Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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"Both Jews and Muslims have a lot in common. What are we fighting over? Jews and Muslims don't eat pork, we don't celebrate Christmas, we both use 'ch' in our pronunciation, and we are both hairy creatures of God," says comedian Ahmed Ahmed. "The only real difference between Jews and Muslims is that Jews never like to spend any money and Muslims never have any money to spend." So goes one of the dozens of jokes featured in the "Laugh in Peace" comedy routine of Ahmed and Rabbi Bob Alper. It's... Full story
LEAWOOD, Kan. (JTA)—Mendel Segal wears two particular titles that each reflect a devotion to tradition, imply an unending pursuit of precision and command immediate respect. One is rabbi. The other is pitmaster. The 33-year-old Orthodox rabbi (and follower of the late Lubavitcher rebbe) is readying to oversee the fourth annual Kansas City Kosher BBQ Festival on Sunday, an event that is expected to attract as many as 4,000 attendees. Segal—known as “RaBBi-Q” to his fans and fellow competitors on the circuit—is a kosher barbecue champion... Full story
(Kveller via JTA)-For many Jewish parents, the challenges they face raising their children include choosing between Jewish and public schools, planning bar and bat mitzvahs, and staying sane while planning big Shabbat dinners. But for parents raising Jewish children in rural areas like me, without a cohesive community around them, just having our identity recognized and honored by neighbors is often the first challenge. Maine thinks of itself as a homogenous state. Despite increasing... Full story
Shown here are Temple Israel's Meitin Religious School students standing inside the sukkah they built last year. Read about what many of the Central Florida religious schools and day schools have to offer the children of this community to prepare them to take their stand in this community and this world in the Back to School supplement in this week's Heritage.... Full story
By Maayan Jaffe JNS.org According to the model of Western philosophy, a successful Jewish student would be one who masters the Talmud, the laws of Shabbat and kashrut, and the tales of the Midrash, says Rabbi Dovid Abenson. “Every institution craves the box child,” Abenson, founder and director of the Shaar Hatalmud online Jewish learning program, tells JNS.org. “The box child is a child that fits the mold.” Yet Abenson asks, if a student has not internalized a love and appreciation for knowledge, nor a faith and security in Judaism, “can we, a... Full story
The St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society will mark the 450th anniversary of the arrival of the descendants of Crypto-Jews to territories later to become the United States, 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8 at the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, 11 Magnolia Ave, St. Augustine, Florida 32084. The program is open to the public and will include a tour of relevant excavations of oldest successful European settlement in the United States led by St. Augustine Archaeological Association Board Member, Carl Lindenfeld. Discussion over lunch follows the... Full story
Three girls who survived their survival Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust's Hidden Child Survivors By R. D. Rosen On sale Oct. 1, 2015 A five-year-old girl who slipped out of the Lvov, Poland, ghetto with her mother, who, thanks to her fluency in German, found work as a bookkeeper for a Nazi. A six-year-old schoolgirl who somehow knew not to raise her hand when her schoolteacher in Southern France suddenly asked which students were Jewish. A family that barely made a noise for more... Full story
BERLIN (JTA)-Seventy-nine summers after Marty Glickman's Olympics uniform was rendered as useless as a jilted bride's wedding dress, his daughter Nancy wore the same uniform to light the cauldron that officially opened the European Maccabi Games here. Her late father's removal from the U.S. track team hours before the 4x100 meter relay in the still-standing stadium across from where the opening ceremony took place Tuesday made Nancy Glickman's act the dramatic climax of a night replete with... Full story
By Shannon Sarna (The Nosher via JTA)-I have never made rugelach. Well, actually that's not entirely true. I made rugelach once recently, and they were a disaster. The dough wasn't moist enough, I didn't roll them properly and I ended up with a bit of a mess. Thankfully one of our contributors is a rugelach master. Samantha Ferraro of The Little Ferraro Kitchen doesn't just make delicious rugelach-she makes rugelach in varieties such as cheese and herb, cherry pistachio and pumpkin candied... Full story
The times they are a changin' (or are they?)... I just read the following in the new World Jewish Congress (WJC) digest for this month: "Addressing the rise of anti-Semitism around the world and the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa, WJC President Ambassador RONALD S. LAUDER noted that the merging today of anti-Semitism and the persecution of Christians is not unique. 'We've both been targeted before, often by the same enemy. But today's rampage against both religions at... Full story
(JTA)-Jeff Lieberman was en route to a South Carolina screening of his first feature, "Re-emerging: The Jews of Nigeria," when he realized how close he'd be to the tiny Blue Ridge Mountain town of Tryon, North Carolina. The New York-based filmmaker couldn't pass up a side trip to the birthplace of Eunice Kathleen Waymon-better known to the masses as Nina Simone. "I'd been a fan of hers since I was in high school, but always felt like I didn't quite understand her," said Lieberman, whose first... Full story
(JTA)—Actor Jason Segel—best known as the star of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “How I Met Your Mother”—opened up on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast this week about growing up with one Jewish parent and as a complete outsider. Segel sat down for the Monday podcast ahead of the release of his film “The End of the Tour,” in which he plays the tortured writer David Foster Wallace—a career U-turn away from the comedic work that made him famous. On Maron’s podcast (on which President Barack Obama was recently a guest), Segel said he long felt uns... Full story
