Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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PORTLAND, Ore. (JTA)—It’s brunch time at Mother’s Bistro & Bar and owner-chef Lisa Schroeder has a small crisis on her hands involving the accidental defenestration of a busboy. Moments earlier, a server had tripped and gone flying through one of the restaurant’s large picture windows. Shattered glass covered the pavement outside, where the hapless staffer was being treated for a nasty gash by an ambulance crew. Meanwhile, dozens of undeterred diners were waiting to be seated. “What’s... Full story
PORTLAND, Ore. (JTA)—Jessica Bettelheim, a business ethics lecturer at Portland State University and a young Jewish mother, has little time to spare on weekends. Like other professionals her age, she’s busy bonding with her husband and 4-year-old daughter, meeting friends at one of Portland’s many fine restaurants or gardening, a favorite pastime in this verdant metropolis known as the City of Roses. So when Bettelheim received an email from the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland last month... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A same-sex Israeli couple struggling against U.S. immigration laws are set to become the faces of the fight to extend one of the foundations of immigration policy to gays and lesbians. Adi Lavy and Tzila Levy have been caught in the bureaucratic red tape of the American immigration system since Lavy, who suffers from a kidney ailment, arrived in the United States in 2011 to seek treatment. The couple, whose New York marriage is not recognized by the federal government, have b... Full story
Welcome Jewish Americans… May is designated “Jewish American Heritage Month.” (I bet you didn’t know that. I certainly didn’t!) It is the official time we celebrate the contributions of Jewish Americans who have helped weave the fabric of American history, culture and society. (You can learn more about it at www.jahm.us.). Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz (a familiar name to most of us) and his wife Nesha Manischewitz are the first to be the founding corporate sponsors of Jewish American Heritage... Full story
When one Googles “Songs for seniors,” there are 3,250,000 results. One reason is that our older generation grew up listening and singing the same songs no matter where they were raised. Seniors love to sing. They love to belt out their old favorites. They enjoy it even more when others join in—especially younger volunteers. Seniors relish the opportunity to laugh and share some happy singing time with the Jewish Pavilion volunteers. Even seniors with dementia recall the songs of their youth... Full story
Diamond’s gesture to Boston NEW YORK (6NoBacon)—After a horrible week in their city, one Bostonians surely want to forget, singer Neil Diamond brought them a memorable moment. Diamond came to Fenway Park on April 20, when the Red Sox played their first home game following the Boston Marathon bombing five days earlier. It was also less than a day after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the bombing, was captured following a manhunt that included a shootout with police and a lockdown on Boston and ot... Full story
Although her book “Tradition and Equality in Jewish Marriage: Beyond the Sanctification of Subordination” (Continuum International Publishing Group) focuses on Jewish marriage laws and tradition, Melanie Landau is really considering a much larger question: Is halacha (the rabbinic legal rulings of the past) binding for eternity or should sociological factors be taken into consideration in order to acknowledge contemporary sensibilities and ethics? Landau notes her own conflict with these iss... Full story
By Jonathan Mark New York Jewish Week For years, the modest dress of Satmar chasidim, and their request that visitors dress in kind, was seen by some non-Jews as Amish-like charming, by some liberal Jews as annoying or religious bullying, and within their own Satmar world as a gentle way to bring holiness to something as ordinary as the length of a sleeve or socks. What chasidic modesty has never been called in the United States is illegal, a violation of human rights. But New York City is now saying exactly that, filing charges against seven... Full story
TEL AVIV—Because it has no source of energy, a dead star—known as a white dwarf—will eventually cool down and fade away. But circumstantial evidence suggests that white dwarfs can still support habitable planets, says professor Dan Maoz of Tel Aviv University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. Now Maoz and professor Avi Loeb, director of Harvard University’s Institute for Theory and Computation and a Sackler professor by special appointment at TAU, have shown that, using advanced technology to become available within the next decade, it should... Full story
If you are a teenager, you have probably laughed at some of the reasons people tell you why you should learn to play the card game bridge: “It will increase your math and logic abilities!” Great, so will Madden… “It will keep your mind sharp when you’re 70!” Great, that’s a long time from now... “Bridge is cool, the ACBL (American Contract Bridge League) said so!” Hahahaha, good one. A common misconception about bridge is that there are not that many teenagers who play the game. Spencer Dye... Full story
WARSAW, Poland (JTA)—Krzysztof Sliwinski, a longtime Catholic activist in Jewish-Polish relations, gazed wide-eyed at the swooping interior of this city’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Nearly two decades in the making, the more than $100 million institution officially opened to the public last week amid a month of high-profile, state-sponsored events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. “It’s incredible, incredible, incredible how things have changed,” Sliwinski... Full story
Two hundred fifty people, one huge tent, and the smell of brisket coming from the oven, can only mean one thing: Passover at Chabad of UCF is here! Every year, Chabad of the University of Central Floria holds seders on the first two nights of Passover, open to all Jewish students in the Orlando area. With many students from out of state or even down south, and unable to celebrate Pesach with their families, Chabad remains their home away from home. There where even a few families that came to vi... Full story
