Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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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...
Traveling when you’re caring for someone in a wheelchair requires a more planning ahead. Hotel Tips When booking a hotel, ask if they have accessible rooms available. This may require booking over the phone because sometimes you can’t select for disability online. Confirm with the hotel that their accessible room has the features you need. Road Trip Tips If you’re driving very far, rest stops are inevitable. Not all of them are handicap accessible, so preplan your rest stops. If you have a commode chair that is smaller than the wheel...
(JTA) — One spring morning in 1934, two little girls followed their mothers to a corner grocery store in Amsterdam. The mothers, hearing each other speak German to their daughters, discovered they were both Jewish refugees who had recently fled Nazi Germany. The two girls peeked shyly at each other from behind their mothers’ skirts, one of them slight with dark, glossy hair, the other taller and fairer. Those two girls were Anne Frank and Hannah Pick-Goslar. One was to become the most fam...
(JNS) — The BDS movement has been a total failure. It has not damaged Israel’s economy, it has not turned Israel into a pariah, it has not changed Israeli policy, and it has not destroyed the Jewish state. The BDS movement has tried to create the image of winning by claiming phony victories. It has also capitalized by convincing a handful of mostly B- and C-list celebrities to shun Israel. The fight to achieve these symbolic “victories” is the subject of Lana Melman’s well-researched book, “Artists Under Fire: The BDS War Against Celebrities...
(JNS) — A new Italian film that tells the real-life story of a Jewish child papal authorities removed from a family and baptized secretly in the mid-19th century is drawing criticism from some Jewish leaders, including Rome’s chief rabbi. The historical drama “Rapito” (“Kidnapped”), directed and co-written by Marco Bellocchio, recently debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. It explores the story of Edgardo Levi Mortara in a narrative loosely based on the book Il Caso Mortara by Daniele Scalise, which was highly critical of the papal role in the s...
Talking with author Ed Borowsky is pure enjoyment. He shares stories from his life that are funny, whimsical, sad, and always with a ring of truth to mull over. His writing style is the same way. He expertly weaves his life experiences into his fictional characters and the situations they find themselves in to the point that reality and fiction become one. "It's a Good Day to Liquidate" is his first fiction novel and it will be released June 29. It's not his first published work - that goes to...
In “Why We Sleep,” Dr. Matt Walker explains how sleep can make us healthier, safer, smarter, and more productive. He provides knowledge and strategies to overcome the life-threatening risks associated with our sleep-deprived society. Walker is on a mission to change our attitude about sleep with a book that aims to demystify what sleep is, warn us of the consequences of sleep deprivation, explain the world of dreams, and give us practical advice on rest. The National Sleep Foundation recommends an average of eight hours of sleep per night for...
(JTA) - British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran came close to setting the attendance record at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday, drawing a crowd of 89,106 concertgoers. The current record-holder? A celebration of Talmud study in 2012 that filled the seats and stands with 93,000 people, most of them Orthodox men. That gathering, called the Siyum HaShas, marked the completion of the seven-and-a-half year cycle of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying one double-sided page of Babylonian Talmud...
Super-star rappers French Montana, Post Malone and Cardi B made it the title of their 2019 hit. Rock artist Paul Simon mentioned it in his hit single, Kodachrome. Rembrandt immortalized it in his painting, "Belshazzar's Feast," and he included in that work a "word puzzle" from the rabbis of the Talmud. It's been satirized, politicized, popularized, set to music, made into the title of scores of books, bands and tunes. For more than 2,000 years, its imagery has terrified and mesmerized readers,...
(JTA) – Broadway made a statement about antisemitism Sunday evening, as two high-profile shows on the subject this season — the play “Leopoldstadt” and the musical revival “Parade” — pulled in multiple major Tony awards. Some of the shows’ honorees, in turn, made statements of their own linking hatred of Jews with other forms of hatred, including homophobia and anti-transgender sentiment at a time when trans inclusion is under attack in many places. “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic semi-autobiographical play about three generations of...
(New York Jewish Week) — Jews and comic books, two deeply entwined entities, will be the subject of a new pop culture convention coming to New York this fall. Billed as the “ultimate comics and pop culture event,” the first-ever Jewish Comics Experience, or “JewCE,” will take place at the Center for Jewish History on November 11-12. Created by Fabrice Sapolsky, a comic book creator and publisher, and Dr. Miriam Eve Mora, the director of academic and public programs at the Center for Jewish History, the event aims to be “an inclusive c...
(JTA) — Chicago Cubs first baseman Matt Mervis is selling T-shirts and hats emblazoned with his nickname spelled in Hebrew to raise money for the Israel Association of Baseball. “It’s a great cause to help grow the game in Israel,” Mervis told MLB.com on Thursday, “and try to build some fields over there.” Mervis, who is Jewish and a hotly anticipated addition to the Cubs this year, played for Team Israel at the World Baseball Classic in March. He is nicknamed “Mash” because of his homerun hitting power, a moniker that some fans and retailers s...
An exhibit at the new Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., asks visitors, "Who are you? and features a diverse array of Jews, June 1, 2023. Read the article titled "DC's new Jewish museum highlights Jews who shaped the nation's capital, from a Confederate spy to RBG."...
WASHINGTON (JTA) - Washington, D.C.'s new Jewish museum features at least two notorious women from history. One is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice, who was dubbed "Notorious RBG" late in her life by a cluster of fans. When the Capital Jewish Museum opens next week, it will launch with Ginsburg at its center when a traveling exhibit on her life has its final stop here. The other is the 19th-century figure Eugenia Levy Phillips, whom the museum chara...
