Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The "Seeking Kin" column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA)-For Rich Lindemon III, the brunch for six that Benita Schwartzman hosted in her Baltimore townhouse was a reintroduction to long-lost family and a chance to fill in some gaps. Lindemon, a mechanical engineer from nearby York, Pa., had long known of the Schwartzmans and remembered them fondly. His late mother, Susan, was Benita's niece, but except for a brief period in 1981, the families had little...
On a chilly Thursday night while most of Orlando residents were at home keeping warm, Wallace Bruschweiler was connecting the dots on terrorist cell operations from the 1970s to today. Seventy people packed Doc's Grill on Orange Avenue to hear from a man who was fighting terrorism long before America's collective consciousness knew there was a problem. Bruschweiler, vice president of Associates of Former Intelligence Officers Fla. Suncoast Chapter, spoke on behalf of Act For America, an...
photos by Exulting Images The Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando's Women's Division gave community supporters a night they will never forget. Replete with singing, dancing and acrobats, the Broadway-style showcase of Jewish life in Central Florida was a smash hit. Here are just a few glimpses of the evening....
There is something special about Taglit-Birthright Israel: Mayanot trips to Israel https://mayanotisrael.com After many months of anticipation, we were finally on our way on our trip to Israel through Taglit-Birthright Israel: Mayanot. When word spread that our flight to Israel was delayed about 10 hours, a wave of frustration spread through our group. Israel was having its worst snowstorm in decades-at the very same time as our scheduled flight. There was talk that we'd be stuck at Kennedy...
If someone were to say "Have you been doin' the 'Hubbly Bubbly'?" Locals near Edgewater and Par would know this is referring to the newest healthy-fast-food shop in the area. Owners Mark and Heather Unger and her father, George Joubran, opened Hubbly Bubbly last September and they have not slowed down since the doors opened. The concept is not new-a falafel shop. But the unique way the food is prepared and served makes it decidedly different-and the constant flow of customers proves it. The...
This is a big month for Jeff Berger. He will be celebrating his 15th anniversary as a general contractor and owner of Petretti Group, a Winter Park-based company that builds and renovates private residences, commercial buildings, restaurants and coffee shops. He has built more than $15 million in custom and spec homes in Orlando, Longwood and the Orlando area in addition to major renovations on Winter Park’s Chain of Lakes. Among many popular restaurants his company has built or renovated are Winter Park’s Cocina 214, a 350-seat Mexican res...
Raymond James recently recruited veteran financial advisers S. Benjamin Weiner, CFP®, CIMA®, who will be operating as the Winter Park Wealth Group, an independent firm, in Winter Park. "We are delighted to welcome yet another accomplished team of advisers to Raymond James," the company said. "Ben and his partners have demonstrated a history of providing excellent client service, consistent with the culture and values at Raymond James. Their decision to affiliate with us reflects their...
Barbara Friedman with Fannie Hillman + Associates has been awarded the Certified Negotiation Expert (CNE®) designation by the Real Estate Negotiation Institute (RENI). The CNE® is earned by real estate professionals after successfully completing formal negotiation training from the Real Estate Negotiation Institute. Agents who receive this certification are in the top one percent of all agents nationally....
Children of the Temple Israel Religious School ended Shabbat on a relaxing note as they came to the sanctuary in January for a Havdalah service wearing their pajamas. Following the service, the children made beeswax Havdalah candles and spice boxes with the Hadas (myrtle) from the lulav. After making crafts and having snacks, each child was ready to go home and hop into bed! For more information about the Temple Israel Religious School, please visit www.tiflorida.org or contact Cathy Swerdlow...
A true story... Finally, Hollywood got it right! There is a new movie coming out... or is it already out? It is produced by Columbia Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. I refer to "The Monuments Men" starring GEORGE CLOONEY, among other noted actors. This happens to be a true story... one I never knew about. (I think many others will not have known about it as well.) The reason I am writing about it is this article, taken directly from the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. calendar: "Nineteen-ye...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-She speaks only Japanese and is not entirely sure what country she's in, but 18-year-old Haruna Matsui is happy to stand in the rain for an hour with two friends to see the home of a person she has never met yet nonetheless considers her soul mate. "We visited Paris and Brussels, so I just had to come here to see Anne's home," an excited Matsui told JTA last week outside Amsterdam's Anne Frank House. Matsui has read Japanese manga comic book adaptations of Frank's diary several t...
What started out as being a "chauffer" for his son turned Stewart Bloom into an entertainer. Several years ago, Bloom would drive his son Andrew, who at the time was preparing for his bar mitzvah, to the monthly musicals at Horizon Bay on Boston Avenue. Andrew would make brownies and was always anxious to serve them to the residents. As time went on, Bloom continued to deliver the brownies every month, even after Andrew no longer made the brownies. Bloom not only has become a regular and...
Two new fruit trees were planted in the Spring Hills Lake Mary Assisted Living courtyard on Thursday Jan. 16, in conjunction with the Jewish annual celebration of Tu B'Shevat, observed as the "Jewish New Year for Trees." Residents of the community, assisted by the Jewish Pavilion, participated in adding one banana tree and one lime tree to the kitchen garden already established in the community. This year's trees join the avocado and lemon trees planted during their Tu B'Shevat celebration in...
