Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Good for you... I'm speaking of a New York City Subway rider, GREGORY LOCKE, who is a hero in my book because he shared his post on Facebook as a lesson for all of us. I read the following in the current World Jewish Congress (WJC) digest and pass it along to you in its entirety: After a Manhattan subway was defaced with swastikas on several windows and advertisements, a group of riders joined together to erase the racist graffiti. In a Facebook post, subway rider, Gregory Locke wrote that 'the...
PSAGOT, West Bank (JTA)-Psagot Winery calls its Sinai wine an "unassuming but distinctive blend" of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Like all its wines, the bottle is stamped with the image of a coin dating to the first century C.E. found in a chalky cave near its namesake West Bank settlement and inscribed in Hebrew with the words "For the freedom of Zion." The coin, its catalog explains, "symbolizes the preservation of winemaking tradition-offering you a taste of our history." For Yaakov Berg,...
(JTA)-When Wimbledon starts next week, no other Jewish tennis player will be seeded higher than Diego Schwartzman. The scrappy 24-year-old from Argentina, fresh off an impressive five-set duel with perennial star Novak Djokovic at the French Open earlier this month, is No. 37 in the Association of Tennis Professionals rankings. That easily makes him the best Jewish tennis player on the planet. Schwartzman, who was raised in a Jewish family in Buenos Aires, has steadily risen in the rankings...
(The Nosher via JTA)—Keeping a stocked pantry is a deep love of mine; it must run in my blood. My mother also was obsessed with having backups of her favorite products in the basement. There were always boxes of pasta, cans of beans, soup and tons of stuff in our second freezer. Until recently we lived in an apartment, and my desire to keep a stocked pantry was limited by space (although I still tried to stock as best I could). But now with more space in a house, along with a second fridge and freezer downstairs, I like to be ready for anything...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-Livraria Ets Haim is the world's oldest functioning Jewish library. As such, it is no stranger to the prospect of imminent destruction. Founded in 1616 by Jews who fled Catholic persecution in Spain and Portugal, the three-room library is adjacent to Amsterdam's majestic Portuguese Synagogue in the Dutch capital's center. The 30,000-volume collection mostly contains manuscripts written by people who fled the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula or their descendants. The oldest...
Let’s redefine Jewish. Let’s make it bigger, broader and more inclusive. That was my biggest takeaway from the annual PJ Library conference in Reisterstown, Md., that I attended in April with Jennifer Cohen, the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando’s director of Outreach and Engagement. The conference was set at the Pearlman Institute, which is a Jewish farm/conference center with Hebrew signage everywhere and super-yummy, healthy, farm-to-table food. Pearlman and PJ made me feel like I was being hugged by a Jewish grandmother the whole time....
"Fraud happens to everyone from youngest to oldest, and to people of all backgrounds. Today we are going to talk about making elders a tougher target... Just like you and I head into work on Monday morning, full-time scammers head to their warehouse each Monday, too," said Detective Leamon "Lee" Davis of the Orange County Sheriff's Office at the 11th Annual Education and Prevention Symposium held on Friday, June 16, in acknowlegement of World Elder- Abuse Day. Sally Kopke of Vitas Healthcare...
(JTA)—If you’re a young Jewish woman—or if you just happen to love “Broad City” or wacky recollections of Jewish summer camp—there’s a new website for you. Alma, which was launched Tuesday by 70 Faces Media (JTA’s parent company), aims to be a resource for millennial women navigating the often fun, sometimes tricky years of early adulthood. Readers can expect everything from personal essays—the wide-ranging topics include grief and figuring out what to do after college—to slideshows of embarrassing bat mitzvah photos. Alma will have a “Jew-is...
Neo-Nazi nightmare... I read this recently in the World Jewish Congress digest and pass it along to you. Warning: It is upsetting to read but as Jews, we must keep our eyes wide open: "WJC CEO ROBERT SINGER expressed concern after an annual neo-Nazi rally known as Lukovmarch proceeded as planned recently in Sofia, Bulgaria, despite a ban issued by Mayor YORDANKA FANDAKOVA. "While we welcome the mayor's ban this year on the rally, we are distressed that even that declaration of authority could no...
(The Nosher via JTA)-Stuffed peppers are a comfort food for both Americans and Israelis. But the two versions vary quite a bit in their spice profiles and methodology. American-style stuffed peppers are often topped with cheese, stuffed with corn, beans, rice and sometimes meat, and feature a more Tex-Mex spice mixture. In the tradition, it's common to stuff all kinds of vegetables: onions, zucchini, eggplant and, yes, peppers. Filled with rice, meat, pine nuts, raisins, fresh herbs and varying...
My favorite Mother's Day gift was a refrigerator magnet set with more Yiddish words than even my "Bubbie" (grandmother) spoke. Every time someone passes through my kitchen, they rearrange the magnets to make a sentence that speaks to them. My daughter's message reads, "My mother has chutzpa (boldness)." My neighbor left behind a note saying, "What's your shtick (talent, special area of interest)?" Although I only recognize about half the words (fortunately, it comes with a dictionary), there is...
(JTA)-On Jan. 16, 1949, Toby Fassman married Max Cohen (Steven M. Cohen's parents, now both of blessed memory). At 24, Toby was among the last of her circle of friends in Brooklyn to marry, and several jokingly remarked that Max had rescued her from lifelong singlehood. Today, if a 24-year-old Jewish woman were heading for the huppah, most would presume that she's either Orthodox or reckless. Indeed, of 25- to 54-year-old American Jews who are not haredi, fully half are unmarried. While...
