Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - Today is not just "Barbie" release day - moviegoers are also planning to fill theaters across the United States to see Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" biopic. Many hope it will answer a question that has long divided Americans and the country's understanding of its history: Who exactly was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb? Oppenheimer's name has become "a metaphor for mass death beneath a mushroom cloud," in the words of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, whose 2005...
(JTA) - When Michael Neuman found out his run on this season of the NBC obstacle course competition show "American Ninja Warrior" would not air, the competitor inside of him was crushed. Part of the filming schedule had conflicted with his Shabbat observance. But Neuman was even more disappointed that he would not get to keep any footage from the show. Neuman, a 30-year-old psychotherapist from Miami Beach, had arranged to bring three young people from his Jewish Inspiration Foundation - which...
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly and is reprinted with permission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. The full special issue on “Israel at Seventy-Five” can be found at https://ccar.co/summer23. “A Tough Neighborhood” This is the line of Noah. Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age; Noah walked with God. — Genesis 6:9 JPS 1962, 1985, 1999 A rabbinic midrash on this verse suggests that a person should not be judged by absolute standards — that time,...
(Israel Hayom via JNS) - Dozens of personal diaries from people living through the early years of the Jewish state have been handed over to the National Library of Israel as part of the Operation Diary project. One presented recently describes the life of the immigrants on the Exodus 1947 ship. "September 1, 1947 - one person died on one of the ships today," Miriam Sternberg Wechsler wrote. "In the presence of all the ships that stood still for a short while, he was lowered for burial in the...
Family histories are a precious legacy of who you are and from where you came. Unfortunately, as time goes on, these stories can get lost over time. Dr. Lane Jay Mercer heard his family stories all his life. He shared them like bedtime stories with his four children. His son suggested he write the family history down so that future generations could enjoy their heritage. And that's what he did - "An American Jewish Family Saga" follows five generations of his family's journey from Spain during...
(JTA) - Long before the craze over the upcoming "Barbie" movie, most people could conjure an image of the doll: She was the beauty standard and the popular girl, a perky, white, ever-smiling brand of Americana. She was also the child of a hard-nosed Jewish businesswoman, Ruth Handler, whose family fled impoverishment and antisemitism in Poland. And some see the original Barbie as Jewish like Handler, a complex symbol of assimilation in the mid-20th-century United States. The doll's latest...
This article originally appeared on My Jewish Learning. (JTA) — Last week’s Torah portion is named after one of the Torah’s more complicated figures. Pinchas is the grandson of Aaron, the first high priest, and son of Eleazar, the second, and his lineage seems to set the stage for one of the most horrific moments in the Torah: Pinchas personally took it upon himself to execute an Israelite man in the act of having sex with a Midianite woman. The perceived immorality of Midianite practice apparently overwhelmed the biblical author’s passion...
(JNS) - Here's a joke: "A Jew, a Black and a Hispanic walk into a bar... association.... " It's not really a joke, but rather a colorful way of describing the composition of liberal Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, as embodied by justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in order of seniority. The black robes, as it turns out, are mere uniforms for when the court is in session. Compared to the first 233 years of its existence, when it was largely an all-white male...
(JTA) - British soccer icon David Beckham is known globally for his bevy of championships as well as the "bend" he could put on the ball during 20 seasons of play. But on Sunday, approximately 600 people in a London synagogue saw him exhibit a different talent: saying "Hamotzi," the Jewish blessing over bread. That moment of Hebrew came during an interview Beckham gave at St John's Wood Synagogue about his Jewish heritage as well as his career. According to accounts in British Jewish...
(JTA) — The prolific Jewish actor Ed Asner died nearly two years ago, but his final film will hit select theaters on Friday. In “Tiger Within,” he plays a Holocaust survivor who becomes the unlikely friend of a homeless teenager who was raised by a Holocaust denier. The movie was filmed in the summer of 2018, and Asner, the Emmy award-winning actor best known for his roles as Lou Grant on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Carl in the Pixar animated film “Up,” died in 2021 at the age of 91. “Tiger...
JERUSALEM (JTA) - Helen Mirren will soon become linked with Golda Meir in the minds of many viewers when she plays the late Israeli prime minister in a new film. But the award-winning actress has another, real-life connection to Meir: the two are related, Israeli genealogical researchers revealed on Thursday. Mirren was in Jerusalem for the Israeli premiere of "Golda," the dramatic film she's headlining about Meir's handling of the Yom Kippur War - when Egypt, Syria and a coalition of their alli...
There are some light spoilers for “The Bear” in this article. (JTA) — “The Bear,” FX and Hulu’s drama series about the behind-the-scenes workings of a Chicago restaurant, has been one of TV’s most acclaimed series since debuting last year. The first episode of its second season, which debuted June 22, brought up a controversial term that caught the attention of critics: “Jewish lightning.” Most found the reference funny but didn’t want to touch it. A Vulture critic wrote,” I’m not even going to...
(JTA) - Israel's national men's soccer team qualified for the Olympics for the first time in nearly 50 years by making a surprising run at a major under-21 European tournament. Israel lost to England on Wednesday in the semifinals of the UEFA European U-21 Championship, a biennial contest among the continent's best under-21 teams. But three days earlier, after a win in the playoff round against Georgia, Israel earned a place at the 2024 Paris Olympics alongside just 15 other countries. Soccer...
