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) – Some people search the world for those they knew before time and circumstance intruded. David Scherr was sitting at his desk at a Baltimore auto repair shop when the lost walked through the door. The amiable Scherr was working in the front office of K&S Associates when a tan Volvo station wagon was towed in this winter with electrical problems. Over the course of several days, Scherr regularly u... Full story
TEL AVIV—Americans work longer hours, take fewer vacation days and retire later than employees in other industrialized countries around the globe. With such demanding careers, it’s no surprise that many experience job burnout—physical, cognitive and emotional exhaustion that results from stress at work. Researchers have found that burnout is also associated with obesity, insomnia and anxiety. Now Dr. Sharon Toker of Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Management and her fellow researchers—professors Samuel Melamed, Shlomo Berliner, David Zeltser a... Full story
Thirty years ago, Israeli hiker Amos Ziv observed a group of visually impaired teens out on a nature trail. They were having a rough time of it, and Ziv decided the only solution was for him to find a way for people with disabilities to experience the great outdoors safely and enjoyably. That’s the story behind LOTEM, a nonprofit organization that now serves about 30,000 Israelis every year through a range of nature clubs and outdoor programs geared to children and adults with physical, c... Full story
AMSTERDAM (JTA)—The dreamy expression of a child at a chocolate factory slowly spreads across Geza Weisz’s handsome face as he watches the quivering breasts and buttocks of young black women dancing around him at an Amsterdam nightclub. The scene appears in “Only Decent People,” a dark and provocative Dutch-language film that examines the fraught relations between the country’s Jews and other minorities and stars Weisz, a Jewish Amsterdammer and a major movie star in Holland. Based on a 2009 be... Full story
Can Broadway musicals teach us about changing American attitudes to the Holocaust? In “Echoes of the Holocaust on the American Musical Stage” (McFarland and Co., Inc, Publishers), Jessica Hillman, an assistant professor of theater and dance at the State University of New York at Fredonia, uses eight Broadway shows to examine how this “unique American art form” has served as a “venue for playing out our cultural obsession with Nazism and the Holocaust.” Her focus is on the public perceptions of the Holocaust and how, as popular opinion changed,... Full story
See something? Say something… This saying really doesn’t apply here… but if the following email (or photo) I recently received, rings a bell in any way… do say something to someone, please. Especially, contact HANAN SHOMRONY via the email address below: “My name is Hanan Shomrony and I’m searching for my brother. He was born in 1946 , his parents’ first born, in Europe after the Second World War. In 1949, when he was 2 ½ years old, he and his parents made aliya to Zfat in Israel. He was hospita... Full story
A generation ago, kids Matt Nadel’s age would be content collecting baseball cards. But in 2013 Matt is making baseball news. Making and reporting it. At 14, Matt is the youngest “pro blogger” on MLB.com, writing not about his favorite contemporary players, or even those his dad, Steve, followed as a kid, but back to the days of Ruth, Cobb and Mathewson. “It gives me a much more thrilling feeling to study the background and history of the game,” said Matt, an eighth-grader at Golda Och Academy in West Orange, N.J. who lives in Springfie... Full story
Sometimes the right book appears at just the right time. That was the case with Anne Lamott’s “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.” The past few months have been difficult for a variety of reasons and I’ve been seeking ways to handle the stress. When writing about asking God for help, the Christian Lamott offers suggestions for dealing with difficult times. Her advice made me look closer at my Jewish thoughts and practices. Lamott believes in order to survive our hardest moments, we must release our problems and hand them over to... Full story
In his video, performance art and photography, Shimon Attie reminds viewers of the way history imposes on the present—and demands that they confront the past. Whether depicting the devastating effect of the Holocaust on Berlin’s Jewish community or the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Los Angeles-born artist turns to his craft to transmit images of loss and shared dreams. “The common theme is displacement,” said Attie during “Art and Memory: Moving Images,” a recent prog... Full story
The camera opens on a frazzled Philip Roth. He is futzing with the horseshoe of hair he has left, rubbing his face and furrowing his unruly brow as a look of supreme unease settles over his face. For a man who recently announced his retirement, he seems a bit stressed. And for a writer who has spent the better part of his life projecting outward, Roth, at first, squirms under the scrutiny of the camera’s gaze. “In the coming years I have two great calamities to face,” he announces at the beginning of the documentary “Philip Roth: Unmaske... 
