Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 3626 - 3650 of 3712
JERUSALEM—On the night we arrived in Israel two weeks ago, my wife and I went for a stroll to see the newly renovated train station complex in the center of town. As we walked through the gates and saw the large, enthusiastic crowds, we realized we were entering not only a beautiful addition to the cultural life of the city but a tangible example of the local government’s efforts to keep Jerusalem relevant and appealing to non-Orthodox Israelis and tourists. Indeed, it doesn’t take long for a visitor in this country to sense that tensions betwe... Full story
Things have never been better for many of us. Europeans are quarreling rather than killing one another. Jews are capable of reaching the top of virtually all professions, with decent housing and no worry about gentlemen’s agreements or restrictive covenants, and safe from plunder and pogroms. Life expectancy and other good stuff are at historic heights in much of the world. No longer do we tell our children and grandchildren to clean their plates because Chinese or Indian children are starving There are problems. South Koreans—at levels of deve... Full story
As we witness the latest attempts to restart the comatose peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, we heard about the recent shutting down of Better Place, a much-ballyhooed Israeli venture that aimed to revolutionize the world of electric cars. It’s hard not to see a poetic link between these two failed ventures—one dreamed of being free of war, the other of being free of oil. The closer you look at them, the more similarities you see. First, they both suffered from the poison of too much hype. It’s not true that all publicity is go... Full story
With the beginning of summer comes a time of reflection. School’s out and summer break is starting, so now is a time when we look back at the past year. And this past year was difficult. It included major natural disasters (tornadoes in Oklahoma, Hurricane Sandy) and human tragedy (Boston Marathon bombing, the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary). We sense that our world is in need of repair. And those of us who think of ourselves as global citizens, as well as Jews, feel called to do something to counteract this chaos. Working to fix our b... Full story
It is so very difficult, indeed utterly unbearable, to sit silently by while Jews, and now the general religious and secular communities, completely misuse and distort the term Tikkun Olam—certainly not intentionally or out of any malice, but rather out of ignorance in the pursuit of virtuous goals and principles which may be applicable to general society and civilization but which have tragically become a poor substitute for authentic religious observance. This repair rhetoric has become an obsession, a catch-all credo. Everything today is T... Full story
My Aunt Rita Levy died last week. Of all the siblings in her family, she was perhaps the least well known. Her sister Dorothy (Dottie) Morrell was considered the gatekeeper to the Orlando Jewish Community for many years, greeting and introducing new residents to those who lived here, and the cultural series at the Jewish Community Center was named after her. Sister Florence (Flossie) founded the Neighborhood Law Center in Orlando that served the poor and indigent for many years. Bea Ettinger... Full story
Roman Blum died a few weeks ago. He was 92, and he wasn’t well. He died a very rich man. According to estimates from his accountant and lawyer, somewhere in the area of 40 million dollars. A nice area. Roman Blum left no family. His wife died a few years ago. Roman Blum was a Holocaust survivor. He said he was from Warsaw, but the few records found about his early life say he was from Chelm. Those of you who know Yiddish folk tales will appreciate why Roman Blum did not want to be known as someone from Chelm. According to what records are a... Full story
“Of making many lists there is no end, and much blogging wearies the eyeballs.” Ecclesiastes doesn’t say that, exactly—but might have had the author lived to see the proliferation of lists ranking the most influential rabbis and other Jews. The latest entry in an increasingly crowded market is the Jerusalem Post’s “50 Most Influential Jews.” According to the newspaper, its honorees have “a proven record of incredible political, social, and cultural influence on the Jewish world and the world at large.” Its top 10 includes a mix of Israeli po... Full story
If ever there was a time to come together as Jews, it is now. Either we learn from history and survive, or we ignore it, and suffer the consequences. With rising anti-Semitism around the world, which is often disguised, as anti Zionism, we must be proactive as a community. What should we do? I am far from being an expert, but I do have a few observations to offer. First of all, we need to let go of the labels that divide us. It does not matter what stream of Judaism we identify with, what synagogue we do or don’t attend, or if we are s... Full story
(JTA)—Throughout our four years in college, Hillel has been our home on campus. We have been involved extensively, with one of us serving as president on campus and on the Hillel international board. While we both found in Hillel a supportive community, when it came to our relationship to Israel, Hillel was not always so welcoming. One of us often avoided expressing political views in Hillel board meetings for fear of losing credibility. The other openly expressed her political views, which was met at times with harsh criticism. We both r... Full story
JERUSALEM (JTA)—What could Goebbels have done with 140 characters? The question, disturbing as it might sound, can no longer be approached only as theoretical. As the arch-propagandist of Nazism, Joseph Goebbels spread the demonic messages of his Fuehrer via the written word, mass demonstrations, radio and film. He used those avenues to near perfection, promoting what perhaps was the most evil publicity campaign in the history of humankind. Some eight decades later, the tools are different but the motivations are the same. In the place of v... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—What happens when the rabbi who delivered the invocation at your nomination inveighs against you? Three controversies in quick succession have earned President Obama opprobrium from some of his most steadfast liberal supporters, including Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. The controversies besieging the White House in recent weeks have included State Department emails suggesting the White House tried to change the administration’s talking points concerning the deadly attac... Full story
By Andrew Silow-Carroll New Jersey Jewish News First, let’s take a deep breath. Stephen Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott of Israel may be infuriating, but it’s not the end of the world. On balance, I’ll prefer to remember it as a week in which Facebook appeared ready to buy its third Israeli company and the Washington Post declared Israel “a major player in the Mediterranean, and perhaps even the European, natural gas market.” Hawking’s decision makes news, after all, because it’s not the norm, and the Boycott, Divestment and... Full story
