Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA)-Randi Bergman isn't sure of her Passover plans yet, but there's a good chance she'll be spending the holiday alone. Bergman, a 34-year-old freelance fashion writer, lives alone in what she calls a junior one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto. The setup-desk, bed, couch, TV, kitchenette but no dining table-fits her usual busy lifestyle, which doesn't involve a ton of cooking and eating meals on her couch or at her desk. But it's not ideal for conducting a Passover seder, the festive...
(JTA) — It’s not just “yiddo.” The Oxford English Dictionary has just added a slew of Jewish-themed and Yiddish terms, some of which are sure to offend. The venerable institution’s list of new entries for January 2020 contains dozens of items with Jewish content, from “bialy” to “Jewfro” to “yeshiva bochur.” Responding to debate this week about the inclusion of yiddo, a term for fans of the British Tottenham Hotspurs soccer club that borrows from a derogatory term for Jewish people, the dictionary’s compilers said they judge proposed addition...
(JTA)-In 2012, the first year that Ben Zauzmer made Oscar predictions based on mathematical modeling, he received an email from a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the body that chooses the winners. Zauzmer was wrong to predict that the silent French film "The Artist" would win best picture, the member said-he and some of his friends in the Academy had heard that "Hugo," Martin Scorsese's steampunk adventure flick, had a better chance. Zauzmer "politely thanked him for...
(JTA)—President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited Middle East peace plan on Tuesday, and the release event was a doozy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined Trump at a news conference and compared it to President Harry Truman’s recognition of the State of Israel in 1948. Netanyahu also snuck in the fact that as part of the plan’s starting framework, he will look to apply Israeli sovereignty over territory that much of the international community considers illegally occupied. In the most basic sense, the plan is a two-s...
(JTA)—As part of President Donald Trump’s proposed plan for Middle East peace unveiled Tuesday, Israel says it will “apply its laws” to the Jordan Valley and Israeli settlements in the West Bank. At a news conference with Trump at the White House discussing the broad outlines of the plan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will otherwise “maintain the status quo” territorially for at least four years. Application of Israeli law to parts of the West Bank would signal a major change to the territory and the contours of...
(JTA)-Terry Jones, one of the core members of the Monty Python comedy troupe, died Tuesday night at 77. He had been suffering from dementia. In addition to starring in numerous Python productions, the beloved comedian directed some of the group's biggest films, including "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "The Meaning of Life" and "Life of Brian." The last of those tells the story of a Jewish man named Brian Cohen, who is born on the same day as and subsequently mistaken for Jesus Christ. At...
(JTA)-The latest episode of PBS' celebrity genealogy show "Finding Your Roots" was a lesson in Jewish history. Titled "Beyond the Pale"-a reference to the Pale of Settlement, the region of what was then Imperial Russia where many Ashkenazi Jews have roots-the episode that aired Tuesday night explored the family trees of actor Jeff Goldblum, NPR host Terry Gross and comedian Marc Maron. As host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explained, each of them has "deep Jewish roots," but they all knew next to...
(JTA)—The 2020 Oscar nominations are out, and unsurprisingly, they’re already causing a firestorm on social media. The list, announced early Monday morning, didn’t do much to quell longstanding concerns that the awards have issues with race and gender equality. Only one actor of color was nominated—Cyntha Erivo, for her role in “Harriet”—and the best director category is once again all male, despite the fact that Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of “Little Women” was a massive critical and commercial success. The Jewish snub of the year goes to “U...
(JTA)-As always, the Golden Globes was a coming together of some of Hollywood's biggest Jewish talents. There weren't many Jewish award winners at the glitzy ceremony on Sunday night, but here are our favorite Jewish moments from one of the industry's biggest nights of the year. Quentin Tarantino spoke Hebrew to his Israeli wife The non-Jewish director won some awards for his film "Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood," and in an acceptance speech sent some love to his pregnant wife, Israeli singer...
NEW YORK (JTA)-As soon as I got out of a recent screening of "Uncut Gems," I had to share the feelings of sheer cinematic bliss I had just experienced nonstop for two hours. "Just got out of 'Uncut Gems,' the new Adam Sandler movie coming out. He is sooooo good in it," I texted my friend. "Oh cool! What's it about?" she responded. "He plays a sleazy diamond dealer," I said, adding a laughing emoji. "Wow! So he does dramatic movies? Pulling a Steve Carell!" She wasn't exactly living under a...
(JTA)-The 2019 Golden Globe nominees were announced Monday morning, and the film "Marriage Story," written and directed by Noah Baumbach, leads the pack with several nominations. Here are the other Jews and Jewish productions that were nominated: "Marriage Story" The movie is up for best drama film, and Baumbach also scored a nomination for best screenplay. Jewish co-star Scarlett Johansson is nominated for best actress in a drama (her co-star Adam Driver, who isn't Jewish but often plays...
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (JTA)—Hours after gunfire that started in a cemetery and ended in a shootout at a kosher supermarket here left six dead on Tuesday, there were more questions than answers. As of Tuesday night, the crime scene was cordoned off, keeping onlookers far from the scene. Some two dozen area residents, several reporters and many more police vehicles lingered outside the JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive, on the western side of Jersey City. Some of the residents took video or livestreamed the scene on Facebook. I...
