Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA)-The Nazi punching debate (is it OK to punch a Nazi?) went viral in January after a liberal protester slugged white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face during President Donald Trump's inauguration. But whether it's OK to confront hatred with violence is not a new topic of conversation. The question was debated in the 1930s among American Jews, who were faced with both the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Nazi sympathizers at home. One hotbed for the debate was Newark, New Jersey,...
TENAFLY, N.J. (JTA)—Ayala Hodak usually cooks the way her mother taught her: adding a pinch of spice here or relying on her eyes—never a measuring cup!—to judge how much liquid to add. But on a recent Tuesday, she was being much more precise. At her spacious home in this suburban town less than 15 miles from New York City, Hodak, 52, who grew up in an Iranian family in Israel, measured the amount of salt and pepper she added to a stew. She also paused to demonstrate how thickly to cut a piece of beef. Her reason for the accuracy: Hodak...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Michelle Reyf isn't really a synagogue-goer. Until recently, the 28-year-old, who works for a Jewish nonprofit, was perfectly happy to get her spiritual fulfillment at Buddhist prayer services and meditation retreats. Synagogue did not appeal to her for a variety of reasons-she found the crowd to be older and the atmosphere to be impersonal. And as someone who identifies as queer, she felt distanced from the traditional values she encountered in many Jewish spaces. But in...
NEW YORK (JTA)—For many Jews, Tisha b’Av is centered around mourning the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. But that interpretation misses out on an important lesson that is made more relevant by recent events, Rabbi David Seidenberg argues. With the release of a new translation of the Book of Lamentations, the main text read on the annual fast day, the Massachusetts-based rabbi argues that Tisha b’Av, which began this year on the evening of July 31, provides a powerful way to connect to the refugee experience. Here’s his...
NEW YORK (JTA)-When Michael Twitty dressed in the outfit that slaves wore in the American South-wool stockings, waistcoat and kerchief tied around his neck-to cook meat in an open-hearth oven on a historic Virginia plantation, more than one memory of slavery flashed through his mind. One memory, of his African-American ancestors in the South, seems obvious The other, of Jews enslaved thousands of years ago in Egypt, perhaps less so. Cooking on the Virginia plantation as part of his research...
(JTA)-Only one religious group in the U.S. has a federally proclaimed month celebrating their history: the Jews. In 2006, President George W. Bush officially declared May as Jewish American Heritage Month. Yet Jewish American Heritage Month, or JAHM, hardly seems a priority-not in the government, not in the media, not even within the Jewish community. There is not a single paid employee working to organize the commemoration, and neither the federal government nor any Jewish organizations or foun...
(JTA)-It's safe to say that Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman are some of the funniest Yiddish speakers around. Their Yiddish-English web series, "YidLife Crisis," is a modern-day, Montreal-based "Seinfeld" that would make any Jewish mother kvell ("It's in Yiddish!") and kvetch ("The sex, drugs and Jesus jokes! Oy!"). The series, which premiered in 2014, follows the nebbish Leizer (played by Batalion) and rebel wannabe Chaimie (Elman) as they wander around Montreal, eat at restaurants and have Talmud...
(JTA)—From Anne Frank’s diary to Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” books about the Holocaust remain some of the most powerful and well-known pieces of literature published in the past century. Books have the power to educate about the Shoah’s unimaginable horrors and bring to life the stories of its victims, as well as unearth hidden details about wartime crimes. Ahead of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, JTA reached out to Jewish studies scholars across the country seeking their recommendations on recently published books dealing with the Holocaust....
NEW YORK (JTA)-Over 100 years ago, Barnett Levine was greeted by the New York skyline and the Statue of Liberty as he arrived in the United States, having fled anti-Semitism and pogroms in his native Poland. On Sunday, his grandson saw those very same sights when he joined about 700 others in this city's Battery Park downtown at a rally protesting President Donald Trump's executive order banning all refugees from the country for 120 days. "I am the grandchild of four immigrants who came here...
(JTA)—American Jews are watching the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency with both fear and hope. Many have expressed worries about some of his supporters’ ties to the so-called “alt-right” movement, whose followers traffic variously in white nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-Semitism and a disdain for “political correctness.” Those fears intensified when Trump named as his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, a site Bannon once referred to as a “platform” of the alt-right. Trump’s strongly cons...
(JTA)—President-elect Donald Trump has a complicated history with Jews. On the one hand, his daughter Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner, and he’s spoken fondly about having Jewish grandchildren. On the other, some of Trump’s supporters identify with anti-Semitic elements of the alt-right movement. On Sunday, Trump appointed Stephen Bannon—the former chairman of Breitbart News, a conservative news site—as his chief strategist in a move that sparked swift criticism from the Anti-Defamation League. Still, Tr...