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Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology report that cells from the amniotic membrane part of the placenta normally discarded after a woman gives birth could one day be a source for human eggs. The discovery was published online recently in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology. Amniotic membrane cells—originated about eight days after conception—preserve the plasticity of an embryo’s cells before they differentiate. The Technion researchers found these cells also have the ability to differentiate into ones that expre... Full story
It was the first day of spring, and Jeffrey Tambor was sitting in his car in the snow near his New York home, conducting an interview while his 6-year-old daughter—one of his four children, ages 3 to 8, including twin toddlers—was taking her piano lesson. “Daddy is tired, but I’m a lucky guy,” he said in his signature baritone. Life is good for the 68-year-old actor, not only in terms of his family but also in the realm of his career: In May, Tambor will reprise his role as George Bluth Sr.... Website
NEW YORK (JTA)—Advertising, it’s fair to say, is in Ben Feldman’s blood. Yes, he technically plays a fictional advertiser, the Jewish copywriter in AMC’s award-winning drama “Mad Men.” But Feldman says it was his excellent marketing skills that landed him the role. “The casting loved that I was a Jew in real life,” Feldman told JTA. “They were looking for the typical character, a Jew with a heavy accent, and I played it up for all it was worth.” A 32-year-old traditional Jew from Washington, Fe... Full story
“Tele-Vangelizing” in Israel?... What else could you call it? The name “tele-vangelizing” seems perfect! This comes from The World Jewish Congress Foundation Digest with my asides: “There’s something stirring in the air over Jerusalem and Israelis are feeling the static. It’s one thing for evangelical Christians to show their fervid support for Israel. It is quite another thing for them to tell Jews to convert in time for the Second Coming.” (Really? Sure, I pretended to convert when I was 5 ye... Full story
Refaeli choice stirs a ruckus NEW YORK—Among Israelis, supermodel Bar Refaeli has been among the more controversial figures. It’s not because people are jealous of her looks. Or friends. Or wealth. Or success. Well, maybe partly. But more Israelis think of her negatively because she dodged the compulsory draft in the country. Refaeli married a family friend in order to be exempted from service. Now she is at the center of a dispute between the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Ministry of... Full story
In preparation for my upcoming annual New York trip, I have been scouring the dining pages of the New York Times to find out about all the new, hot restaurants. Getting reservations is always a challenge. Booking weeks in advance is a must, even before your air tickets are purchased. But always, my first and last stops in this city of spectacular restaurants are at a New York deli. I’m not sure if it’s the nostalgia, the legendary wait staff or, as some say, the special New York City water that makes that pastrami sandwich heaven between two... Full story
BALTIMORE (JTA)—Earlier this month, a “Seeking Kin” column concluded with Rozanne Dittersdorf of New York expressing hope that Phyllis Garfunkel, a childhood friend with whom she lost contact in the late 1940s, “found happiness over these years and created a family of her own.” And in a February column, Jerusalemite Sofia Greenberg wondered what became of her grandfather’s brother, Mordechai “Morris” Greenberg, who had left Ukraine for the United States more than a century ago. The missing have... Full story
NEW YORK—Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai recently came to New York City to talk about his city of sun, sand, skyscrapers, and start-ups. With “just two minutes” on a winter afternoon to introduce the city and its entrepreneurs, he began his presentation with a weather report. Noting the damp, cold conditions, Huldai teased, “I’ve left behind the wonderful weather of Tel Aviv to talk about the start-up culture that began on the day the city was born.” During this event organized by the Consulate G... Full story
Standing behind the podium of the 2013 NAACP Image Awards is a man in a tux with a red tie whose smooth, dark skin is stretched over a frame so long that it cannot fit through a standard doorway. Behind the same podium, a woman comes up to maybe the bottom of that man’s ribcage. She is fair skinned, black haired, ruby lipped, and sheathed in black lace. She looks like a Jewish Snow White. He is the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) all-time leading scorer, an actor, New York Times bes... Full story
PARIS (JTA)—Cigarette in one hand and cup of tea in the other, Matisyahu sat down with JTA in his closet-sized dressing room during his European tour to talk about his life, his music, how he’s raising his kids, and the recent changes in his religious outlook and physical appearance. The beatboxing reggae star once known for his signature beard and hasidic garb has left his yarmulke by the wayside, dyed his hair blond and moved to Los Angeles from the hasidic stronghold of Crown Heights, Bro... Full story
MONTCLAIR, N.J. (JTA)—In the space of a single painting, Siona Benjamin juxtaposes feminism, Indian mythology and Jewish imagery. On a three-foot canvas, she’ll paint a portrait of a blue-skinned figure, usually a character from the Bible, with nods to Persian miniatures, Talmudic fables and Vishnu gods. Often there’s a message in Arabic. “I want people to realize there can be a universal message in Jewish art,” Benjamin told JTA. “I didn’t want to just be a Jewish artist, explaining my... Full story
It was eight years ago, on a rainy afternoon at New York City’s Javits Center, while I was covering the annual Kosherfest trade show, that I first met one of the fathers of the modern kosher wine industry. At the time, I had just started writing The Jewish Week’s “Fruit of the Vine” column, and I was still relatively unknown in the industry. While most of the vendors, noticing my press badge, treated me courteously, there was one vendor who gave me the real VIP treatment—not, I think, because I... Full story
BOSTON (JTA)—Francine Hermelin Levite and Edgar Bronfman have been using unique versions of the Passover Haggadah for years. Now both have decided to publish their versions of the Exodus story. Hermelin Levite, 43, the mother of three school-aged children, is the author of “My Haggadah: Made it Myself,” (http://madeitmyselfbooks.com), an interactive version for children of the ritual-laden book that is now available on Amazon. Bronfman, 84, the business giant and Jewish philanthropist, offer... Full story
So what else is new?... According to an international agency that studied Israel’s delivery of health care, the agency finds Israel has a quality system overall (again I repeat, what else is new?) but with some improvements needed. The World Jewish Congress Foundation reports (with asides by me) that “the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which Israel is a member, dispatched an international team to the Jewish state more than a year ago to investigate hos... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—It’s rare that an Orthodox rabbi chooses to omit an important Jewish ritual in his holiday celebrations. But in the spring of 2000, Rabbi Yosef Lipsker cleared his living room of furniture, set up three large dining tables and invited dozens of people to a special seder that included all the standard Passover observances—except for one. “When it comes to seders, everybody thinks of the four cups of wine drunk during the service,” said Lipsker, a consultant at the Caron Treatment... Full story
