Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Israeli researchers have discovered that a specific protein is severely reduced in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease caused by brain cell death. Currently there is no cure, but according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), we now know what may trigger it. Dr. Debbie Toiber, of the BGU Department of Life Sciences, and her team discovered that a specific protein-Sirtuin-6 (SIRT6)-is severely reduced in the brains of...
Gloria Yousha could not write her Scene Around column this week because she recently had heart surgery. She wanted to let everyone know she is doing fine in her recovery, and thanks all her well wishers. Her column will return next week....
"That doesn't belong here." Peter Gutensohn stared at the large tarnished sterling silver piece almost hidden in a dusty corner of Lanier's Historic Downtown Marketplace. Peter had come in to the antiques mall in Kissimmee, Florida, on an early spring day in 2016 to look for a silver serving platter for his wife, Kelly. He was a frequent visitor, often successful in his search for a specific old, beautiful object. And sometimes he bought interesting items "just because." A few years earlier,...
(JTA)-The time is just after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Two Orthodox Jews disembark from a train at a rural station in Soviet-occupied Hungary and, after offloading a heavy bag, they begin a silent, hour-long walk to a nearby village. The purpose of their journey is not known. But their arrival in the village sets in motion a series of tragic and violent events, as some residents worry the visitors will expose crimes they committed during the Nazi occupation, with potentially deadly...
(Kveller via JTA)—My final hike with Talia was an act of defiance and love. In July, I held her, my 23-month-old daughter, in a front carrier with extra support to prevent her head from lolling side to side. I pressed her tiny body firmly against mine in the hope that my body heat would comfort and warm her increasingly cold body. She was as weak as I had ever seen her, her body limp—a result of her brain’s inability to function. She was 10 days away from death, yet there we were summiting another peak together. To outsiders, we were a typical...
Seventy-eight years ago, a Torah scroll was sentenced to death along with the Jewish people. Now it will be in Orlando, as part of a whirlwind tour that will include hundreds of Jewish communities all across the globe. On Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass" when more than 1,400 synagogues were torched and 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed across Germany, 14-year-old Isaac Schwartz of Hamburg knew he had to act. Seeing a pyre of Torah scrolls and other Jewish sacred items left...
Of all the interesting facts and statistics you will learn at Kehillah: A History of Jewish Life in Greater Orlando exhibition, perhaps the most fascinating will be the people you will meet-their stories, their accomplishments, and their role in building the Central Florida community. Did you know... A Jew helped write the charter of the village of Orlando? After opening Florida stores in Bartow, Fort Meade and Fort Ogden in the 1860s, Jacob Raphael Cohen settled in Orlando in 1873. He bought...
(The Nosher via JTA)-Growing up in Seattle, it's easy to fall in love with pho. Nearly as ubiquitous as coffee shops or teriyaki spots (yes, teriyaki), pho restaurants seem to be just around every corner of the city. They welcome you in from the cold and the rain with their steamy glass windows and equally steamy giant bowls of soup. Pho (pronounced fuh) is a traditional Vietnamese soup that was popularized around the world by Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Pho...
Remembering Jewish and American history... We all remember the World Trade Center and the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City. (How could we ever forget?) DANIEL LEWIN, an American-Israeli entrepreneur and former Israeli commando, became the unofficial first casualty of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Born in Denver, Colorado, he moved as a teenager to Jerusalem where he enlisted in Israel's elite special forces commando unit-the Sayeret Matkai. (One of the...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-When it comes to women posing with firearms, the United States is fully loaded. Lithe models can be found showing off weapons at gun shows, in rifle magazines and on dedicated social media pages. Orin Julie may look like just another "gun bunny," as such models are sometimes called, but she is the industry's secret weapon. She is a former Israeli combat soldier who is trained to discharge the weapons she poses with. "I don't stand around in swimwear," she said in an interview at...
COIMBRA, Portugal (JTA)-From its mountaintop perch, the University of Coimbra towers majestically over the downtown square that used to be the regional headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition. It's a fitting location for the 737-year-old university, the seventh oldest in the world, which outsmarted and outlived the campaign of persecution against Jews and freethinkers unleashed by the Catholic Church and Portugal's rulers in 1536. "This place was almost literally an ivory tower of knowledge...
(The Nosher via JTA)-For generations, Jewish grandmothers have spent hours and hours chained to their stoves perfecting their family chicken soup recipes. The prevailing thought was that the longer the soup simmered, the more flavorful the result. Fortunately for the current generation, technology has created new ways that we can achieve that slow-cooked flavor in a much shorter time frame. With the Instant Pot, or an electric pressure cooker, we've cut down the cook time without sacrificing...
Congregation Ohev Shalom's Men's Club celebrated the holiday of Sukkot with fun, food, music and fellowship by holding an event titled "A Celebration and So Long in the Sukkah," held on Sunday, Oct. 8, at Congregation Ohev Shalom. The family-styled event was open to all congregation members and the community as a way to celebrate the holiday and to help everyone perform God's commandment to be joyous during Sukkot. It was also a great time to give best wishes to Howard Kaplan, COS Men's Club's...
