Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 4252 - 4276 of 4548
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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.... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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...
Princesses’ gig a teacher’s nightmare NEW YORK (6NoBacon.com)—When Stefan Serie appeared as an extra on Bravo’s “Princesses: Long Island,” he did what the female stars on the show do practically every episode—prance around a party wearing minimal clothing. The difference between Serie and the ladies (one of the differences, anyway) is he actually had something to lose: a job. The 30-year-old health teacher in Merrick showed up shirtless on the series premiere at Erica’s bash in the Hamptons, h... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)—The show was supposed to be a celebration of glamour and glitz, but in the second episode it dropped a bombshell: One of the protagonists’ husbands died of cardiac arrest. The five stars of “Meusharot,” Israel’s version of the “Real Housewives” reality series, handled the news in their own ways. One grappled with her feelings about death. Another baked a cake to bring to the shiva. Jennifer Snukal tried a different approach, arranging a sexy photo shoot that aimed to produce an... Full story
Right around the corner... When you read this column, hopefully I will have returned safely from Las Vegas... but actually, I don’t fly out there for another day. I hope my airport experience is more pleasant than on my last flight, which was round trip to Chicago from Orlando. It was an especially long wait for me on the TSA lines because the guy in front of me had to remove his ear pierce, his nose pierce, his tongue pierce, his belly-button pierce... (And I’m grateful not to have to remove my... Full story
KIEV, Ukraine (JTA)—Hours after assailants shot Rabbi Artur Ovadia Isakov on a street in the Russian republic of Dagestan two weeks ago, mainstream Russian media were still scrambling to ascertain his identity. But Isakov’s name and condition already were known to the readers of Jewishnet.ru, a growing social network with 80,000 daily users that has relied on user participation to cover Jewish news and help connect fast-assimilating Jews across the Russian-speaking world. The first report abo... Full story
BALTIMORE (JTA)—For Howie Perlman, a kibbutznik in Israel, hearing about the New York reunion of his Yeshiva of Central Queens Class of 1973 spurred him to post a few period photographs on Facebook. Then he had an idea: Let’s hold a reunion in Israel of the 15 or so YCQ graduates living there. Perlman was looking for a way to honor his parents, Martin and Zelda, who had died one month apart last fall. What better way to remember them, he figured, than recalling his time at a school for whi... Full story
Seeing the green scaly skin and long snouts on the characters, you might not guess at first that Ed Shankman’s latest book is about a child’s visit to his grandmother in the Sunshine State—inspired, in fact, by his own two Jewish bubbes, one assimilated and sophisticated, the other the embodiment of Yiddishkeit to her core. “Both these women were amazingly influential in my life, taught me all kinds of stuff, and showered me with unconditional love and appreciation,” he told N.J. Jewish Ne... Full story
By Abigail Klein Leichman Israeli rescue equipment helped workers save the lives of at least eight trapped miners in South Africa on July 28, after a nightmarish three-day ordeal underground that left three dead, allegedly at the hands of an armed rival illegal mining crew. The Agilite Instant Harness was used by Riga Rescue volunteer Graham Holmquist to lower a South African police interpreter down into the shaft to communicate with the injured miners regarding the procedures to follow. The product is designed for scenarios where military,... Full story
Inviting the museum visitor down hallways and through rooms of rendered memories and memorials, the Gary Baseman show at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles uses a design based on the artist’s Jewish childhood home to offer up a retrospective of his extended family of characters, related artworks, and family memorabilia. The show’s title, “The Door is Always Open,” is taken from a remark Baseman’s Yiddish speaking father made while explaining his attitude about hospitality: “Gary, th... Full story
Almost 70 years after the Holocaust and 50 years after Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations, a textbook commission is shedding light on how the two countries are promoting their sustained cultural and historical connection. Dirk Sawdowski, chairman of the German-Israeli Textbook Commission, describes that there is a fundamental difference between the German education system and the Israeli education system that “finds expression in each country’s secondary and high school textbooks.” “Although both systems try to impart western... Full story
