Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(New York Jewish Week) - Some of the most iconic American folk singers of the 1960s and '70s were Jewish: Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, "Mama Cass" Elliot. But what if there had been an entire Jewish family of folk royalty, whose descendants became stars of their own respective eras? In her debut novel "The Singer Sisters," which was published on Tuesday, writer and native New Yorker Sarah Seltzer dreams up this fantasy and fills it with rock music history, family drama and lots of Yiddishkeit. Singer...
(JTA) — Police estimated that 50,000 people showed up for a march against antisemitism on Sunday in what reports are calling the largest such gathering in London since before World War II. Organizers estimated that 60,000 attended the march, which was planned in reaction to the spike in antisemitism around the world that has accompanied the Israel-Hamas war that began on Oct. 7. Speaking at the march, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said Jews “will not be intimidated.” “We must teach our children that the superheroes of our society are tho...
(JTA) - Javier Milei, a colorful right-wing "anarcho-capitalist" who has said he would like to convert to Judaism, was elected president of Argentina. Milei's passionate love of Judaism and Israel has been one of the several unexpected qualities that Argentines and political analysts have become accustomed to during his rapid rise over the past year. Milei, 53, throughout his campaign blamed the outgoing government for soaring inflation and poverty rates. That government included Cristina...
This is a developing story. Friday - First 13 Israeli and 10 foreign hostages released (JTA) - Hamas released 13 Israeli hostages into Egypt on Friday, Nov. 24, a sign that the four-day ceasefire brokered between Israel and the terror group that runs Gaza was holding. Ten Thai nationals and one Filipino national were also released in a surprise additional deal that Egyptian officials said they had brokered. Thirty-nine Palestinian prisoners were released from Israel as part of the agreement,...
(JTA) - The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City's former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc. The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country's first Jewish president, too. Earlier this month, Sheinbaum, 61, was announced as the candidate for the l...
(JTA) - When David Corenswet was announced as the next DC Comics Superman last month, Jewish movie and comic fans rejoiced: He will be the first Jewish actor to portray the hero in a blockbuster. But one Jewish community in New Orleans has been particularly excited. "The Corenswet family is well known and loved" in New Orleans, said Daniel Sherman, rabbi of the city's historic Temple Sinai synagogue. "I have also heard a few groups talking about having some screening events to support David and...
(JTA) - Israel's national men's soccer team qualified for the Olympics for the first time in nearly 50 years by making a surprising run at a major under-21 European tournament. Israel lost to England on Wednesday in the semifinals of the UEFA European U-21 Championship, a biennial contest among the continent's best under-21 teams. But three days earlier, after a win in the playoff round against Georgia, Israel earned a place at the 2024 Paris Olympics alongside just 15 other countries. Soccer...
(JTA) - Pop star Harry Styles gave a shout-out to a pair of Orthodox Jewish friends who walked close to six miles to attend a concert of his at London's Wembley Stadium on Saturday. Jewish Chronicle reporter Tash Mosheim, who was at the show, heard Styles tell the crowd of 90,000 that he was grateful for Ben and Meredith Winston's efforts to show up at the gig, which opened its doors well before sundown on Shabbat. The couple walked from their home in Hampstead, an outlying area of London, to...
(JTA) — Chicago Cubs first baseman Matt Mervis is selling T-shirts and hats emblazoned with his nickname spelled in Hebrew to raise money for the Israel Association of Baseball. “It’s a great cause to help grow the game in Israel,” Mervis told MLB.com on Thursday, “and try to build some fields over there.” Mervis, who is Jewish and a hotly anticipated addition to the Cubs this year, played for Team Israel at the World Baseball Classic in March. He is nicknamed “Mash” because of his homerun hitting power, a moniker that some fans and retailers s...
(JTA) — A man rushed the stage and unfurled an Israeli flag at a Roger Waters concert in Frankfurt on Sunday in protest of the former Pink Floyd frontman’s continued criticism of Israel. Video circulating on social media showed a group of fans chanting “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The people of Israel live”) while the protester makes it to the main stage, where he lasts a few seconds before security guards chase him away. Since at least last week, Berlin police have been investigating Waters over a costume he has been wearing at concerts for years t...
(JTA) — Israel’s health ministry tweeted that Elon Musk was engaging with “fake news” regarding COVID-19 data, the third Israeli government ministry to comment on the Twitter owner’s views in recent weeks. Musk had replied to a tweet from Zero Hedge, a far-right blog site that features conspiracy theories and has been accused of spreading Russian propaganda. The tweet claimed Israeli data showed “zero young healthy individuals died of COVID-19.” The billionaire businessman wrote “Zero …” In response, the health ministry wrote: “Elon, unfortunat...
LONDON (JTA) - At a reception of faith leaders at Buckingham Palace the day after Queen Elizabeth's death in September, King Charles pulled Britain's chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, aside for a word. The reception was pushed earlier in the day than originally planned to accommodate Mirvis, since it fell on a Friday. But it ran long and Shabbat was approaching. According to Rabbi Nicky Liss, head of the Highgate Synagogue, Charles asked Mirvis what the rabbi was doing sticking around - didn't he...
(JTA) — A new drama on Netflix centered on a haredi Orthodox family that runs a business in Antwerp’s famed diamond district hit the platform on Friday and is drawing comparisons to the hit Israeli series “Shtisel.” “Rough Diamonds,” a joint production from Israel’s Keshet International and Belgium’s De Mensen, follows the Wolfson family as it navigates internal tension and business struggles in the wake of a death in the family. The protagonist, who left the haredi world 15 years earlier, returns to Antwerp to look into his relative’s deat...
