Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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America’s loss of dominance was inevitable. Its standing from the late ‘40s through the ‘50s could not last. The power derived from being the sole country on its feet after the most destructive war in history. The American economy thrived as a result of pent-up purchasing power from wartime full employment, the genius of sending demobilized troops to college, the skills they acquired, the economic boom associated with the babies they made, and the additional genius of foreign aid in the context of the Cold War that made the U.S. No. 1 in a wes... Full story
Should you be fearful of someone who demands you convert to his religion or he will kill you? What if there were 100s of such fanatics demanding you convert or they will kill you? What if you learned that they have killed thousands who refused to convert? There were thousands of people who took the fanatics’ demand too lightly. Below, are a handful of typical scary statements made by Islamic leaders. Read their words. Their words are similar to those spoken by many around the world. Then consider the possibility that they mean and intend to d... Full story
It’s common these days to micromanage what information we receive. Many of us have a list of favorite Web sites and blogs we regularly go to, as well as Facebook pages and mobile apps that reflect our individual tastes and ideologies. It’s a way of maintaining some level of control amid the chaos of the Internet. There’s an opportunity cost, however, to micromanaging this flow of information: We rarely experience the joy of what I call “bumping into knowledge.” That’s why I want to tell you about my all-time favorite Web site, Arts & Letters D... Full story
A new book published in the United States this week reveals that President Obama considers the prime minister of Israel to be a pain in the tuchus. For those Yiddishly challenged this translates as a pain in the posterior. No doubt the diplomatic fraternity will be frantically trying to play this latest revelation down and bury it under the proverbial carpet but for us mere mortals it is plainly obvious that despite spin doctors’ activities to the contrary, Israel’s reluctance to acquiesce to its own demise, does cause painful symptoms in the... Full story
The subject of incitement as an impediment to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may finally be getting the attention it deserves. But even now, discussion of the issue glosses over a deeper problem. Israel has been complaining for years about Palestinian Authority incitement against Israel and against Jews, arguing that it merely inflames old anger, stirs up violence and terror, and foments new hatred in each new generation. Most depressingly, it prevents the population from coming to terms with the idea of peacefully... Full story
When I was much, much younger I desperately wanted to be a musician. It was something my parents never encouraged, and I didn’t have any close friends who missed hanging out in the afternoon because of their music lessons. But I loved music. I loved the piercing sound of an electric guitar, the thrum of a bass guitar, the blast of a saxophone. So I tried. I tried them all—guitar, sax, mandolin, bass. I even went so far as to take harmonica lessons, because I thought, “That at least I can maste... Full story
Ah, Saudi Arabia! The country that spawned 15 of the 19 terrorists that executed the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. The country we in America are told is an ally, even though, when it comes to values, we have virtually nothing in common with the reactionary oil billionaires running the place. The country whose oil supplies us, for the moment, with about 13 percent of our annual energy needs. The country with one of the most abysmal human rights records in the world, which bans any religion other than Islam, which imports slave labor from the... Full story
In Woody Allen’s Sleeper, the hero wakes up from cryogenic sleep to find out a war has wiped out the world as he knew it. “Over 100 years ago,” a doctor tells him, “a man named Albert Shanker got a hold of a nuclear warhead.” Allen knew this incredibly specific joke would kill in 1970s New York, where it was easy to imagine that Armageddon would be launched by the fiery, bespectacled, Jewish leader of the New York City teachers’ union. The joke came to mind when I read how casino mogul, Jewish benefactor, and Republican bankroller Sheldon Ade... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—Belief in God is at the core of my very being. But that belief is sometimes challenged by the scores of innocents killed over the millennia in God’s name, from biblical times to the present day. Last month, dozens were killed at a shopping mall in Kenya by terrorists demanding to know if those they were confronting were Muslim. If Muslim, they were spared; if not, they were murdered. One man who claimed to be Muslim was asked to name Muhammad’s mother. When he could not, he was summarily shot in the head. The day after the mall... Full story
Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) are engaging in negotiations refused for years by the PA. Yet, only weeks ago, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash delivered a paean to Shekih Ahmad Yassin, founder and leader of Hamas, the terrorist organization that has murdered hundreds of Israelis in scores of suicide bombings, calling him a Palestinian “icon.” How can peace talks and glorifying a terrorist chieftain coexist in the PA? Al-Habbash gave us the answer this summer, when he justi... Full story
A decade ago, Jewish parents worried that their children wouldn’t marry Jewish or bar and bat mitzvah their own children. Today, however, we see a younger generation that is marrying within the faith and looking to raise their children Jewish, while maintaining a strong bond to Israel. Taglit-Birthright Israel’s free educational trip, offered to young Jewish adults between the ages of 18 and 26, is largely responsible for creating the change we believed only a decade ago to be impossible: The younger generation is not only more connected to... Full story
In the important new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, American Jews overwhelmingly (by 94 percent) say they are proud to be Jewish. And yet, one of the most significant trends cited by the survey is the growing percentage (32 percent) of younger, “Millennial Generation”Jews, who identify themselves as Jews with no religion, considering themselves Jewish solely on the basis of ancestry, culture, or ethnicity. This stands in sharp contrast to my parents’ generation—the “Greatest Genera... Full story