Heritage received a story about this wonderful couple, Theda and Bob Levinn, and ran it in the June 30 issue. Since then, we have learned that story was not accurate at all. This is what really happened! Theda and Bob Levinn are truly remarkable people. Bob is 98 years old and Theda is 94 years old. They are living proof you can find love at any age. Bob and Theda were married in 2019. Their ketubah hangs on the bedroom wall. The two met in the 1990s when Bob and his then-wife came with his sist...
(JNS) — Sometimes, kids just need a hug. That’s especially true of children who have endured the horrors of war. In 2006, Israeli psychologists invented a plush dog called Hibuki—Hebrew for “hug”—to help kids cope with trauma from the Second Lebanon War. The stuffed toy, with its elongated arms and sad eyes, has expanded globally. Last year, it was introduced in Ukraine, and now Hibuki is comforting many Ukrainian refugee children who have made their way to New York, at a Brooklyn school that...
(JTA) — Israeli actress Gal Gadot, best known for her role as Wonder Woman in the eponymous 2017 film and franchise, will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year, joining the more than 2,700 members of the entertainment industry who have been immortalized with a Hollywood star. Gadot will be the first Israeli actress to receive a star on the Walk of Fame. Haim Saban, the Israeli media mogul, creator of the “Power Rangers” TV show and major Democratic donor, received a star in 2017. Other Jewish figures awarded stars for 2024 incl...
Estimates indicate that approximately one third of people with dementia and 1 in 7 of those with Alzheimer’s disease lives alone. A diagnosis of dementia does not automatically mean a person cannot safely live independently. Some people may be able to live on their own for some time after the initial diagnosis. Others may be at too much risk to continue living alone. It is common for people living with dementia to go through a series of stages from complete independence to living with someone or needing a long-term care placement over the c...
There are so many elements to unpack in the extraordinary Israeli drama “The Lesson” — which is based on a true story and won the best series award at the Cannes International Series Festival last year — that it’s hard to know where to begin. The starting point of this gripping six-part miniseries, which premiered this month on ChaiFlicks, the Jewish streaming service in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, is a confrontation between an outspoken student and her civic...
(JTA) — David Wolpe has been called one of the most quoted rabbis in the United States, and not always to his advantage. As senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, one of the largest and most visible Conservative pulpits in the country, the decisions he makes and things he says are often treated as bellwethers of centrist American Jewry. When he questioned the historicity of the Exodus story or began performing same-sex marriages, for example, he made front-page news. Wolpe has also led an unusually diverse synagogue, with pews filled b...
Theda and Bob Levinn of Oakmonte Village were married two years ago. Marriage is always special, but what is so special about this wedding? Bob was 96 years young and Theda did not tell her age, as is a lady’s prerogative, when they exchanged their vows. They both were married before and the two couples were close friends. After their spouses passed away they started dating. Bob, now 98 years, and Theda are very happy....
(JNS) — The wife of Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO whose submersible, Titan, vanished on June 18 during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, is a direct descendant of two famous Jewish passengers who perished when the ocean liner sank in 1912. Wendy Rush is a great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus. Isidor was co-owner of Macy’s department store. She is descended from one of their daughters, Minnie, who married Dr. Richard Weil in 1905. Their grandson, Dr. Richard Weil III, is Rush’s father, said Joan Adler, executive direc...
Hebrew is one of the oldest spoken languages in the world and the sacred language of the Jewish people. It is the only language ever to be revived as a spoken language - nearly 2,000 years after it ceased being one. A Brief History of Hebrew Hebrew was the language spoken in biblical times by the ancient Israelites. One of the original names for this language, and the one it is called today, is ivrit, because it is the language spoken by a people called the ivrim, or the Hebrew people. But it...
(JTA) - Pop star Harry Styles gave a shout-out to a pair of Orthodox Jewish friends who walked close to six miles to attend a concert of his at London's Wembley Stadium on Saturday. Jewish Chronicle reporter Tash Mosheim, who was at the show, heard Styles tell the crowd of 90,000 that he was grateful for Ben and Meredith Winston's efforts to show up at the gig, which opened its doors well before sundown on Shabbat. The couple walked from their home in Hampstead, an outlying area of London, to...
(JTA) - Viewers of the popular game show "Jeopardy!" got a glance of one of the United States' most distinctive synagogue buildings on Tuesday, after a clue showcased Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan. The Conservative synagogue had leaked the fact that it would appear as a trivia item on "Jeopardy!" for days before the game, and as luck would have it, one of the contestants on Tuesday lives just a 45-minute drive from Southfield, in Dexter. Ben Goldstein told the Jewish...
LOS ANGELES (JTA) - The White House recently released a detailed strategy for combating antisemitism, complete with more than 100 action items. One thing not on the list? Comedy. That's where Jewish celebrities such as Howie Mandel, Rachel Bloom and Michael Rapaport came in on Wednesday night at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, at a so-called "Roast of Anti-Semitism." As event organizer Dani Zoldan put it, the comedy show was focused on "making fun of people that hate Jews." Emceed by...