A correction… In last week’s column I suggested sending garbage pails filled with doggie poop bags over to North Korea as a missile. I now realize that was such a bad idea because human poop is used to fertilize the soil in North Korea. If they are accustomed to inhaling that, well… what more need I say? Texas, Boston, Ricin poisoned letters… What a week. I shudder to think what’s in store. It’s starting to feel like we are living in Pakistan! So much hate, so many sick and twisted people. We do... Full story
BALTIMORE (JTA)—Josh Perelman is seeking kin—but not his own. Rather, Perelman is on a quest for families and individuals who will share memories, artifacts and pictures that help tell the story of the American Jewish relationship with baseball. As chief curator for the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, Perelman is mounting an exhibition that will open next March. Instead of focusing solely on American Jewish baseball icons such as Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, the e... Full story
BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA)—On a corner in the heart of the former Jewish ghetto here, David Popovits sits down for some matzah ball soup and super-sized dumplings at his newly opened kosher-style restaurant. A burly, 40-year-old Hungarian Jewish businessman, Popovits used to eat in the restaurant as a boy, when its former owners ran a “dirty little place that smelled like oil but had good Wiener schnitzel,” as Popovits puts it. It wasn’t the memories but the location that convinced Popovit... Full story
It started around the time of his bar mitzvah at age 13, when Tomer Hen decided it was time to open his first business. “I wanted to be independent and not take money from my parents,” Hen told The Media Line. “I was too young to get a job so I started an online business. First, I started selling stuff from my room on Ebay; then I started buying Dead Sea products and Israeli army T-shirts. Soon it became larger than I expected and I was making $200 a month at 14-years old.” Today, at 19, Hen is a millionaire and owns three homes—one in Dallas,... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Meredith Ross will never forget when she first laid eyes on Lior, her partner for the past seven years. Lior, an infantryman in the Israel Defense Forces, was escorting Ross’ Birthright Israel group on a free tour of the Jewish state when his friend, a fellow soldier, was killed. Lior was leaving to attend his funeral and had come to say goodbye. The two 18-year-olds spoke for just five minutes, but it was enough. “I remember borrowing someone’s phone to call my mother in the U.S... Full story
“You are who they were.” This is just one of many quotes Laurence Morrell uses with his middle school students at the Jewish Academy of Orlando. Morrell, a longtime and enthusiastic genealogy hobbyist, also the past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando, is volunteering his time and knowledge to teach 11 JAO middle school students the basics of genealogy research. When asked why, Morrell answers with a gleam in his eye and a broad smile. “Because it’s importa... Full story
It is traditional for Jews to have two Passover seders during the first and second night of the holiday. The Jewish Pavilion of Central Florida, a nonprofit, held 40 seders over the course of a month.... Full story
Shades of Mel Gibson… The following information comes directly from the Simon Wiesenthal Center with asides by me: “Vicious attacks on the memory of the Holocaust…from denial to distortion…to revisionism…are erupting in countries worldwide. Every day in ways big and small, the deniers and anti-Semites are chipping away at our history, savaging the memory of the six million who perished. Some examples are: The senior Egyptian official in charge of appointing editors of all state-run Egyptian... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Moviegoers who head to “42” will see the story of how Jackie Robinson displayed legendary courage, class and talent in the face of immense pressure and racial hatred as he broke down baseball’s color barrier. Less well known is Robinson’s role in a controversy that erupted at Harlem’s most famous theater, and underscored his commitment to fighting all bigotry, including prejudice emanating from his own community. It was 1962, a decade-and-a-half after Robinson first took the fi... Full story
Jonah Hill’s deadly date NEW YORK—Jonah Hill has been on the market since his split from Ali Hoffman (Dustin’s daughter), and following a recent date it looks like the dry spell will continue a little longer. Hill apparently took a brunette to Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant in New York and, according to the New York Post, was trying “really hard to woo her” when something strange happened. “A man a table over leaned in and told Jonah, ‘I buried my dad today, and I just want to say you’re gonna be... Full story
BALTIMORE (JTA)—Visiting his late father’s ancestral village of Pavoloch in 2011 confirmed some of the images Lew Priven had long held of the place as a real-life Anatevka, the fictional shtetl of “Fiddler on the Roof,” such as the people he saw riding by on horse and wagon. Then he and his wife, Judy, learned of the horror: The 1,500-member Jewish community, massacred on Sept. 5, 1941, was buried in a mass grave. The suburban Washington couple were visiting the Ukraine village’s museum, housed... Full story
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—“Are you still a bigot?” Every year for the rest of his life, students studying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” would call Rabbi Milton Grafman, knowing little of the situation in 1963 Birmingham, and pose that question. His son, Stephen, a Washington attorney, said his father’s reputation “is still stained by what simply is not correct,” and this month’s 50th anniversary of the letter is a chance to explore the full context and history behind the letter. “The substance of the letter is beautif... Full story
SAN FRANCISCO—Mary Farquhar’s earliest memory is of flame. Specifically, the flames of war in the last months of World War II, when Japanese forces battled the Americans in a fight to reclaim Manila, Farquhar’s city of refuge. She was a toddler at the time, the daughter of Austrian Jews given safe harbor in the Philippines, where she was born in 1943. Hers was one of hundreds of European Jewish families—1,200 Jews in all—taken in by the Pacific island nation between 1938 and 1941, saved from the Nazis by an unlikely alliance of Americans and Fi... Full story