(JTA) — Frankfurt’s administrative court ruled that the city can’t cancel a Roger Waters concert after calling him “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world.” Waters, the former frontman of the band Pink Floyd, took legal action and prevailed on Tuesday after Frankfurt officials said in February they would cancel his concert in May. The city can appeal the ruling. The Frankfurt court ruled that because Rogers “did not glorify or relativise the crimes of the Nazis or identify with Nazi racist ideology” in past concerts, it...
(JTA) - "It's like a Jewish 'Lord of the Rings,' but he's just going to his mom's house." That's how director Ari Aster, known for his acclaimed horror movies "Hereditary" and "Midsommar," described his new film, "Beau Is Afraid," in a behind-the-scenes video released on Wednesday. Aster, who works with A24, the same studio behind this year's Oscars darling "Everything Everywhere All at Once," said in a 2018 interview that he is a "proud Jew" who "doesn't practice very actively," and his...
(JTA) — When Israel and Poland agreed to resume Israeli youth trips to Polish Holocaust sites last month, their agreement stipulated that new sites be added to the students’ itineraries, including some that document Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, is now calling those additions “inappropriate” and “problematic.” In statements to Haaretz published on Monday, leading historians condemned the development, arguing that the new trip rules advance what they call Poland’s trac...
(JTA) - As part of his journey after a tumultuous decade and a half in the spotlight, former New York Mets star Darryl Strawberry is speaking at a pro-Israel event in his second career as an evangelical minister. Strawberry, an eight-time MLB All-Star-turned-traveling-preacher, will be a panelist on Thursday at Extending the Branches of Zionism, an event taking place in New York City and organized by the Jewish National Fund-USA focused on support for Israel among non-Jews. The panel will...
(JTA) - When a film about a group of Israeli youths who visit former concentration camps in Poland premiered on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival, its Israeli producer took the microphone after the screening to decry the state of his nation. "The new far-right government that is in power is pushing fascist and racist laws," said Yoav Roeh, a producer of "Ha'Mishlahat" ("Delegation") on stage after the film's premiere. He was referring to lawmakers in Israel's government who have long histories...
(JTA) — The Brooklyn Nets traded Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks, a team whose Jewish owner had spoken up about the star guard’s antisemitism controversy last year. Mark Cuban, known as one of the NBA’s most outspoken team owners and as a star of the hit TV show “Shark Tank,” did not comment on the trade that was the talk of the league on Sunday. But in the fall, after Irving promoted an antisemitic film on his Twitter account and at first refused to apologize for the tweet, Cuban said the eight-time All-Star was “not educated about the i...
(JTA) - Every year brings the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of well-known Jewish icons in every field and to mourn those we have lost. Here are 18 Jews who died in 2022 and who leave outsized legacies on politics, the arts, sports and everything in between. Madeleine Albright The "first woman secretary of state in the United States" label will always follow Madeleine Albright, especially because of her success in such a male-dominated field of policy. But regardless of her gender,...
(JTA) - Barbara Walters, the iconic newswoman and celebrity interviewer who made history for women and Jewish anchors on mainstream American news television, died at 93 on Friday, Dec. 30. ABC News, where Walters regularly appeared on shows such as "20/20" and "The View," shared the news without giving a cause of death. Before becoming one of the most enduring and talked about news hosts in the world from the 1970s through the 2000s, Walters was raised by parents descended from Jewish immigrants...
(JTA) — Leonard Cohen’s momentous trip to the Sinai Desert to perform for Israeli soldiers in the wake of the Yom Kippur War is being turned into a dramatized TV series. “Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai” will be written by Yehonatan Indursky, a co-creator of “Shtisel,” the landmark Israeli drama about an Orthodox family in Jerusalem, according to Variety, which reported the news on Monday. The limited series, an adaptation of journalist Matti Friedman’s 2022 book of the same name, will film in Israel in 2024. It’s being co-produced by...
(JTA) - Given his place in the international literary canon, it's hard to believe that there has never been a widely-released documentary made about the Jewish Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow. That's about to change, as PBS debuts "American Masters: The Adventures of Saul Bellow" on Monday night. The documentary, which was filmed by Israeli director Asaf Galay between 2016 and 2019 and features what is being touted as the last interview Philip Roth gave before his death in 2018, digs deep into...
(JTA) — This year’s slate of Jewish Grammy nominees offers a little something for everyone. The nominees for the 2023 Grammy Awards, announced on Tuesday, include prominent Jewish names from pop and rap, but they also recognize Jewish musicians and writers in classical music and other less popular genres. Here’s the full (and varied) list: Jack Antonoff, a New Jersey Jewish day school grad who has become one of pop’s most in-demand producers and songwriters, thanks to his work with the likes of Taylor Swift and Lorde, is up for produce...
(JTA) — Three weeks after saying he was “alarmed” by Adidas’ ties to Kanye West, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, donned the company’s sneakers for his group’s “Never is Now” conference in New York City. The about-face happened after Adidas ended its relationship with West weeks after the rapper began making antisemitic comments, satisfying the ADL’s demands. Now, Adidas is making a major donation to the anti-hate group and working with it to fight antisemitism among student and professional athletes. The new...
