Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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On the morning of Wednesday, April 1, what began as an ordinary workday at Jewish Pavilion Senior Services quickly turned into an extraordinary example of community, compassion, and perfect timing. Vanessa Stein, assistant director of Jewish Pavilion Senior Services, was at her desk when she received an unexpected call from Joel Kirschblum, owner of Sababa Market and Catering. He explained that he had prepared more Passover foods than needed - including matzo ball soup, charoset, and gefilte...
In the 1950s, Younes Dardashti, a Jewish man from Tehran's Jewish ghetto, became one of Iran's most celebrated singers. As the country underwent rapid secularization under the Shah, Jewish communities that had long been pushed to the margins found new opportunities. Dardashti's piercing, unmistakable voice filled Iranian airwaves, exclusive concert halls and the Shah's palace, earning him the title "Nightingale of Iran." Years after Younes Dardashti's death, his granddaughter Galeet is still sin...
Hearing loss is often considered a minor inconvenience or a normal part of aging. However, when hearing loss goes untreated for a long period of time, it can lead to a condition known as hearing deprivation. This occurs when the brain receives less sound stimulation over time and gradually loses some of its ability to process speech and other sounds. Hearing is not only about the ears — it is also about the brain. Sound travels from the ear to the brain, where it is interpreted and understood. When someone has hearing loss and does not use h...
After Passover, people wonder what to do with the leftover matzah. Some easy suggestions are to make appetizers using broken pieces of the cracker to serve with slices of cheese, cheese spreads or sauces from avocado and tomato. Adding salt and chopped herbs like oregano, basil, and dill, will add to the flavor. By making a fine powder or breadcrumbs in the food processor, you can thicken sauces and make cakes and cookies, bread chicken and fish and add to meat loaf and meatballs instead of breadcrumbs. Use the large pieces for lasagna,...
Forward Culture reporter "The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles"" By Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder Chronicle Books, 224 pages, $27 "Pickles are a favorite food in Jewtown," muckraker Jacob Riis, referring to the Lower East Side, wrote in "How the Other Half Lives," his seminal exposé on poverty. "They are filling and keep the children from crying with hunger. Those who have stomachs like ostriches thrive in spite of them and grow strong - plain proof that they are good to...
Mom: Tell me about your day at school. Little girl: We went outside for a fire drizzle! So goes the first report of a new and strange weather phenomenon. And certainly not the first innocent misunderstanding experienced by a child or even by an adult. This was in 1956. Back then, Art Linkletter’s show had a segment called “Kids say the darndest things” in which he interviewed children. Its popularity led to a bestselling book by the same title. Kids often say funny things because they mishe... Full story
(JNS) — A humble childhood, a meteoric rise to power, a fatal love affair, a confrontation with a giant. It’s no surprise that the life of King David, as told in the biblical book of Samuel, has attracted generations of filmmakers, with the second king of Israel played by Gregory Peck and Richard Gere, among others. More recently, the first season of “House of David” drew 22 million viewers in its first two weeks on Amazon Prime last year, with a second season released on March 27. David also features in a new animated musical and a four-pa...
There's an FAQ on the website of the London theater where the Kadimah Yiddish Theatre of Melbourne's production of Yentl is running through April 16. The very first item reads: Is this a stage version of the 1983 musical film starring Barbara Streisand? No - the London production of Yentl is a play. It is a new adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's 1962 short story, "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" - just like the Streisand film was at the time. This explanation does more than relieve box office staff...
(JNS) - Every Passover, we ask the same question: Why is this night different from all other nights? This year, for the first time since Oct. 7, the answer is freedom. Real, hard-won and finally ours. Every living hostage is home. Every murdered hostage has been given the dignity of a Jewish burial. After 738 days that felt like lifetimes, the circle has closed. For two-and-a-half years, my heart broke on a rolling basis. Not a dramatic, one-time shattering, but a daily, quiet, relentless...
Many remember Beth Schafer when she was the cantor soloist at the Congregation of Reform Judaism back when it was the Congregation of Liberal Judaism. She has just released a new album, stating, "After months (years?) of dreaming, shaping, re-shaping, recording, listening, second-guessing, and ultimately trusting, "Sinai" is out in the world. "This album feels different to me," says Schafer. "Not just because it is entirely in Hebrew, but because of the musical landscape it travels. These arrang...
I went to the dermatologist today to have the first of two skin cancers removed — one on my face, the other on my neck. As she worked, I asked whether I should finally spring for tinted windows in my car. She smiled gently and said, “You can, but the roots of these growths go back more than 20 years.” That sentence landed like a rock. Twenty years? I had thought of all the times I had driven lately with the Florida sun blazing through my window or walked the dog “just for a minute” without a hat or sunscreen. The damage, my dermatolo...
One of my friends, Robin Asher, wrote: “Myrna, Myrna. What can I do? I can’t eat anything. That’s why I’m writing you. No sugar, no yeast, no milk, no dairy. I think I need a food fairy.” The Internet offers many recipes that substitute allergy producing symptoms. Gluten-free oats, pulverized to flour, in the food processor, almond flour, coconut flour or measure-for-measure flours are now easily available for gluten intolerance. Unsweetened applesauce, monk sugar, coconut sugar, brown rice sugar, agave, and honey can be used as sweetener...
Reprinted with permission from the Forward For weeks, I lived in Tel Aviv as missiles streaked across the sky overhead. I heard sirens day and night, disrupting sleep and leaving me constantly bracing for the next alert. I ran to dozens of shelters across the city, waiting tensely as interceptions echoed overhead. And yet, when I decided to leave Israel amid the ongoing war with Iran, I expected to feel relief. Instead, I felt a quiet, disorienting grief — as if I were stepping away from a moment I had spent my entire life waiting for. For m...