(JTA)-Love him or hate him, rapper Kanye West has done nothing if not evolve over the course of his career. He has cycled through mainstream hip-hop, auto-tuned singing, soulful sampling, epic egotistical commentary and-as he would happily tell you-much more. At the moment, West is in the midst of an intensely religious phase. Since the beginning of the year he has held what he calls a Sunday Service each week-a pop-up Christian service of sorts that has rotated through different (at times...
(JTA)-Most of the news surrounding Houston Astros slugger Alex Bregman on Tuesday night focused on his "bat carry"-how he ostentatiously carried his bat down to first base while watching his first inning home run sail over the left field fence before dropping it. He apologized for the move after the game. But the Jewish third baseman's blast was historic, too: It was his fifth in a World Series, setting the all-time record for most World Series home runs by a third baseman. It was his third...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Many obituaries of Harold Bloom, the lion of American literary criticism who passed away on Oct. 15, 2019, at 89, mention that he was born to Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Few mention his lifelong love of Yiddish, and particularly Yiddish theater, which he grew up watching in New York City (although The New York Times one does say that the first book Bloom read was an anthology of Yiddish poetry). In what was likely one of Bloom's last interviews, taped only a...
(JTA)-Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky have careers that many people in Hollywood dream of. Not long after graduating from college and moving to Los Angeles, the duo joined the writing staff of "The Office" on the strength of a TV script they wrote together. After contributing to the show for several seasons, they co-created the HBO comedy series "Hello Ladies" with Stephen Merchant (the co-creator of the original British "The Office"). The pair also worked with Harold Ramis on the prehistoric...
(JTA)-After three and a half years as editor in chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Andrew Silow-Carroll will be the next editor of the New York Jewish Week. The veteran journalist will succeed Gary Rosenblatt, who announced last month he will step down at the end of September after 26 years as editor and publisher of the Jewish Week. Silow-Carroll, 58, has spent over 30 years in Jewish media. He was previously the CEO and editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News and managing editor of...
(JTA)-Gary Stein remembers the first time someone played a Phish song for him in high school. It was "Divided Sky," an intricate 11-minute tune that shows off the group's diverse jam rock chops. Stein, who's now a 30-year-old history doctoral student living in Los Angeles, quickly became infatuated with the band, which takes cues from the Grateful Dead and a host of other genres, from prog rock to bluegrass. Unfortunately for Stein, that was right around the second time that Phish broke up, in 2...
(JTA)-Alex Bregman has agreed to a six-year, $100 million contract with the Houston Astros-one of the largest deals ever for a professional Jewish athlete. Bregman, who turns 25 at the end of the month, has established himself as one of Major League Baseball's top players. Last year he finished fifth in the American League's Most Valuable Player voting following a season of 31 home runs, 103 runs batted in and a league-best 51 doubles. He also was named the All-Star Game's MVP. The only Jewish a...
(JTA)-The day after the New England Patriots beat the favored Kansas City Chiefs to reach their third straight Super Bowl-their amazing ninth in less than 20 years-CBS Sports analyst Boomer Esiason made an intriguing statement: Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "Is Julian Edelman not a Hall of Famer?" Esiason, a former NFL quarterback, asked on a Boston radio show last week. "The guy is clutch in the biggest of games. I don't know what else to tell...
(JTA)—In a tense exchange on “The View,” co-host Meghan McCain confronted Tamika Mallory about her support of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader known for his history of virulent anti-Semitic comments. Mallory’s response is sure to add fuel to accusations that she is too soft on Farrakhan and has not sufficiently condemned anti-Semitism. “I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements,” Mallory said in the exchange. “Specifically about Jewish people?” McCain asked. “As I said, I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrak...
(JTA)—New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman wore special cleats in honor of the victims of the shooting attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue during a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. As he showed in a tweet, Edelman’s cleats bore the words “The Tree of Life” written in Hebrew, the logo of the Tree of Life Or L’Simcha Congregation—the synagogue targeted in the mass shooting in October—and an Israeli flag, with the hashtag #strongerthanhate. His tweet also listed in alphabetical...
(JTA)-Three years ago, Don Was walked into a Jewish service in Los Angeles without high expectations. Was, born Don Fagenson in Detroit, is a producer who has worked with musicians like John Mayer, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt. Since 2012, he has also been the president of Blue Note Records, the historic and acclaimed jazz record label. Since his bar mitzvah in 1965, he has rarely stepped into a synagogue. But his aging father, who was getting remarried, was set to be honored by his beloved...
(JTA)-When Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created the Superman character in the early 1930s, they were still living at their parents' homes. Of course, the character and his story-the arrival from another planet, his dual identities as mild-mannered reporter and flying, bulletproof crime fighter -would go on to change the comics industry in several ways and pave the way for the super-heroization of our popular culture. But Siegel and Shuster originally just wanted to make a little income to...
(JTA)-"Star Wars" fans are eagerly awaiting the franchise's latest film, "Solo: A Star Wars Story." As its title suggests, the flick focuses on Han Solo, the legendary character made famous by Harrison Ford in the series' first films from the late '70s. The "Solo" movie, which hits theaters on today, is the second of what are being called the "Star Wars" anthology films-or offshoots of the main series (which, for now, is made up of three trilogies: the original films, the early 2000s prequels...