Newspaper estimates of the numbers taking part in recent demonstrations tell us something about the ranking of items on the agendas of various sectors. What is impressive is not the precision of such numbers, but great differences in their magnitude. On Thursday evening of last week, it was estimated that 30,000 haredim massed outside the Jerusalem recruitment office, with some of them expressing the low level of violence likely to occur when riled by their rabbis. Several protesters and police were injured, eight haredim were taken into... Full story
April’s Israel divestment vote at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is just the latest unfortunate expression of how hateful an environment the anti-Israel movement can create for Jewish students and supporters of Israel on campus. I witnessed this firsthand during my four years as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley from 2007-2011. In 2010, when the last similar initiative was proposed before the ASUC (UC Berkeley’s student government body), urging the University of California Regents to divest funding from companies doing bus... Full story
By Gary Rosenblatt David Passig, a professor at Bar-Ilan University, is the first to admit that he is neither a prophet nor a seer. Still, his job is to predict the future, based on the new academic discipline of Future Studies. His latest book, “2048,” describes the conflicts that likely will dominate the next half-century, including a major world clash between superpowers by 2020, the emergence of Turkey as a key regional power and buffer between the U.S. and Russia, and a major Israeli attack on its northern neighbors that will result in... Full story
The news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unfairly targeted conservative groups has brought renewed spotlight on a 2010 lawsuit filed by the pro-Israel group Z Street, which alleges it was also singled out by the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status. The Z Street case, whose first hearing is set for July 2 in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, has raised eyebrows in the Jewish community. But Z Street’s claims, if true, would not mark the first time the IRS has been used against Jewish activists. During the Holocaust e... Full story
During his visit to China last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled that the city of Shanghai was “one of the few places that opened its gates” to Jews fleeing Hitler. Officials of the Chinese Communist government, standing nearby, beamed with pleasure at the expectation that people all over the world would read how their regime rescued Jews. But is it true? As the prime minister noted, the port city of Shanghai was a haven for many European Jewish refugees during the Hitler years, at a time when most other countries, inc... Full story
In a crummy economy, people are always looking for good investments—a promising stock, a real estate opportunity, a star mutual fund. It’s really not that different in the “mitzvah economy”—donors and do-gooders are also looking to squeeze the maximum amount of goodness out of every charity investment. On that note, I’d like to share with you a mitzvah that has a ridiculously low investment and an incredibly high return. It’s a mitzvah called shmooze. I think of this mitzvah every time I’m stuck in freeway traffic and I call my mother in Montr... Full story
By Ira Sharkansky The latest numbers about the 2-year-old Syrian civil war are 80,000 deaths, one million refugees over the borders in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and a total of four million displaced Syrians either over the borders or away from their homes in Syria. As always, we must be suspicious about round numbers published by organizations with an interest in portraying the carnage. Nonetheless, by all the indications, the death, dislocation and destruction have been great. Perhaps greater than Afghanistan, and more than in every other... Full story
What’s your definition of a “major national Jewish organization”? Could it be made up of less than 20 people? Don’t laugh. Consider the case of the American Jewish Congress. The storied organization, dating back to 1918 and led in its early years by such illustrious figures as Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Felix Frankfurter and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, suspended its activities in the summer of 2010, having lost virtually all of its money and staff in the Madoff scandal. But while many mourned the loss of a once proud, grass-roots defense... Full story
How much Islamophobia is just enough? That’s probably the least sensitive way to pose a question that has been bothering me lately. The Boston Marathon bombings gave a new boost to the cottage industry of “anti-jihad” activists, like Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes, who have thrived since 9/11. The anti-jihadis exploit an incontrovertible fact—that a radicalized form of Islam has spawned repeated terrorist attacks around the world—to concoct an indictment of Islam and all of its practitioners. Every good question they ask about, say, the prior... Full story
In a recent, exhaustive study of anti-Semitism, the German scholar Clemens Heni explains the significance for Christian theology of the story of Ahasver, a Jewish shoemaker in Jerusalem who, legend has it, refused Jesus a resting place as he made his way to Golgotha bearing the cross on his back. Ahasver’s punishment, says Heni, was to wander the world for eternity, an image that formed the basis for what the Nazis famously called “der ewige Jude”—“the eternal Jew.” “The attribute ‘eternal’ cries out for redemption,” writes Heni. “For Christia... Full story
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Until recently, I thought of Ruth, the heroine of Shavuot, as a positive role model, a woman who made good choices, was strong and fulfilled. But lately I’ve been rethinking this and focusing on the strange dynamics of what appears to be an unhealthy, possibly abusive, relationship between Ruth and Naomi, her mother-in-law. Abuse is about power and control, and abusive relationships are not limited to romantic situations. Any relationship has the potential to be abusive, including relationships among friends and families or bet... Full story
By Ed Ziegler The United States is known for welcoming immigrants seeking freedom and a better life. The vast majority of immigrants embrace our language, customs and laws. However it appears that many Muslims have developed a pattern to change our way of life to satisfy their religion and customs. In 2010 Safoorah Kahn, a new teacher (a Muslim) in the Berkeley, Ill., School District filed a law suit against the school for refusing her a 19-day leave in mid-semester to travel to Mecca. Her request did not meet those set forth in the... Full story
