Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Jews and Blacks or Jews and African-Americans or Jews and voting. Plenty of causes. And Jews have been there. Time and time again. Are we ready for another rally to another cause? This one is right down our alley — but … are we up for it? This past summer the United States and the world for that matter became aware of the Black Lives Matter movement. It had been around for a while, but it took this year’s Black death count and the “Death by Cop” phenomenon to make all the headlines, the marches, yet another call to action. George Floyd, 13...
Back in the day, Jews wanted to take care of their family first — mostly because if we didn’t nobody else would. Then we wanted to care for the Jewish people mostly because if we didn’t nobody else would. Governments in Europe from whence most of us came were not friends of the Jews. In the late 1800s came the longest period of immigration from Europe to the U.S. because Europe was in turmoil. The U.S.A. wanted immigration because of a need for low paid labor. However, once they were here, the government had little or no interest in takin...
When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the Jewish reaction was pretty well muted. We did not know a whole lot about the guy. Seemed pretty decent, had always been friendly to the Jewish Community. We should have looked under the rock. Two years before, Trump founded the “Birther Movement” questioning the legitimacy of Barak Obama as president. Trump said Obama was born in Kenya. There’s the first hint. A Black president could not be legitimate. While he never took more than 25 percent of the vote in the primaries, Trump w...
In 1968 Rachel and I made our very first trip to Israel. I have told the story of that trip and what it meant to us. On the flight back to the United States, we confirmed the promise we had made to Adi Ben Orr, our guide in Israel: That we would send our children (toddlers at the time) to meet their Israeli cousins. And so, it came to pass. As each Shipley kid graduated from high school they spent at least the first six weeks of that summer vacation in Israel. And remember — this is a generation before the Gap Year concept was invented. The eff...
“The Jewish Vote.” What ever happened to the “Jewish Vote”? While we never meant more than one or maybe one and a half percent of the total turnout, there was always press, commentary, speculation, even some wringing of hands about the turnout, the political leaning and the meaning of the “Jewish Vote” during every national election for a really long time. I could never figure out what the fuss was all about. We truthfully could not have any real impact on the final outcome of any presidential campaign. Outside of maybe the five boroughs of...
Haimish is a Yiddish word meaning …? To Google it means “Homey” — that is a far cry from Yiddish. To me it means my grandmother’s wooden bowl and “chopper.” When I was in high school my grandmother lived with my Aunt Rosie just a short bus ride away. At least two or three afternoons a week I would ride the bus to within a block or two of my Aunt Rosie’s house and walk over to visit my grandmother. Aunt Rosie lived in what we called a “row house” which meant you shared two walls, one on each side, with your neighbors. The houses fronted on t...
So, I was in the gym at my Sports Club one day, getting dressed next to my locker mate, nice guy named Jay. Jay is head of technology at a large hospital chain in our town. I know he’s got two boys just entering middle teens. I know this because he talks about them on a regular basis. Jay happens to be African-American although his family goes back over a hundred years in America. My family has not been in this country for more than three generations. We came in the late 1890s. We came from what is now the Ukraine. I was born in Brooklyn, N...
Let’s go back in time. The 1960s. Hippies. The March on Washington. George Wallace. Viet Nam. The Edmond Pettis Bridge. Remember? Well, I guess that those of us of a “certain age” do. We remember the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. We remember that time. The last time that the racial divide and the struggle for equality and voting rights were in the headlines on a daily basis. Those of us who were there and lived it saw many similarities to this past year. But, there is one significant difference this time: Where are the Jews? There...
Let me put the disclaimer out first: I am no biblical scholar — I am no expert on ancient Jewish history. So, this column is really in the form of a few questions about belief and my own life. I have stated before that I was raised in a totally non-religious environment. God, in my house, was an afterthought. Outside of having fist fights on a daily basis when he was growing up because he was a Jew, my father had no other relationship with Faith. As I have written, his father, my grandfather Abraham Shiplacoff was an ardent Socialist. Then, i...
Well, hello there! I suppose you’re wondering why I’m writing after all this time. Let’s do a Cliff Notes: Got sick in February of 2019. Three weeks in the hospital after a misdiagnosis. Lost 16 pounds. Recuperated at home. Rachel and I could not maintain the apartment while I healed. So, we moved. We spent two months with son Tom and daughter Pam in N.J. (Tip: Avoid living with relatives, even those you love with whom you really get along). So Rachel and I moved to New Orleans, home of son Adam and granddaughter Bar. NOLA is, well, diffe...
I cannot count my first 17 years as a Jew. My father inherited a hatred of Orthodoxy from his father, a dedicated Socialist. Therefore, I would not be bar mitzvahed until my 40s—but that’s another story. My Zionism and Judaism rose together in that Wave that swept the Jewish Community in 1948 with the founding of the Third Jewish Commonwealth. Suddenly our family was part of the Zionist rush most Jews felt in the founding of a Jewish State—a country of our own. My father suddenly became as ardent a Zionist as you could find. So, my intro...
“A Near Death Experience.” Ever had one? There actually is such a thing. Been there—done that. Well, I did—and it ain’t a picnic. About two months ago I developed a cough that would not go away. We complacently kept the same primary medical practice after our Doc retired. The “new” doctor hired by the practice almost killed me—seriously. I complained during a routine visit of a constant cough. He told me to go to the drug store and get some cough medicine. Didn’t help. Cough persisted. Got so bad I could not sleep. Two of our children were her...