Israel is home to approximately 140,000 members of the Druze faith, but today there's a dozen or so young students waiting patiently for me as I park my car next to the Shrine of the Prophet Bha'a Aldeen, a local Druze holy site. By this point, I have spent several months in Israel and have only heard whisperings about the Druze community. They remain something of a mystery to the outside world, with terms like "secret religion" and "hidden in plain sight" used at times to describe them. But...
(JTA)-Nazi death marches crippled Mr. Cohen's knees. The 94-year-old who survived Auschwitz now felt defeated trying to climb the stairs to his walk-up condo. He and his wife of 66 years used to be highly active in the Holocaust survivor community and frequently spoke at schools, but the onset of her dementia, and his now frequent falls, have stopped him in his tracks. But thanks to a grant from the Jewish Federations of North America's Center for Advancing Holocaust Survivor Care and the...
Until I moved to Israel, the closest I got to farming was knowing were to get good produce at a farmers market. Since living in Israel, I see how the simple act of eating and growing produce is a fulfillment of God's promise, and Ezekiel's prophesy which impacts and moves me personally. "I will make them and the places all around My hill a blessing; and I will cause showers to come down in their season; there shall be showers of blessing. Then the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and...
The Genealogy Success Story in this issue tells the sad story of young Froim (on right, in the white hat), a newly arrived immigrant, who died 10 days after his fifth birthday. This was discovered through author Gloria Green's genealogy search at one of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando's workshops. Shown here are Grandmother Hinda (Ida) Schwartzman (in black bow), with daughter Jennette Bayles and four grandchildren. 1909. Read the article on this website....
On June 22, the United States celebrated the anniversary of the G.I. Bill, a historic act that was the first major piece of legislation dealing with the postwar era challenges to come. With veterans coming home to already fully staffed factories, the G.I. Bill, officially known as the Service Member Readjustment Act of 1944, helped stop another recession by providing education and housing opportunities to veterans-allowing them to create new jobs and businesses in America's new booming economy....
The arts, sciences, technology, literature, architecture, navigation, mapmaking, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and art that flourished in Medieval Spain are often credited to Islam but this is a distortion of the role played by adherents of all three religions. The United Visigothic kingdom of Spain prior to the Muslim invasions had inherited five centuries of Roman civilization and had made use of the achievements of the Greeks and earlier Carthaginians as well as the Assyrians in...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Paul Shaffer, sporting a gray T-shirt and a one- or two-day-old beard, is sitting in the living room of his spacious Manhattan apartment near Lincoln Center. The walls are crammed with music memorabilia, including a signed Curtis Mayfield single and a plaque presented by the State of Israel to Sammy Davis Jr. The homey scene is a far cry from the glamorous studio environs that made Shaffer famous. For more than 30 years, Shaffer served as David Letterman's sidekick, musical director and band leader on his two late-night...
"This is my town"... That is the name of the newest BARRY MANILOW album. It refers to New York City, of course. (This is also my town!) Although I have been living here in Central Florida for more than half a century, I still walk, talk and think like a New Yawka. See what I mean? Oy vay department... I read this bit of disturbing news in the current issue of the World Jewish Congress digest and pass it along to you in its entirety: "The Palestinian terror group Hamas, has elected one of the...
(Kveller via JTA)—Being the parent of a child with a disability can be lonely. Being the single parent of a child with a rare disability that is estimated to affect a mere 1 percent of the population can feel like being sentenced to solitary confinement. Beginning in toddlerhood, my daughter Kate embarked on a lifetime of being poked and prodded, assessed and reassessed, and being escorted to multiple therapy appointments to address both a body and mind that were out of sync with everyone else. I felt helpless, like a failure and utterly a...
This old picture from the early 1900s was a family enigma for many decades, until the mystery was solved earlier this year. I have stayed in touch throughout the years with cousins who are the son and daughter of Minnie, the girl on the left. My cousins and I knew the picture was of our widowed grandmother, Hinda Schwartzman (with the black bow), along with her widowed daughter, Jennette Bayles (Baylish), and two of Jennette's three daughters-Minnie, left, and Anne, rear. My cousins guessed the...
WASHINGTON, D.C. (JTA)—The Israeli Embassy marked LGBT Pride Month with a reception for Jewish and Israeli activists and leaders. About 100 people attended the event, which featured an address by Talleen Abu Hana, an Arab Christian from Nazareth who won the first Miss Trans Israel beauty pageant in 2016. The embassy also paid tribute to the 49 victims of last year’s massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida. “Just as the noxious fumes of anti-Semitism ultimately poison all of society, so too hatred towards the LGBT commu...
MITZPE RAMON, Israel (JTA)-It sounds like a Jewish mother's nightmare: a preschool class held outdoors in the desert. But parents in this remote Israeli town drop off their children at Gan Keshet every weekday during the school year, setting them free to cook on a campfire, whittle sticks with switchblades and search for scorpions. Class goes on rain (rare) or shine (intense). "The kids meet real life when they come here," said Ron Meltzer, the school's soft-spoken principal and visionary....
The fifth annual commemoration of the largest mass arrest of rabbis in U.S. history, an event that took place in St. Augustine in June 1964, will be held on Monday, June 19, at 12:30 p.m. at the historic Columbia Restaurant, 98 St. George Street, St. Augustine, Florida 32084. The 60-minute event will include the reading of the letter written by the rabbis in the Flagler County jail. All are welcome, no advance arrangements are necessary. Discussion will follow this event. Luncheon available from Columbia Restaurant Menu. RSVP to 804-914-4460....