On the surface, "Ethan Bloom" looks like a familiar coming-of-age story: a 13-year-old nervously preparing for his bar mitzvah. But in this warm, funny, and surprisingly heartfelt film, the path to growing up takes an unexpected detour - straight through a Catholic church. At the center is Ethan, played by newcomer Hank Greenspan, a boy who secretly finds comfort inside a Catholic church while his family prepares for his bar mitzvah. Father Diaz (Carlos Ponce) becomes an unexpected guide, while...
Marilyn Shapiro has been a freelance writer for the Heritage Florida Jewish News since 2017. Most of her articles center on Jewish themes and her family. Some of her stories are accounts of people's lives during the Holocaust and how others are keeping alive the memory of its unfathomable history. She is an excellent writer - garnering four (two First-places, a Second- and a Third-place) Florida Press Newspaper awards since 2020. One of her First-place wins, "The mother of women's swimming:...
(JNS) — With the eight-day holiday of Passover practically around the corner, rabbis at OU Kosher are preparing for thousands of questions from Jews around the world. Along with the OU Kosher hotline, fielded by Rabbi Zvi Nussbaum, the Orthodox Union says its rabbinic coordinator, Rabbi Chanoch Sofer (also known as the “Webbe Rebbe”), is poised to address more than 3,000 Passover-themed questions expected to arrive via email. “Everybody thinks that we’re super-busy now with Pesach,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of OU Kosher,...
(JNS) — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) filed three joint resolutions of disapproval on Thursday targeting U.S. arms sales to Israel. The resolutions set up another test of Democratic support for Israel, after a record 27 senators tied to the Democratic caucus voted in favor of a similar Sanders resolution last summer to halt the sale of tens of thousands of automatic assault rifles to Israel amid the Jewish state’s war against the Hamas terror organization. The Thursday filings address the $658 million in munitions sales the Trump adm...
(JNS) - The siren went off at 8:17 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28, in the northern Israeli city of Safed-a nationwide alert warning Israelis of the start of "Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury," the joint Israel-U.S. offensive against Iran's current regime. Julia Marzouk, 15, from Chicago, woke in a panic. She couldn't find her shoes. So she ran-barefoot, heart pounding-down to the shelter. "I felt completely confused," she said. "I asked questions in my head about what was going on. I had never experi...
(JNS) - As one enters the iconic Dizengoff Center shopping mall in Tel Aviv, it is hard to imagine that deep below, on parking level minus four, a city of its own has taken root. Three weeks into the war with Iran, Israelis in Tel Aviv have grown weary of repeatedly moving between their apartments and building shelters-or, for some, public protected spaces several streets away. On level minus four, tents have been erected and shared spaces assembled from garden chairs, colorful blankets and...
The following recipes by Myrna Ossin are for Passover. Enjoy! Passover Orange Chicken Meatballs This recipe is good any season. It has some Asian spices and is easy for a quick dinner. Serves 4. 1 lb. ground chicken 2/3 cup matzah meal 1 egg 2 T. soy sauce for Passover made with coconut aminos 1 tsp. garlic powder 1 tsp. ginger powder or 1 tsp. fresh ginger, grated 1-2 T. avocado oil Sauce 1 T. potato starch mixed with 2 T. water 1/2 cup fresh orange juice ( I also make this with tangerine peel...
ARNOLD RAFKIND LEVY Arnold Rafkind Levy, 93, passed away peacefully on March 10, 2026. Born in the Bronx in 1933, Arnie grew up in Brooklyn, NY, surrounded by many cousins, aunts, and uncles. Arnie went to Brooklyn College and then graduated from Harvard Law School in 1957 after taking a year off to attempt to write the Great American Novel, Rafkind Rabbit. He had three children with his wife, Carole, and practiced corporate and securities law in NYC as a partner in the law firms Wagner McNiff DiMaio & Levy and Epstein Becker & Green. He also...
Quick! There’s no time for leavening. No rye bread and no bagels. No time for a lengthy examination about individual empowerment versus group interdependence. Instead, we bring a freestyle assortment of Pesadik (Yiddish for Pesach) stories and macaroon-sized morsels from the contributions of our fellow tribal members. May the bitterness of your horseradish be counteracted by a spoonful of Haroseth! Freedom and Life — A personal revelation Without life there is no freedom. Nu? Did I need to tell...
As we celebrate Passover, I contemplate my ancestors' flight out of Egypt. If the Exodus happened today, I am not sure if I would ever make it out of Egypt. According to the midrash, the Pharoh commanded the Israelites to leave immediately following the tenth plague. As we all know, they had so little time that the bread had no time to rise. As a woman who loves to bake challah, I could live with whipping up the dough and foregoing the rising process. As long as I had butter and raspberry...
For many people unfamiliar with traditional Jewish communal structure, the word kollel can sound foreign, abstract, or even intimidating. Sometimes the reaction is candid: “Is that simply a group of men sitting in a room studying ancient texts?” Others may wonder whether such an institution has relevance in a modern, growing Jewish city. The truth is that a kollel is one of the most quietly transformative institutions a Jewish community can have — especially outside major population centers. At its core, a kollel is an advanced center of Jewis...
Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, more people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year than all other cancers combined. Among these cancers, melanoma is less common but far more dangerous because it is more likely to spread to other parts of the body if it is not detected early. Melanoma accounts for about one percent of all skin cancers, yet it causes a large percentage of skin cancer deaths. The good news is that when melanoma is found early and treated promptly, the...