Since the first large wave of Jews arrived in the U.S., we have fought for human rights. It is in our own self-interest to do so. We believe in taking care of our fellow man, in equal rights, equal opportunity, etc. You know, the stuff that allowed us when we came to America to take advantage of the system. And, based on our heritage and our history, we have endeavored to pass it on to succeeding generations. This has resulted in Jews having the reputation of being “Liberals”; “Left Wing”, etc. All this because we tend to take up the cause o...
We watched a Netflix program the other night titled “Mossad.” It consisted of interviews with mostly former Mossad agents and executives. At one point the interviewer asked “Why is the Mossad pictured in so many nations as a bunch of assassians and terrorists? With a slight smile, the ex-agent said “look—we are a different country. We are surrounded by nations who for the most part would like to destroy us and wipe every Jew off the face of the earth.” Can you name another country faced with this problem? No. And the problem of course, ext...
Civility. It was something basic to our society. We were taught at home to be respectful of other people, specifically those older than ourselves. We were taught to listen to other peoples’ opinions, not interrupt and then offer our own take on the subject—with respect. Recently, times have changed. When it comes to matters Jewish, or the subject of Israel, Jews can tend to be more dogmatic than even the loudest of the chatterers filling the 24-hour news cycle. In the beginning, it was simple. The Jews were a people who had been cast out of...
Religion does play a part in politics. When John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic elected president in 1960, the rumble was that the Catholic vote was united —there was an underlying fear that “The pope would now rule American politics.” Nonsense, of course. So far, no Jew has run for president. But, it has always been more about who, what and where we are as a people than our religious positions that have ruled our politics. During the 1930s, at the tail end of the huge immigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States, it is a fair...
I was born into what was known as the “Sha, Still” generation. Jews, who had been in the U.S. since long before the Declaration of Independence, still did not want to call attention to themselves in the 1930s. The fear of a backlash and stronger displays of anti-Semitism if Jews became too visible, too successful, was the order of the day. Lynchings were still taking place (the last one in Central Florida was in 1941). A Catholic priest by the name of Father Choughlin was preaching anti-Semitism on hundreds of radio stations. As we have poi...
There was a time when “real” anti-Semitism was alive and doing well in the United States. I have written before that had we moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, two years earlier than we did, we could not have bought a house there. It was not until 1948 that the “No Jews” restriction was declared illegal. At that time there were quotas on the number of Jews allowed in many medical and law schools around the country. Most country clubs did not allow Jews (we retaliated by opening our own country clubs and not allowing gentiles). Before the war, Je...
Dialogue and argument among Jews are as old as our people. When God told Moses to “get out of town” not every Jew in Egypt agreed. “Too dangerous!” “Moses is meshugana.” Luckily for us all, the “ayes” won and the Jews became a nation. The synagogue was always a place for discussion—not just about Torah portions or arguments over particular rabbinical sayings—but about politics, business and various other subjects. Part of the tradition is to “join” discussions—okay: Butt in. It’s going away. The younger generation arrives with earphones in a...
It’s an old story and has resonance probably only for people of a certain age whose life made it almost necessary to look at everything through the “I am a Jew” lens. Back in 1969, When I told my 93-year-old immigrant grandmother “Bubby! We just landed a man on the moon!” She replied, “Oh. Is that good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?” Well, we’ve come a ways since then. But, Israel... yeah, Israel. Not as simple as it used to be. When the State became a reality in 1948, Jews around the world rejoiced. We, the People of the Book were back...
Jews used to be used to losing. The poor shlep. The cringing schlemiel. The Hebrew prayers that call for God’s help; God’s blessing. While Jabotinsky was exhorting the Jews of Eastern Europe to either leave for what was then Palestine or arm themselves, most Jews shrugged and continued to live their miserable lives. Some listened to Jabo. The rest shrugged and sighed. And 20 years later - died by the millions. Out of the Holocaust the Third Jewish Commonwealth was born. They took in millions of Jews. Some fleeing persecution and death, oth...
In my last column I tried to reduce some 5,000 years of our history to less than a thousand words. I apologize for the gaps. So, now let us turn to the “Palestinians.” If you search history you will find that the land that is today Israel did not have a formal “Nation State” prior to the Israelites coming in from a long desert trek. There were no “Arabs” living there. The “Arabs” of the time were basically wandering Bedouin nomads. Before Israel, the land was visited by the Phoenicians and Greeks as they built routes for trade (and war). By t...
It’s an old expression: A definition of insanity is doing the same thing in the same way time after time and expecting different results. It’s been said many times about the Arabs in Israel time after time. And of course, not much ever changes. I realize by writing for a Jewish audience, I am preaching to the choir. But all of us are out in a general society where we hear a lot about Israel—and a lot of it is not particularly flattering—or true. So let’s arm ourselves with a little fact checking, and the next time you hear or read something...
Truthfully? I don’t remember when I first heard the word “Holocaust.” In the 1940s I went to Bala Cynwyd Junior High and then Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, where out of 1500 students, less than 20 were Jews. In my senior year, Israel declared its independence. There was a discussion about it in Miss Lamb’s history class. As I remember, the class was about evenly divided on whether or not Israel as a State was legitimate. I do not remember any mention, much less discussion of the Holocaust. Perhaps it came into my conscio...
Our Torah tells us of a man named Abram who probably lived in what is now Iran. He was head of a small “Clan”—also identified as a “Tribe.” The Tribe consisted of a group of loosely connected family members: sons, daughters (of which Abram had none of either at the time), cousins, etc. Our Torah tells us that one day he decided to move the Tribe from the pleasant and fruitful land in which they dwelled to a barren strip of sand over a thousand miles almost due east. But, our Torah tells us God came to Abram in a dream and told him to go and th...
