Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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One aspect of a Jewish home is decorating with Judaica including a mezuzah and holiday decor. Many Jewish homes may have various kiddish cups, Chanukiah and wall art tastefully displayed throughout the home. There is no difference for senior living communities welcoming families and seniors of all cultures and religious backgrounds. A warm and welcoming entrance was displayed at Serenades at Longwood for Passover. Touches like this make families and visitors feel acknowledged at holiday time....
Seeing trees blossom and grow fruit in the Land of Israel as I leave my house every late winter and early spring morning makes me realize another way in which I am grateful to be able to live and raise my family here. When we built our house, it was important not only to plant trees, which Jews have done for more than 100 years, and where Israel has become the only country in the world to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the beginning of the 20th century, but also to realize...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-1993 was a dramatic year in the memorialization of the Holocaust. In April, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened its doors; 45 million visitors later it is a fixture adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., not only telling the story of the Holocaust but demonstrating the ongoing significance of this Jewish event-this European event-to the American people, to Western civilization and to the world. In November of that year, Steven Spielberg, widely...
(JTA)-From his birthplace in Boston to New York, Berlin, South Africa, China and Israel, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), the larger-than-life conductor, pianist, composer, educator and bon vivant, is being celebrated in a two-year bonanza of concerts, stage productions and programs marking the centennial of his birth. The American-born son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Bernstein's influence spanned the musical world, from classical music to Broadway. Thousands of events are featured as a part...
WESTERBORK, Netherlands (JTA)-On a foggy Sunday, cheerful cabaret music pierces the silence that hangs over this former concentration camp, one of the largest facilities of its kind in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Blasting from the recorder of an Israeli visitor last month, the music draws disapproving looks and remarks from several locals touring the grounds in respectful silence. They find the sound of music inappropriate at a place whose name in the Netherlands is synonymous with wholesale...
Leon Uris (Embassy of Israel in Washington via JNS)-JNS is proud to partner with the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., to celebrate 70 of the greatest American contributors to the U.S.-Israel relationship in the 70 days leading up to the State of Israel's 70th anniversary. An American author of historical fiction, Leon Uris was known for his commitment to historical accuracy and extensive research. The people of Israel can be especially grateful that this literary giant brought the early...
A trove of rare bronze coins, the last remnants of a four-year Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire, has been discovered in a cave near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. During the digs at the Ophel excavation site, led by Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar, dozens of coins as well as broken pottery vessels, jars and cooking pots were found dating back to the Great Revolt period (66-70 CE). It is believed that these 1.5cm bronze coins were left behind by residents of Jerusalem who hid in...
Spence-Chapin is currently seeking a loving family for baby Emma. Emma is an adorable, two-month-old baby girl with light brown hair and blue eyes who was recently diagnosed with Down syndrome. Emma’s parents are looking for a loving, Jewish home. At birth, Emma weighed six pounds, eleven ounces. She has no reported medical complications and was in the well-baby nursery after birth. Since then, Emma has been eating, sleeping and gaining weight consistently. She recently had her first smiles! If you think you could be an adoptive family for Emma...
(JNS)-While it is well known that Birthright trips provide American participants with a transformative, often life-changing experience, it is perhaps less known that the young Israelis who accompany the participants on the trip often have similarly transformative experiences. Young Israelis Ayelet,* a 23-year-old computer scientist, and Racheli, a 22-year-old speech therapist, accompanied a Mayanot Birthright trip from March 12-19 with the goal of traveling the country with contemporaries eager...
Stephen Hertz, who managed the Tel Aviv Lightning in the Israel Baseball League after playing for the Houston Colt .45s and coaching nearly three decades at Miami-Dade Community College, is one of 644 retirees who do not receive Major League Baseball pensions because of a change in the vesting requirements that occurred over the 1980 Memorial Day Weekend. The union was offered the opportunity to give its members the following deal: one game day of service credit to buy into the league’s umbrella health insurance plan, and 43 game days of servic...
A reflective thought... What ever happened to "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free"? (Just saying.) I received a letter... The letter I received was sent from DAVID HARRIS, CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). I pass it along to you in part: "The Jewish stories handed down through our three-thousand-year-old tradition recount instances of persecution and hatred, but also examples of resilience and survival. Now, let me ask you to consider a current s...
SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA)-My Dear Land, It is almost your birthday. At 70, you are not a young country anymore. Some will consider me a stepdaughter because I left you, deciding to move an ocean away. I left behind me the battles, the traffic, the heat and the politics to become a citizen of the world. Whenever I am asked where I am from, I hesitate a minute before I answer, then I carefully monitor the interlocutor's response. Some have no idea where you...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-When Alice (Gerstel) Weit last saw Simon Gronowski, she was 13 and he was 10 and, by Alice's recollection, "the most adorable boy ever." When they reunited this week, 76 years later, "I opened the door and there he was, a frail, little old man," she said. At the threshold of Alice's apartment here, the old friends embraced, and they wept. "They weren't talking; they were speaking with their eyes," said Simon's grandson Romain De Mys, 24, who witnessed the April 10 reunion. Two...