One of the unintended highlights of this year’s Conversation—the annual Jewish Week-sponsored two-day retreat for a wide variety of Jewish leaders and future leaders from around the country—was the emerging friendship between two participants with seemingly little in common besides their names. Actually, their name. You see, the small team that helps put together the list of about 55 participants each year had intended to invite David Ingber, the dynamic and popular rabbi of Romemu, a growing congregation on the Upper West Side. When his posit... Full story
Years ago, Grandma told me, for the nth time, that God helps them who help themselves. It’s a message she should have directed to the Palestinians, as well as to her lazy grandson. Once more, the Palestinians are blaming others for their problems, while their most obvious roads to progress remain unused. This time it is Khalid Amayreh, writing in what he labels “occupied East Jerusalem” about what he claims to be “institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews in Israel.” I received the article from my friend Muhammad, with whom I often dis... Full story
Throughout the Jewish communal world, there is no hotter topic this month then the Pew Research Center Study called “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” released in early October. The study confirmed what most of us have been watching over the past several years—a shift in the way Jews see themselves and the way they relate to the Jewish community. While American Jew overwhelmingly say that they are proud to be Jewish and have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, the study shined a light on the changing nature of Jewish identity in th... Full story
NEW YORK (JTA)—The leaders of the Jewish Federations of North America are calling for free Jewish preschool for every Jewish family in America. In an Op-Ed published Thursday on the Huffington Post and in the Forward, Jewish Federations CEO Jerry Silverman and board chairman Michael Siegal said free Jewish preschool would “dramatically widen the pipeline of families entering Jewish life through this critical early gateway.” The idea was one of four proffered by Silverman and Siegal to “intensify—and make affordable—the most effective v... Full story
Dear Editor: I’ve found that some of life’s most interesting paradoxes reside in some of its biggest trivialities... like why are gas tanks on the driver’s side of some cars but the passenger side of others; or why are they called stairs inside and steps outside; and why is a Heritage column that promises “The Good Word” so often the bearer of bad? I don’t know David Bornstein well enough to know if he’s a naturally negative person or if he has to work at it, but I find another paradox in the question of how a family (David’s) that historical... Full story
A decade ago, Jewish parents worried that their children wouldn’t marry Jewish or bar and bat mitzvah their own children. Today, however, we see a younger generation that is marrying within the faith and looking to raise their children Jewish, while maintaining a strong bond to Israel. Taglit-Birthright Israel’s free educational trip, offered to young Jewish adults between the ages of 18 and 26, is largely responsible for creating the change we believed only a decade ago to be impossible: The younger generation is not only more connected to... Full story
Life at the top can be lonely. If you became the “Decider”—the one who must make the difficult decisions—taking the best advice of trusted associates, there would come a time in any really important decision when it is on you and you alone. While Dick Cheney gets a lot of the blame for the horrific miscalculations that led to more than a decade of war and hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the fact remains, the president was in the chair and he had the final yeses and noes. Same goes for the head of any democratic society. If you happen... Full story
By Ira Sharkansky Somewhere in the American side of my brain is a memory of hearing that America is safe only when Congress is on vacation. The feeling may not be appropriate this week, when members of Congress are trying to do something along with the White House to loosen their collective hands from the throat of the world’s largest economy, and via globalization on the rest of us. Leaving America aside for the time being, the view of danger when a legislature convenes fits Israel, especially this week when the Knesset returns from its s... Full story
As a young Israeli who had just completed five years of service in the IDF, I looked forward to my new job educating people in the Pacific Northwest about Israel. I was shocked, however, by the anti-Israel bigotry and hostility I encountered, especially in the greater Seattle area, Oregon, and Berkeley. I had been very liberal, a member of the leftist Zionist party, Meretz, but the anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel that I have seen in the U.S. has changed my outlook personally and politically. This year, from January through May, I went to co... Full story
A response to David Bornstein’s “Community held hostage” In last week’s issue, Heritage Florida Jewish News published a column by David Bornstein in which he discussed the refinancing of the Maitland campus debt and used it as a proof of a malaise afflicting our Jewish community. David accurately describes the circumstances of the refinancing process. The Jewish Federation was faced with a potential crisis and did its best to save the Maitland campus for the Jewish community. There was some disagreement regarding certain aspects of that pr... Full story
I’ll confess that when I first read about Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s disagreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, I felt a degree of sympathy. Not for the substance of the argument, but for the manner in which Lapid expressed it. “My father didn’t come to Haifa from the Budapest ghetto in order to get recognition from Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas),” Lapid said Oct. 7 at New York’s 92nd Street Y. “Darn right,” I grunted at my Mac... Full story
A new mortgage encumbering the Maitland community campus was recently signed. The campus, home to the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, The Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Academy of Orlando, and the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center, is truly the jewel of our communal assets. Sadly, this process has revealed flaws in the jewel that run so deep it may be cracked beyond repair. When Bank of America announced that it would not renew the letter of credit for the old... Full story
Rabbi Ovadia died at noon on Oct. 7, at the age of 93, after more than two weeks in intensive care and hourly reports of his decline, improvement, and final decline. The eulogies were scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., with burial in the small cemetery of Sanhedria about a kilometer distant. The vehicle carrying the Rabbi’s body moved at a rate of inches per hour, and had not approached the cemetery by the time I went to bed. From the time of the Rabbi’s death, the three television channels had little more than coverage of the clogged streets, occ... Full story
