Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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HAIFA—Jay Ruderman has observed for years that when American Jewish leaders visit Israel or when Israeli leaders visit the United States, the conversation is “always about Israel” and how the Jewish state relates to Iran, Syria, the Palestinians, and others. “What’s happening in the American Jewish community?” and how those events impact future support for Israel never seem to enter the conversation, according to Ruderman, who worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in...
Among the various events in Holocaust history marking their 70th anniversary this year—including the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the Nazis’ failed assault on Stalingrad, and a Washington, DC march by 400 rabbis who urged President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rescue Europe’s Jews—what stands out for author Jud Newborn is the White Rose episode. In February, July, and October 1943, the Nazis executed the six members of the White Rose non-Jewish resistance group, which distributed leaflets opposing Hitler. The founding historian of New York’s...
By Abigail Klein Leichman You may not have heard of corneal edema, but this painful eye condition caused by accumulation of fluids is not uncommon as a result of eye surgery, trauma or aging. The edema (swelling) causes the cornea to lose its transparency, affecting vision and leading to irreversible scarring of the cornea. Until Israeli startup EyeYon Medical invented its patented therapeutic contact lens, Hyper CL, there was no effective way to relieve symptoms of the condition—which can be cured only with a donor cornea from a deceased p...
We grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y. surrounded by Orthodox Jews, but we were never part of that community. We were all Jews but somehow it seemed that we each lived in our own little world. When Rabbi Yanky Majesky asked us to join him and his wife, Chanshy, to the National Jewish Retreat we did not know what to expect. We have just returned from the Retreat in the Washington, DC area, and it was five of the most wonderful days. We were warmly welcomed into the Chabad community, and were made to feel very much part of it....
In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian woman took off her clothes for a movie director. She ran through the woods, naked. She swam in a lake, naked. Pushing well beyond the social norms of the period. The most popular movie in 1933 was King Kong. But everyone in Hollywood was talking about that scandalous movie with the gorgeous, young Austrian woman. Louis B. Mayer, of the giant studio MGM, said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The film was banned practically everywhere, which of...
This is very interesting... This comes directly from the World Jewish Congress Digest. It is something that has been bothering many of us: “The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, RICHARD FALK, is notorious for outrageous comments. In his latest verbal spew, he said that the Boston Marathon bombings were directly attributable to America’s policy on Israel. “World Jewish Congress President Ambassador RONALD S. LAUDER called Falk’s comments linking...
The invitation came for the bar mitzvah, and we gladly said yes we would be delighted to attend. My great-nephew, Elijah Schulman, became a bar mitzvah. All bar mitzvahs are special, with families getting together, picking up from where they left off the last time there was a family occasion. What made this bar mitzvah worth writing about? It was held in Selma, Ala., where there had been only four bar mitzvahs in the last 40 years. No relatives live in Selma, so why Selma? Elijah’s great-great-g...
Lea Michele’s farewell to Finn NEW YORK (6nobacon.com)—Lea Michele took the stage at Sunday night’s Teen Choice Awards in her first televised appearance since boyfriend Cory Monteith’s death in July. The Jewish “Glee” actress used her time up there to dedicate her Choice TV Actress-Comedy award to Monteith. “I want to dedicate this award to Cory,” she said, choked up. “He was very special to me, and also to the world, and we were very lucky to witness his incredible talent, his handsome smil...
BALTIMORE (JTA)—As a girl in Seattle, Anne Bush evinced little interest in the Holocaust, even though her father, Harry, was a survivor whose mother, sister and brother-in-law had been murdered. But as a mother in Baltimore, by then known as Chana Staiman, she gradually was drawn to the period, spurred in part by her elder son, Ari, who as a boy read incessantly on the Holocaust—to the extent, Staiman said, that she considered “taking him to see someone” for counseling. By then, Harry Bush ha...
As newly elected leaders of their respective Christian faiths, Pope Francis I and Egypt’s Coptic Pope Tawadros II face a wide array of internal and external challenges. One presides over a global church of 1.2 billion, the other a smaller Mideast church of 12-18 million. But a primary challenge for both is the fate of Middle East Christianity, which is on the verge of extinction in the region where the religion was born. Early in their papacies, both Pope Francis and Pope Tawadros have shown a willingness to break from convention and c...
There is something different about taking a ride from Shlomi Bakish. Not only can he get from Haifa to Tel Aviv in half the time, but passengers also don’t feel the road. The car accelerates without strain. Unlike many Israeli drivers, Bakish doesn’t express rage when a slower car cuts him off. He sees his opportunity and easily passes on the right. It’s as though he’s driving in a race. For the past decade, talented Israeli drivers like Bakish were stranded in traffic by an unpopular law reg...
Alpha-1, a natural blood protein that fights inflammation, protects transplanted animal pancreatic islets—where insulin is produced—from rejection by the human body when used in combination with another anti-rejection therapy, according to an Israeli study financed by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. This discovery, reported in the journal PLoS ONE in May, could open the door to successful islet transplants from mammals, such as pigs, for Type 1 diabetes patients. Type 1 diabetes affects an estimated three million people in the Uni...
Many people, Jew and non-Jew alike, have wondered who they might have been during the Holocaust. A righteous gentile like Schindler? A self-serving member of the Judenrat? In other words, a person of courage or cowardice? Now, nearly seven decades later, an explosive new book reveals haunting details about Hollywood’s relationship to Hitler’s Germany. And the era’s predominantly Jewish studio heads are taken to task for their apparent complicity in Hitler’s anti-Semitic propaganda. In America, responses to Hitler’s assault on Europe varied—but...
