world in disturbing ways. As someone who is no longer young, I find one aspect of the crisis to be particularly unnerving: the attitude toward the elderly. The media is filled with stories about the problem represented by the elderly. What will happen if there aren't enough respirators for everyone? Should the elderly, who have lived their lives long enough, have the same right to medical care as young people who have their whole... Full story
Back in 2012, when Deborah Feldman's memoir "Unorthodox" came out, several people recommended I read this tale about a young woman leaving the Hasidic Satmar sect. I didn't follow the advice, but I should have. It's an important and engrossing autobiographical work. "Unorthodox" has inspired an incredible new Netflix miniseries by the same name. Starring Shira Haas of "Shtisel," this is reverent and beautiful television. Haas plays Esther "Esty" Shapiro, a woman struggling to find her place in... Full story
Stuck in the House... By now I'm sure I proudly mentioned that I was a Navy mom several times. I must do it again! Being stuck in the house, what put a smile on my face (almost continuously) was watching certain TV movies. "On the Town," about three sailors in Manhattan, was one of them. My eldest is a Navy commander, my middle guy is a psychologist who worked with recruits at Great Lakes Naval Base and my youngest served in the Navy on a minesweeper in the Persian Gulf. Frank Sinatra, Gene Kell... Full story
Passover is over, but I still will be using up my leftover Matzah meal, potato starch and other Passover items. Matzah meal is a great binder for hamburger, meatloaf, salmon cakes, and more. I make the vegetarian Lasagna, Matzana, all year. Make potato pancakes as a side dish or for breakfast or use the starch as a thickener like cornstarch for sauces and stews. Finely crunch the Matzah squares in the food processor for a streusel topping for an apple crisp or as bread crumbs to coat fish. Use your imagination to create your own special... Full story
(JNS)-What's with this weather, anyway? I mean, the majority of us have accepted our lives as indoor cats right now, but a little sun wouldn't hurt, especially in the U.S. Northeast, where as of today, the highest cases of COVID-19 can be found in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. I'm not thrilled to be part of this group, but that's what it is. Since I work remotely in my basement directly under a window, I theoretically monitor the weather around the clock (as well as... Full story
(JTA)-The new TV show based on Philip Roth's novel "The Plot Against America," helmed by David Simon, the Jewish creator of "The Wire," has premiered on HBO and made a splash with critics and fans. The eerily captivating series, which borrows details from the iconic Jewish author's life and a crucial moment in American history, depicts an alternative reality in which isolationist Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and encourages anti-Semitic... Full story
By Eric Berger Growing up in Los Angeles, Elyse Forman always tried to take the highest-level science courses she could, like A.P. physics and chemistry. Forman often found she was the only female in those classes. "You can't help but feel that you don't belong when you're not like everyone else in the class, when people don't think that you have the right answers to questions, when they look at you weirdly if you participate," the 18-year-old said. What Forman didn't realize is that the issue... Full story
(JTA)—Simmy Cohen has hardly read from the Torah since his bar mitzvah. When he’s not working at his marketing job from his home in Queens, New York, Cohen spends far more time these days reading children’s books to his 13-month old daughter. But with a spark of comedic genius and perhaps a little quarantine-induced imagination, he put the two together in a video of himself reading—no, chanting—the classic board book “Goodnight Moon” set to the Torah trope. “For those missing the sound of leyning,” he wrote in his post of the video to Twitter,... Full story
Combat thru education... I read this recently in the World Jewish Congress Digest and pass it along to you: "The WJC, together with UNESCO and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently held a high-level workshop in Geneva on the role of education in combating anti-Semitism. The event follows two previous workshops for policymakers held in Warsaw an... Full story
(JTA)—With its glittering assembly of stars, jokes that worked and attendees who could, well, sing, it was the Zoom Seder you wished you had. The Saturday Night Passover Seder that aired on YouTube over the weekend brought together dozens of celebrities and raised $2.6 million for the CDC Foundation, the nonprofit wing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government agency guiding America through the coronavirus pandemic. The broadcast, which drew more than 1 million viewers, had a distinctive liberal coastal Jewish o... Full story
(ISRAEL21c)-The constantly intensifying battle against viruses and antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" isn't only about finding stronger drugs against infection. The focus is moving to preventing infections in the first place. That's why large companies such as Carrefour and a Far East luxury hotel chain are looking at unique germ-vanquishing textiles invented by Jerusalem's Argaman Technologies and manufactured inside its custom-built factory. Carrefour Group, a French-based superstore chain with... Full story
(JTA)-Elisha Nochomovitz, a 32-year-old French Jew, was to be among the 17,000 participants in the Barcelona Marathon on March 15. But the marathon, one of Europe's most popular running events, was postponed to October because of the coronavirus outbreak. Still, Nochomovitz found a way to do what he had been training for despite being forced to spend the past month confined to his apartment in Balma, near Toulouse, under lockdown. (He had worked at a restaurant in Toulouse, but that was shut dow... Full story
