Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 9 of 9
PARK CITY, Utah (JTA)-The Sarah Silverman that the world knows and loves is a loudmouthed, foulmouthed, ribald comedian who tramples on the boundaries of social decency with sharp purpose and uproarious glee. The Sarah Silverman who stars in the domestic drama "I Smile Back," which premiered at Sundance, is stripped of both bravado and joy. In the movie, which marks Silverman's first starring dramatic role, she plays Laney, a deeply depressed housewife who veers into self-destructive behavior....
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-Henry Koster had a long and successful career in Hollywood, directing a string of hits from the 1930s through the 1960s, including "Harvey," the comedy classic that paired Jimmy Stewart with a 6-foot invisible rabbit. But perhaps the most important film Koster ever made was also his least famous. Koster's "From Europe to Hollywood I," a home movie he shot in 1936, followed his journey from Hegyeshalom, Hungary, to Los Angeles. For Koster the trip -across Europe, the Atlantic...
LOS ANGELES (JTA) – The music that packs the Skirball Cultural Center's stately courtyard – Yiddish tango – is a musical hybrid twice over. On the tango side, it is a blend of African-born rhythms and a potpourri of European music styles. On the Yiddish side, it combines mournful liturgical melodies with folk songs. Tango, too, is famous for its sensual dance, while Yiddish music is rooted in the festive freylekhs of traditional wedding bands. In combination, the two prove irresistible, as th...
(JTA)-The streets of North Miami Beach look different since the murder of Rabbi Joseph Raksin. At Northeast 175th Street and 8th Court, in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood where he was killed, a memorial of candles is arranged in a Star of David that the community keeps lit. Police officers have stepped up their patrols, filling the streets at all hours. Raksin, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic sect who was in town from Brooklyn, N.Y., to visit his grandchildren, was shot on the...
(JTA)-It is now open season for those who would like a chunk of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's change and think they have a big idea up their sleeves. On Tuesday, the Genesis Prize Foundation announced the launch of the Genesis Generation Challenge, a competition offering 10 awards of $100,000 each to teams that can successfully present innovative projects "guided by Jewish values to address the world's pressing issues," according to a foundation statement. Teams must have approximately 10 people...
BOSTON (JTA) – One recent Tuesday evening, a group of about two dozen Jews in their 20s and 30s huddled around wooden tables poring over the text for the week’s Torah portion. A rabbi prodded them with questions about the petition that Zelophehad’s daughters submitted to Moses to inherit their father’s estate. Why do they petition at this juncture? Why does Moses refer the question to God? Members of the group raised hands, offered theories, debated. The learning session took place not in a synagogue study hall but at a bustling cafe in Harv...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-It's Friday night, and patrons are sitting and chatting over plates of tajine and hummus waiting for the evening's main event, a stand-up comedy show. It could be any nightspot in this city. But a closer look reveals a bolder agenda than just good food and entertainment. The comedy show, part of a long-running series called "The Sultans of Satire," features Muslim and Jewish comedians with roots in Iran, Afghanistan and Morocco. The room's walls, meanwhile, display an art...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)-It's a sunny morning in Southern California and Lea Rosenfeld, a soft-spoken, bespectacled woman who looks like a Jewish grandmother, squares her feet, faces her target and squeezes off five shots with a handgun. All of them miss. "I never even held a gun in my hands before," she later confesses. "I'm still shaking." Still, Rosenfeld keeps shooting in the hot sun. She says she's doing it because of her parents and what they endured: Both were Holocaust survivors. "My question...
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—According to Jewish tradition, the Torah is so sacred that even a single error made on a single letter renders the entire scroll unfit for use. And yet the Hebrew Bible, including the Torah (its first five books), is riddled with corruptions and alterations that have accrued and been passed down over the millennia. Now an international team of scholars is working to fix all that. For the past 14 years, the team behind “The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition” has been laboring on a project to sift through the text and rever...