Jews and cancer... I received this information from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and pass it along to you in part: "This is about the three cancers Jews need to worry about most, and how to reduce the risks." (As if Jews don't have enough to worry about.) "Specifically, Jews are at elevated risk for three types of the disease: melanoma, breast cancer and ovarian cancer. The perils are particularly acute for Jewish women. The higher prevalence of these illnesses isn't spread evenly among a...
"The Trust," By Ronald H. Balson, St. Martin's Press In 2013, Ronald H. Balson debuted his first novel, "Once We Were Brothers," an originally self-published title that reached great success and instantly became an international best seller. Over the course of just a few years, Balson would come to publish two more novels featuring the same compelling characters-lawyer Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart-and build a dedicated readership. Balson's fourth novel, "The Trust,"...
BOSTON (JTA)-If New England Patriots star Julian Edelman retires from the NFL anytime soon, he clearly has a promising second career as a Jewish children's book writer. In front of about 400 children and their families Tuesday night at the Newton Centre flagship of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston, the 31-year-old wide receiver and Super Bowl hero read a special edition of a children's book he co-wrote last year. Unsurprisingly Edelman, who has Jewish ancestry on his father's side...
CHICAGO (JTA)-Three days after a gunman killed 59 people in Las Vegas, a post in a Facebook group for Chicago Jews displayed a blurry photo of survivors fleeing the bullets. Next to it was a flier advertising ChiDefense Firearm Training with a Hebrew phrase underneath denoting that the company is closed for Shabbat. The post got a few "likes"-and plenty of hate. One commenter called it "vile and distasteful." Another wrote sarcastically that it displayed "impeccable logic." Another called for...
The strict dedication it takes to become an Olympic-caliber athlete is astounding: years of practice and discipline, rising with the sun each day and putting in grueling effort. But athletes are human beings as well as national heroes, and they also like to have a little fun from time to time. Professional Israeli swimmer Guy Barnea, 30, an Israeli record-holder and 2008 Olympian, is out to do just that. And he wants to take you along for the ride. It all started with a nude swimming photo...
BUCHAREST, Romania (JTA)-When the roof of the Jewish State Theater collapsed during a 2014 snowstorm, its director reluctantly knew it was finally time to abandon the century-old building in this capital city. Maia Morgenstern did not take the decision lightly. Following years of neglect by authorities, the Bucharest Jewish community had fought for decades to keep the storied theater afloat. The Jewish State Theater had been a major cultural institution for Central European Jews prior to the...
I am emotional... Before I even start this column, I must mention the Monday, Sept. 25th, showing of the tape, Broadway from 1893 to 1927, a JCC 39ers program presented by SHELDON BROOK. Although I am living in Central Florida for more than 53 years, New York City will always be "home" to me, but, of course the last time I was there was with my dear departed spouse, Irv. Just seeing Times Square created much emotion. That was followed by the stories of legends Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Jerome...
The following are excerpts from the U.S. Congressional Record of 1922 that demonstrates the powerful sense of the members of Congress in favor of reestablishing a Jewish national home in Palestine: “Palestine of today [1922], the land we now know as Palestine, was peopled by the Jews from the dawn of history until the Roman era. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They were driven from it by force by the relentless Roman military machine and for centuries prevented from returning. “At different periods various alien people suc...
TEL AVIV (JTA)-In the summer of 1947, when the British turned away the SS Exodus from the shores of Palestine, the world was watching. Before the eyes of the international media, British troops violently forced the ship's passengers, most of them Holocaust survivors, onto ships back to Europe. The resulting reports helped turn public opinion in favor of the Zionist movement and against the pro-Arab British policy of limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. But much else was happening in the...
ISRAEL21c—That’s one of the findings of groundbreaking experiments performed at Israel’s Benjamin Triwaks Bee Research Center at Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot. The center also has discovered that, like humans, bees consuming an unhealthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids develop cognitive deficiencies. They cannot simply choose pollen from flowers high in omega-3 because increasing urbanization has decimated many kinds of wildflowers. The resulting nutritional imbalance is a major reason why hon...
(JTA)-When Dr. Avi Rivkind landed in Las Vegas three years ago to lecture as a trauma care expert, he saw something that troubled him. The airport, McCarran International, felt too open, almost exposed. He felt no less comfortable on the city's Strip while watching crowds flow from hotels to casinos to shops to the street-with little security in sight. "I felt there was a lack of presence, from the ease of getting around there, from the casinos, from how easy it is to enter all the malls," he...
(JTA)-After 70 years of studying the Holocaust, historians still don't know the exact circumstances of the tragic fate that befell two of the best-known victims of the Holocaust era: Anne Frank and Raoul Wallenberg. Frank, the teenager whose journal of her days in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam has sensitized millions to the suffering of 6 million victims, died in 1945 in Bergen-Belsen after the Nazis caught her. But nobody knows who, if anyone, betrayed her and her family to the Nazis....