By Curt Schleier (JTA)—“Homage” is a French word that frequently and unfortunately translates into English as I don’t have a good idea of my own, so I will borrow one of yours and call it a tribute. Fans of Alfred Hitchcock will be delighted, however, with “Phoenix,” German director Christian Petzold’s suspenseful take on “Vertigo.” He offers a fresh twist on mistaken identity that ultimately leads to a denouement that’s as dramatically, emotionally and intellectually satisfying as the master’s. Not that Petzold is a slouch in the master... Full story
By Gabe Friedman (JTA)-James Franco may be 37, but he isn't yet a man in the Jewish tradition: The popular actor never had a bar mitzvah. With the help of fellow Jewish actor Seth Rogen, that's about to change. Rogen and his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, will throw Franco a bar mitzvah during their annual Hilarity for Charity variety show at the Hollywood Palladium on Oct. 17. "Ever since I've known James, he's been talking about wanting a bar mitzvah," Rogen told Variety in a statement. The... Full story
Here are ways to voice your opinions about the Iran nuclear deal provided by The Israel Project, StandWithUs and Zionistas AIPAC Action Alert. After 20 months of negotiations the United States and its negotiating partners announced a nuclear agreement with Iran. Throughout the negotiations, AIPAC outlined five critical criteria for a good deal. Unfortunately, the proposed agreement is fundamentally flawed in each of these vital areas. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 established a procedure for congressional review of any nuclear a... Full story
The following are a sampling of the many inquiries received on a daily basis from a family member or the older adult. Read below and you will find that most people have similar needs just like yourself or your own loved one. "My father is living alone and he needs supervision twenty four hours a day but we do not want him to move." "I need to move out of my family's home but I am not sure I can afford alternative living arrangements." "I would like to move into assisted living but I have to take... Full story
There is just something about store-bought coffee cake, especially Entenmann's, that is irresistible. I cannot control myself when it is around. Several times in the past few years my husband has brought one home, in an attempt to make me smile. And of course I immediately yelled at him for buying it. Then I ate the whole thing in one sitting. What can I say-we all have our weaknesses. My dear friend Danielle recently suggested I should try my hand at mashing up my classic challah with a coffee... Full story
A special commemoration... I read this in my July issue of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) digest. It is a time for all of us to remember with much reverence. I pass it along to you: "More that 100 survivors of the Nazi camp Bergen-Belsen, children born at the post-war displaced persons (DP) camp, British liberators and a WJC leadership group traveled to Lower Saxony, Germany, on April 26 to mark the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation. German president, JOACHIM GAUCK and WJC President Amb... Full story
ISRAEL21c-Plenty of apps are available for helping people remember to take their meds. But when Rotem and Omri Shor's diabetic father accidentally took a double dose of insulin, the Israeli brothers created Medisafe, a cloud-synced mobile medication-management platform that could do much more. "Going way beyond apps that are really just glorified alarm clocks, we provide additional tools to keep patients on their medications. We do this by bringing in content and data from third parties to... Full story
(JTA)-Josh Ostrovsky, aka The Fat Jew, is reportedly making an improbable transition from pudgy social media comic to fashion model. Self-avowedly rotund, The Fat Jew, 30, recently signed a deal to join the likes of Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli and Karolina Kurkova at One Management agency, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He shared his long-term plans with the magazine: "Get uncomfortably famous, develop a raging drug problem, then spiral out of control and surround myself with people who... Full story
(JTA)—For years it has been written about, and on the night of July 23 it was sealed: Jon Stewart is proud to be Jewish. With just two weeks left before he leaves “The Daily Show” following a 16-year run as host—and well ahead of the High Holidays—he appears to be tying up loose ends. Stewart made his Jewish pride clear in a segment titled “A Look Back: Let His People Laugh.” Sen. Chuck Schumer made a surprise appearance as a follow-up to his inclusion on the previous night’s show, which poked fun at the New York Democrat’s preference for ta... Full story
PHILADELPHIA (JTA)-Alex Bethea, the son of cotton and tobacco farm workers, was in sixth grade in 1965 when his family moved from Dillon, South Carolina, to the tiny town of Fairmont, North Carolina, where he attended a school called Rosenwald. But it wasn't until this week, 50 years later, that Bethea learned that his school was named for Julius Rosenwald, the Jewish philanthropist who is the subject of a new documentary by Aviva Kempner. The film tells the little-known story of Rosenwald's... Full story
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of the Christian Zionist NPO Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN), is a force to be reckoned with. She is straight-forward and stands upon biblical principles to bring about change in her own state of Tennessee and the rest of the United States. Her latest endeavor has been campaigning to defend the Jewish state from the scourge of BDS that pushes to boycott and economically attack Israel. Last Wednesday evening, Cardoza-Moore was invited by the Zionistas to... Full story
NEW YORK-Eva London Ritt of Winter Park, Fla., has gifted her personal collection of materials from the Soviet Jewry movement to the Yeshiva University Archives. Ritt dedicated the donation of two archival boxes of correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs and artifacts of work to free Soviet Jews during the 1970s and 1980s in memory of her late husband David Elliott Ritt z"l who, she said, was her greatest supporter, and in honor of all those who participated with her in this effort.... Full story
A story of jealousy, betrayal and suspense "The Winter Guest" by Pam Jenoff Available on amazon.com Life is a constant struggle for the impoverished eighteen-year-old Nowak twins as they raise their three young siblings under the shadow of the Nazi occupation. The constant threat of arrest for even the most minor infraction has made everyone in their village a spy, and turned neighbor against neighbor. They are faithful allies in protecting their family from the threats and hardships the war... Full story