Once again, the Jewish Pavilion hosted a Tu B'Shevat seder at Arden Court, a live-in facility in Winter Springs for persons with dementia and/or Alzheimer's. The residents were gathered in anticipation of the arrival of Jewish Pavilion volunteers, and they happily participated in the program for the day. In addition to reciting the prayers and enjoying the foods associated with this holiday, they shared some personal stories. Program director Judy Procell asked the residents to tell a story...
Justin Timberlake playing Israel HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA)- While Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters' efforts to stop artists from performing in Israel have been getting plenty of attention lately, the list of upcoming big-name concerts scheduled there continues to grow. The latest additions: Neil Young and Justin Timberlake, joining Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and, (fingers crossed) the Rolling Stones. First up is Timberlake, who will play Tel Aviv on May 28, according to Haaretz. The official...
I may be mistaken, but... I don’t think I’m mistaken when I say that many, if not most, medical breakthroughs in the last few hundred years were made by Jewish doctors and scientists. Here is another that I recently heard about. This comes from the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev: “A cure for diabetes? No, not quite. But for children and adults with type 1 diabetes, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev may have discovered the next best thing: a combination of drugs already in use for other conditions that...
For American Jews, the birthday of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is an occasion to recall the impressive Jewish contributions to the movement for African-American civil rights-from Jewish Freedom Riders such as Schwerner and Goodman, to the rabbis who marched with Dr. King, to the Jewish attorneys who spearheaded the NAACP's legal battles against discrimination. It may surprise some to learn that one of the earliest Jewish protests against racism in America was lodged more than half...
Pete Seeger, the iconic American folk singer and composer of such notable standards as "If I had a Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" passed away on Monday, Jan. 27 at age 94. Seeger died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, his record company, Appleseed Recordings, said. Seeger was well known for his liberal politics, working as an environmentalist, protesting against wars from Vietnam to Iraq. He was sentenced to prison for refusing to testify...
BALTIMORE (JTA)-Even at 96, Frank Towers still recalls the stench of the prisoner train when its doors were opened nearly seven decades ago. "Not to be believed," he said. It was April 13, 1945, when the U.S. Army's 30th Infantry Division, to which Towers belonged, freed prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany who had been packed onto a train 40 to 50 cars long bound for Theresienstadt. They had been on the train for six days before it was stopped at a railway siding near...
TEL AVIV (JTA)- When the Israeli mobile maps start-up Waze accepted a buyout from Google for more than $1 billion in June, each of the company's 100 employees walked away with an average of $1.2 million from the sale. An even bigger check, though, went to Baruch Lipner, a Canadian Israeli who hasn't worked in the high-tech or finance industries for a decade. The acquisition put $1.5 million on his desk. A veteran of the venture capital world, Lipner is now the sole employee of Tmura, a...
The weekend of Jan. 11-12, a brand new 9,000 square foot Hillel was opened at Florida State University. FSU serves nearly 3,000 Jewish undergrads and this marks the second brand new Hillel facility to be inaugurated in the State of Florida in the past six months. Although it hasn't had an official "grand opening" yet, in August 2013 Central Florida Hillel opened a new 20,000-square-foot facility located at UCF to serve the 6,000 Jewish undergrads. Shown here (l-r): Melanie Annis, executive...
A monument to gays persecuted by the Nazis was dedicated in Tel Aviv. The monument, the first of its kind in Israel, was constructed in Meir Park, near the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association Center in the central part of the city. The monument is made up of a concrete pink triangle along with a bench and a plaque providing information on the persecution of gays and lesbians during the Holocaust. Gays and lesbians were forced to wear an identifying pink triangle on their clothing in the same...
Johansson's Super Bowl ad HOLLYWOOD, FL (JTA)-Scarlett Johansson, faceless in the movie "Her," just landed a gig as the face of an Israeli company. According to The New York Times, the Jewish actress has been chosen as SodaStream's "global spokesperson" and will star in its upcoming Super Bowl ad. In the commercial, airing during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVIII on Fox on Feb. 2, Johansson will show us how the home soda maker works. The point is to "demonstrate how easy it is, how sexy...
A dying language?... Gee, I hope not! This is an article about preserving and sharing Ladino and Sephardic culture. (Married for more than half-century to a Sephardic Jew, this article, directly from the Impact magazine of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, really caught my interest). I pass it on in part: "According to Dr. ELIEZER PAPO, 'The Ladino language is dying but losing the language doesn't mean you should lose the entire cultural package. That's where the Ladino Center comes...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Mark Bittman is not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, least of all his own. A longtime food writer for The New York Times who three years ago shifted from cooking to food policy columnist, Bittman has made a living eating the kinds of things frowned upon by Jewish tradition. As he told me recently, "Pork cooked in milk is an amazing dish." Though he was born and raised a Jew-going to synagogue, religious school and Reform youth groups at Manhattan's East End...