NEW YORK (JTA)—When the nation’s largest Jewish federation convened its first-ever conference recently on engaging interfaith families, perhaps the most notable thing about it was the utter lack of controversy that greeted the event. There was a time when the stereotypical Jewish approach to intermarriage was to shun the offender and sit shiva. A generation ago, the publication of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey showing intermarriage at the alarmingly high rate of 52 percent tur...
NEW YORK (JTA)—When the world’s first lab-grown burger was introduced and taste-tested last week, the event seemed full of promise for environmentalists, animal lovers and vegetarians. Another group that had good reason to be excited? Kosher consumers. The burger was created by harvesting stem cells from a portion of cow shoulder muscle that were multiplied in petri dishes to form tiny strips of muscle fiber. About 20,000 of the strips were needed to create the five-ounce burger, which was finan...
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Dr. Mehmet Oz sat down to talk with JTA on the Tel Aviv coast last week, but what he really wanted to do was go to the beach. Oz, the surgeon and well-known TV personality, was in Israel for the first time and had a packed itinerary. He traversed the country from the Red Sea to the Golan, lectured Israeli physicians in a northern Israeli hospital and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His host on this whirlwind tour was Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the author and sexpert who l...
This is the way the Bible ought to be read. In graduate schools and in theological seminaries, the Bible is usually read by comparing manuscripts and by studying the parallel literatures of the ancient world. The result is an accurate text, but one that has very little to say to the modern reader. In yeshivot, the Bible is usually read as a prelude to the Oral Torah. The result is a text that has no independent meaning, but is only understood through the eyes of the Sages. In Israel, the Bible is often read as the document that serves as the...
Iconic Israeli costume jeweler Michal Negrin, who for more than 25 years has been bringing romantic and vintage-inspired designs to the global fashion scene, is expanding her brand to a new level in the U.S. this summer. Negrin plans to open more than two-dozen U.S. boutique locations over the next few years. June 21 marked the opening of a location at the Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, N.J., and Negrin’s New York City flagship shop, in the fashion-focused SoHo area, launched Aug. 15....
Big bucks for Portman and Kunis NEW YORK (6nobacon.com)—Forbes just released its list of Hollywood’s highest paid actresses, and (drumroll, please) two of the 10 stars are Jewish. Not bad, ladies! Natalie Portman comes in at No. 8, having earned $14 million this year. While the Oscar winner has been in the news lately for her upcoming directorial debut, it’s blockbusters like “Thor” that are bolstering her impressive paycheck. A spot behind Portman is the Ukraine-born Mila Kunis with $11 million. Kunis is a newcomer to the Forbes list than...
Yet another well-deserved honor... This comes directly from the World Jewish Congress Digest: “Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish ambassador to Berlin who saved many thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, has received yet another posthumous recognition... Australia’s conferral of its first-ever honorary citizenship.” In announcing the honor, Prime Minister JULIA GILLARD said, “The lives of those he rescued are Mr. Wallenberg’s greatest memorial, and Australia is honored to have survivors he rescue...
NEW YORK (JTA)—“You live in Brooklyn now. Stay there!” my father screamed at me. He slammed the door to my parents’ renovated tenement apartment in my face, exiling me from the Manhattan home and Lower East Side neighborhood in which I had grown up. I was a 20-year-old college dropout, a disgrace to my education-obsessed Jewish family. My mother had earned her doctorate in neuropsychology and spoke fluent Yiddish, Hebrew, German and Spanish. Her mother, my bubbe, had a doctorate in child p...
Whether it’s a navigation aid you’re seeking, or a city bus or parking, these apps have you covered. One will check your tire pressure and another checks your breath to gauge if you’re too tipsy to drive—and it’ll even hail you a cab if you are. 1. Waze Waze was a global household name even before it was judged the world’s best mobile app and Google plunked down $1.03 billion to buy it in June. The free crowdsourced navigation app allows users to share traffic information automatically in real time simply by following their GPS tracks. Waz...
When immigrants move to a new country, they often find it necessary to reinvent themselves. Some transform their lives in order to survive in a different environment. Others seek a fresh start so they can forget the past. Still others disguise their identities, for example, using a new name to mask their innermost self. The theme of re-invention serves as the core of Nancy Richler’s moving novel, “The Imposter Bride” (St. Martin’s Press). Richler’s insight into her characters shows just how difficult it is to make connections, while still off...
Long before Magic and Michael, before Kobe and LeBron, there was Ossie, the first scoring leader in the National Basketball Association—at least for a few seconds. Ossie Schectman, a Knicks guard and a onetime all-American at Long Island University in Brooklyn, died on July 30 at 94. According to The New York Times, he was remembered as a central figure in the NBA’s creation tale. He scored the first 2 points in the league’s history and became something of a celebrity when the distinction was u...
Dr. Jill Gabrielle Klein is author of “We Got the Water: Tracing My Family’s Path through Auschwitz” My father had to cope with an unfathomable situation: at the young age of 16, he was a prisoner in Auschwitz. He was deported from Hungary in the spring of 1944, was separated from his family and friends, and spent a year in Nazi concentration camps. Today he is 85. In the decades since the war ended he has enjoyed life to its fullest, having decided the day he was liberated that he would not give any more of himself to his captors by conti...