(JTA)-"GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II" begins as many Holocaust documentaries do, with a history of the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany mixed with what is now standard archival footage of Brownshirts and Kristallnacht. Throw in interviews with some Jewish celebrities-in this case, Carl Reiner and his friend Mel Brooks wearing his old Army jacket-and it has all the workings of a typical PBS documentary. But the film, which premiered April 11, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Da...
(JTA)-Lightning struck Zach Braff in 2001. The up-and-coming Jewish actor, who had appeared in a few films-perhaps most notably a small role in Woody Allen's "Manhattan Murder Mystery"-landed the lead role of John "J.D." Dorian in the hospital-based sitcom "Scrubs." Along the way to starring in 175 episodes of the show, which became one of the most beloved comedies of the 2000s, Braff wrote and directed "Garden State," released in 2004. The indie dramedy film, which also starred 23-year-old...
NEW YORK (JTA)—A new study will provide free testing for three mutations that substantially increase the risk for developing breast, ovarian and prostate cancer among people with Eastern European Jewish ancestry. The BRCA Founder Outreach Study (BFOR), which was launched last week, will test 4,000 men and women in four U.S. cities—New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston—for mutations in the BRCA gene that are more common among those with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Those who test positive for one of the mutations will receive genet...
My heart is broken... Everyone in Central Florida probably remembers the Pulse Nightclub shooting tragedy where so many precious lives were lost. My friend Eddie Sotomayor Jr. was the first to be shot that fate-filled day more than a year ago. (Seems like yesterday to me.) The NOOR SALMAN trial ended recently and she was found not guilty by the jury. (Life goes on... but not for my friend, Eddie.) Another tragic life lost... (Actually, six million lives lost.) I recently watched a rerun of the...
(JTA)-In "7 Days in Entebbe," which hits theaters on Friday, Daniel Bruhl plays a German leftist terrorist tortured by the fact that he's hijacking a plane full of Jews and taking them prisoner. The movie, about the 1976 Israeli rescue operation that freed the mainly Jewish and Israeli hostages of a hijacked plane in Uganda, focuses on the conflicted experiences of the two Germans-played by Bruhl and Rosamund Pike-who allied with Palestinian terrorists to hijack the Paris-bound plane. Even as...
(JTA)—More than 50 entertainment industry executives have signed a letter in support of Netflix, after the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel threatened a lawsuit over its distribution of the Israeli drama series “Fauda.” The show focuses on a commando unit of the Israeli Defense Forces whose members embed themselves in the Palestinian community, gathering intelligence and preventing terror attacks. Fauda is an Arabic word meaning “chaos.” The show incorporates both Arabic and Hebrew dialogue. It airs on Netflix with Engl...
(JTA)-"Arthur Miller: Writer," a lovingly crafted documentary about the award-winning playwright set to air on HBO, doesn't reveal a lot of new information. A good portion of the film involves Miller himself speaking from the audio version of his 1987 memoir, "Timebends: A Life." And much has already been written elsewhere about the tumultuous life of the Jewish author who gave us classics such as "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible," and spent much of the 1950s in the public eye. But the fi...
(JNS)-In an interview, former U.S. President Bill Clinton admitted that he tried to help former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres defeat Benjamin Netanyahu during Israel's elections in 1996, just a year after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Clinton stated in an interview on Israel's Channel 10 news that it "would be fair to say" that he assisted in the process to elect Shimon Peres, adding that "I tried to do it in a way that didn't overtly involve me." He explained...
NEW YORK (JTA)-The Torah tells how God created the earth and the heavens, although the stories that follow tell us more about the former than the latter. A new exhibit doesn't quite answer theological questions about space, but it does show the ways in which Jews have looked at, written about and traveled into the final frontier. "Jews in Space: Members of the Tribe in Orbit," named after a Mel Brooks gag, is an exhibit organized and on view at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the...
In 1978, Time magazine claimed that 80 percent of all stand-up comedians in the United States were Jewish. And this at a time when Jews made up only 3 percent of the U.S. By way of explanation, psychologist Samuel Janus told a meeting of the American Psychological Association that, “Jewish humor is born of depression and alienation from the general culture. For Jewish comedians, comedy is a defense mechanism to ward off the aggression and hostility of others.” Or as Mel Brooks put it: “If they’re laughing, how can they bludgeon you to death?” F...
JNS is proud to partner with the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., to celebrate 70 of the greatest American contributors to the U.S.-Israel relationship in the 70 days leading up to the State of Israel's 70th anniversary. (JNS)-Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was without question a great Jewish figure, and one of the greatest Jewish leaders of the 20th century. A talented and charismatic scholar, he was known across the world as simply "The Rebbe." As the seventh Rebbe of the...
FBI reports uptick on anti-Semitism... I read this recently in the World Jewish Congress (WJC) digest (got upset as usual) and pass it along: "According to hate crime statistics recently released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States rose slightly over the previous year and each year. Following Jews, Muslims were the targets of the second-largest number of hate crimes." (No surprise to me. Anti-Semitism seems to be back and just as...