By Jackson Richman (JNS)-Aron Bielski is the youngest and last living member of the Bielski brigade, which he founded along with three of his brothers. Their activities have become widely known as one of the largest partisan groups that rescued Jews during the Holocaust. He was born on July 21, 1927, into the family of David and Beila Bielski, who had 10 sons and two daughters, in what is today Belarus. According to Aron Bielski, they were the only known Jewish family in the Belarusian village... Full story
"Watch this series!" everyone advises on social media. "Read these books!" others exhort. As a work-from-home mom whose preschooler's distance-learning schedule from her Jewish school requires constant supervision-exactly why are they still teaching about Passover every day if we can barely have a Seder?!-my main response to all these recommendations is, when? When do people have time to commit to a series, a novel, an online language course? I may be home all the time now, but I feel like I'm... Full story
When VITAS® Healthcare Chaplain Nicolle Grasse met Adele Laznowski Zaveduk in early January in the home she shared with her husband, the 82-year-old woman was visibly weak from a long fight against advanced heart failure. Zaveduk had been receiving care from VITAS for only a few days. Her doctors expected she had only a few weeks to live. Yet her eyes shone brightly as she thumbed through a box brimming with envelopes, each bearing her name and address scrawled by a child's hand. For 25... Full story
(JNS)—I don’t sleep much. I never have; a good five hours was all I ever needed to feel refreshed and go about my day. But in the past eight years, that’s dwindled down to about three hours a night (it did correlate with the birth of my fourth child and the fact that I moved from newspaper print to online journalism). I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true: I have the email, social-media posts and computer time logs to show for it. Not that it’s something to brag about. Quite the contrary! It’s just that I can get so much done, and I d... Full story
(JTA)-Fresh off his Super Bowl win in February, Kansas City Chiefs lineman Mitchell Schwartz took a vacation with his wife, Brooke, to St. Lucia. Little did they know that when they returned, they would be spending the next few months holed up at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. So Schwartz, 30, has turned to what he loves maybe more than football: cooking. Posting to his 79,000 Instagram followers using the hashtag #ChefSchwartz, the Jewish athlete has shared photos of many of his... Full story
Social distancing and staying inside is hard. Thankfully, accessing good things to watch during this time is not. This is the second installation of a weekly column on Jewish movies and TV shows that you should stream in quarantine. "Blazing Saddles" Streams on: Hulu Available to rent on: Amazon, YouTube, iTunes and more. Family friendly? No-only for mature audiences due to language and adult material (JTA)-Confined by the coronavirus plague over the Passover holiday, what better way to satisfy... Full story
This is a common question. Although I don’t believe God did this. The world is a beautiful, wonderful place. Things like this have happened throughout all of mankind. You can believe that perhaps this is in God’s plan. But God gave us each other to love and cherish, and perhaps it’s a reminder to Treasure your life more. To realize that we’re not in the driver’s seat. We recognize how frail we really are. So, let’s lean on each other and let’s give our worries over to God. This is an excerpt from the article written by Ed Borowsky, “Me... Full story
A word about Passover... Our shared Jewish heritage and traditions bind our global family together, especially during difficult times. And with Passover just ended, we recognize that this year's commemorations were unlike any in recent memory as we found ourselves unable to gather with loved ones, friends and neighbors. 75 Years After A Nightmare... Of course I refer to Auschwitz, which was liberated 75 years ago. I read this in the World Jewish Congress digest and pass it along to you:... Full story
As we tread carefully through the fourth month of the corona virus pandemic, the emotional and physical devastation this plague has caused is felt acutely by so many. As our days of sheltering at home continue, it has become much more real, much more personal, much more frightening. My husband Larry and I are feeling the impact, as I suspect many of you are. Our community already has had two confirmed deaths from the virus. A friend from my writing group, who had been sick with bronchitis, posted the following message on a Monday on her... Full story
(JNS)—Israel must take a series of immediate steps that would enable it to end its nationwide closure and enter a new “corona routine” that would revive the economy and that could begin immediately after Passover, Interim Defense Minister Naftali Bennett stated on Sunday. In a new national response plan that he published, Bennett wrote that “the State of Israel saw the danger early and took a series of correct decisions that revolved around ‘closing Israel.’ On one hand, this bought us precious time, but on the other, it had a terrible ec... Full story
(JNS)—April 1 is no laughing matter. Because back in 1992, the joke was on me. I was graduate student in New York City, almost done with my dual-degree master’s program in journalism and Near Eastern Studies. In fact, in my briefcase at the time was a recommendation letter for a job I was applying to—my first real writing job—at the Homer News in Alaska (which just yesterday reported the first case of coronavirus in the city of Kenai. I note this because that’s what got me started writing these daily pieces in the first place.) I was also in th... Full story
The prevalent thinking in 1972 was that the seventh Chabad Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, on his 70th birthday, was going to reveal his retirement plans. Rather, he laid down a challenge. He was offering his birthday wish to the community to establish, by his 71st birthday, 71 new Chabad institutions throughout the world. Rabbi Sholom B. Dubov, Chabad chief rabbi of the Greater Orlando area was with him at that public gathering. Within a few hours, 71 rabbis were to go forth and establish... Full story
