Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The Shabbat of Memorial Day weekend later this month will mark a first in American Jewish life: Three New York City congregations representing the three major U.S. Jewish movements will daven from the same prayer book. Produced by the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) Jewish Chaplains Council specifically for the military, the siddur that the trio of shuls will use for those services made its debut at the Jewish Community Centers of North America (JCC Association) biennial in late March. Distribution...
Aviva Sufian was just 8 years old when her mother took her to an American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors event in Philadelphia in 1985. She remembers survivor after survivor standing up and announcing, "My name is..., and this is where I'm from." Sufian, whose grandparents had come to this country shortly after World War I, says her parents "placed a primacy on my understanding the world they came from," including understanding the devastation of the Jewish people under the Nazi...
(JTA)-In less than a year, Dane Kuttler and Rowan Parker exchanged vows in 10 different wedding ceremonies at 10 different venues on two coasts under nine different marriage canopies. In what Kuttler calls "Wedding Tour '13," the introverted Seattle couple wanted to share their celebration with as many friends and family as possible while avoiding the pressures of one big party. "It was fun," Parker said. "We wanted to travel. We wanted to take a big vacation." The couple first exchanged vows...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Natan Zaidenweber thought the mohel was kidding. His wife, Linda Raab, thought it was some kind of religious formality and didn’t give it a second thought. But the mohel, Cantor Philip Sherman, was serious. Though most fathers demur when he invites them to perform the bris on their sons by clipping their foreskin, preferring to delegate the task to someone professionally trained in the procedure, Sherman finds that about 5 or 10 percent of dads agree to do the cut. “It is the father’s mitzvah to actually perform the bris as...
(JTA)—Susan Esther Barnes had had a rough two years. Her father’s death in April 2011 came as a shock; she hadn’t even known he had been hospitalized. And his widow leaving town for a week complicated plans for his funeral and burial. As executor of his will, Barnes discovered that the money in bank accounts that were to go to her and her sister had been transferred to someone else. All in all, it was an extraordinarily difficult ordeal, says Barnes, who wrote about the experience on her Relig...
WASHINGTON, DC—Sam Bain knew that life could be dangerous in southern Israel, with rockets fired indiscriminately across the border from Gaza. But it wasn’t until the Ohio college student visited an Israeli day care center near the Gaza border that the reality truly hit him. This day care center was a bomb-safe facility. “We don’t have bomb-safe day care centers in America,” Bain told JNS.org. “It was almost a wake-up call” about the reality of life in Israel, he said. Bain visited the Jewish st...
(JTA)—As his mother read to him, Levi Davishoff puckered and moved his lips in the universal sign indicating that something is sour. He then pointed to the lemon pictured in the library book. His mother, Marla, was thrilled. It was the first time that Levi, then 18 months old, had communicated with the baby sign language he had been learning. He had been in therapy for developmental and cognitive delays since was 2 months old. Davishoff rushed out to buy the book, “Joseph Had a Little Overcoat,...
(JTA)—Five years ago he was D-Black, a hip-hop artist rapping about the violence, gang activity and drugs of his African-American ’hood. Today he’s Nissim Black, an Orthodox Jew davening in a Sephardic shul in Seattle and writing songs he describes as rap/urban alternative that “speak a message of hope and inspiration.” The shift in his musical message will be on full display with his new album, “Nissim,” due for release July 16. Meanwhile, the changes in his personal life were underscored e...
The year was 1935. Yehoshua Abramowicz, just 14, was leaving Poland to join his father in England. His mother told him, “Try to be a good Jew.” By all accounts, the boy who became Stanley Abramovitch and never again saw his mother—she along with two of his brothers, one of them his twin, perished in the Holocaust—did just that. For nearly seven decades, Abramovitch, who died May 13 at 93, worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), traveling throughout the world and ded...
There might not have been a State of Israel if a Jewish Russian immigrant boy hadn’t found a banana in a back alley by his uncle’s dry goods store in Selma, Ala. That young boy, Sam Zemurray, “fell in love” with the exotic and expensive fruit—they were sold after being cut up at 10 cents per piece in 1876—and became determined to make bananas widely available to the public. Through determination, business acumen, and ruthlessness, Zemurray did just that, in the process controlling armies and...
As the director of a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, Naomi Taffet sees a lot of women in tears. But once a year, for Mother’s Day, she has a chance to witness what she calls “happy tears.” That takes place when Taffet, executive director of CHANA-Counseling, Helpline & Aid Network for Abused Women in Baltimore, delivers a large bouquet of Mother’s Day flowers, courtesy of Jewish Women International (JWI), to the CHANA safe house. Through its Mother’s Day Flower Project, which for 15 ye...
In a fiery speech in Edison, N.J., attended by about 70 supporters, controversial anti-jihadist blogger and author Pamela Geller warned Americans and Jews about a war being waged against Western ideals by Islamist radicals. Geller had accepted an invitation three days earlier from Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg to speak April 14 at Congregation Beth-El, after a Long Island synagogue cited security concerns in canceling her appearance there. Geller, who runs the blog “Atlas Shrugged,” has angered Mus...
In his video, performance art and photography, Shimon Attie reminds viewers of the way history imposes on the present—and demands that they confront the past. Whether depicting the devastating effect of the Holocaust on Berlin’s Jewish community or the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Los Angeles-born artist turns to his craft to transmit images of loss and shared dreams. “The common theme is displacement,” said Attie during “Art and Memory: Moving Images,” a recent prog...
After most of Daher Dhudy’s family was murdered in a bloody civil war in Somalia, the teen fled with his only surviving brother on a perilous journey through Egypt, reaching safety only when they crossed the border into Israel. “I never found any racism or discrimination” in Israel, the 27-year-old, who is black and Muslim, told a March 7 gathering at the Rutgers University student center in New Brunswick, N.J. Dhudy spoke of an Israel where he was able to find a safe haven, work, and receive a college scholarship, earning a degree in gover...
