Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The annual intersection of Chanukah and Christmas is once again approaching and with it the combined joy of the season. The close proximity of the two holidays this time of the year becomes complicated because of the different meaning and commemorations of what each holiday represents and how each should be observed and celebrated. Each year the Jewish community faces this annual dilemma of how to keep from getting caught up in the holiday season while at the same time respecting our Christian friends in their celebration of Christmas. How do...
Technology has brought the world ever closer together, but increasingly, political instability, terrorism and war reminds us how very far apart different places remain. In 1963 when I made my first flight to Israel, our Air France flight had to stop in Paris to refuel in order to complete the journey to our destination. That trip to Israel from New York City took more than 18 hours. Today, that same route is nonstop and can be accomplished in under 10 hours and in greater comfort. The same is true for international (and domestic)...
When America entered the Great World War in 1917, it commissioned an artist by the name of James Montgomery Flagg to create a recruitment poster to encourage Americans to enlist in the Army. The poster Mr. Flagg designed pictured a stern Uncle Sam making direct eye contact with and pointing a parental finger at the viewer. The combined image was a very personalized message as to whom it was intended. To remove any ambiguity the caption under the image was, “I Want You for the US Army.” That iconic poster has endured and was used as a recruitmen...
As a native born American of the Jewish faith I have been doubly blessed by being born into two great peoples. I am a proud and patriotic citizen of my native America and a proud supporter of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide. I am not however, a citizen or resident of Israel and have no vote in Israeli elections or how Israelis go about choosing their leaders. I do have a right and an obligation along with my fellow Jewish Americans, to express my opinion about everything that goes on in the State of Israel and work for American policies...
As I get deeper into my senior years, I find myself spending more time reflecting on my life, and trying to find meaning in what brought me to this moment of my existence. One of those reflections was remembering my first real connection with Israel. I was only 4 years old in 1948 when the modern state of Israel was established. Although raised in a traditional Jewish home, my earliest Jewish memories consisted of Chanukah gelt, Purim costumes, Shabbat candles and the delicious smells of my Mom’s cooking throughout the year, but especially a...
The days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are devoted not only to examining our relationship with God, but also to self-reflection and our relationship with others. Our tradition, developed over more than three thousand years, has created a rich narrative of prayers and readings which, selectively are an integral part of synagogue services for all denominations. Included in the High Holiday liturgy is the retelling of our rich history from the rituals and pageantry of the High Priest in the Holy Temple to our religious experiences throughout the...
Congressional Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) along with two other freshman democratic congresswomen, have now been collectively tagged with the moniker, “The Squad.” The descriptive name for the four was quickly and enthusiastically adopted by the media when the hashtag was jokingly suggested by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the four members of “The Squad,” at a press conference after a contentious meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker had criticized the four freshman congresswomen for challen...
On the front page of the Aug. 2nd edition of this newspaper, a small article with large implications appeared with the headline, “A debt-free Federation is in sight.” I do not know if the article was written by a Heritage writer, was sent to the Heritage as a news release by the Federation or was authored by a public relations guru. The article was upbeat and was accompanied by a photo of the current executive director who categorized the event of satisfying the debt as “transform[ing] a daunting challenge into a most rewarding trium...
From the title of this column you might presume that I oppose a two-state solution where majority Arabs and majority Jews live peacefully in separate independent democratic states, with guaranteed equality, and with civil and human rights protection for Arab and Jewish minorities in each state. Since 1967, when Israel was forced to fight a war for survival against an onslaught of regular Arab armies from neighboring states, Israel has found itself in control of the lands west of the Jordan river comprising Judea and Samaria, parts of biblical...
The 50th anniversary of the first successful Apollo-Saturn Moon Mission was met last week with great fanfare and enthusiasm by the national and international media, the American people and the entire global community. There were inspiring speeches, recognition of our brave astronauts, celebration of a great national achievement and a remembrance, if not a renewal of the spirit of unity that at the time prevailed among the American people. While NASA, the astronauts and the leaders of the project were acclaimed as national heroes, less attention...
In January 1966, I found myself living and working in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I had been recruited by RCA Missile Test Project, the scientific and engineering manager of the Air Force’s Eastern Test Range for rockets and missiles being test fired from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Prior to arriving in Cocoa Beach, I had been doing research in radiation physics at the Radiological Research Laboratory at Columbia-Presbytarian Medical Center in New York City, under contract with the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor to the Nuclear Regula...
By Mel Pearlman The latest legislative assault on a woman’s reproductive rights is a dangerous and threatening assault on the U.S. Constitution itself. Supporters of these newly introduced state laws prohibiting abortion in every instance believe the act of aborting a pregnancy, even in its earliest phases of development, to be the murder of a human being. The danger to our constitution arises because that belief is not based on science or a societal consensus of a well-defined social harm, but is based on a religious conviction that human l...
The U.S. is in a worldwide battle for making trade among the nations fairer and more balanced than it has been for several decades. This is a bipartisan issue and enjoys support by members of Congress from both sides of the congressional aisle. The motivation for trying to bring our trade imbalances down and ultimately to eliminate them altogether has far reaching consequences for the economic health of our nation. Prior administrations have recognized this problem and have diplomatically tried but failed to correct these trade imbalances. Inte...
Lately, I have been awestruck, not by the increasing number of anti-Semitic incidences, acts, statements and publications spewing forth from supposedly educated and responsible people in government, academia, the arts, and other respected organizations, but by the ever increasing number of public apologies for the use of anti-Semitic tropes and other hate speech directed toward Jews and Israel. I am equally astounded by the completely incomprehensible attitude of some Jews and Jewish organizations who rush to accept, forgive and in some cases...
The bleeps on the oscilloscope, the respirator assisted breathing and the occasional movement of a leg or an arm are the only evidence that this peaceful old man is engaged in a fierce battle for his life. The fight for life began on a quiet tree-lined street in Central Florida, where the tranquility of a residential neighborhood was shattered by the crashing of an automobile and its unbelted passengers into a magnificent oak tree. The tree, a stately manifestation of nature’s wonders, had sustained life for so many years. She had provided s...
As the sun goes down this evening, Jewish people in our own community and throughout the world will be sitting down with their families and friends to participate in the ancient Jewish ritual of a free people known as the Seder, the traditional feast and story telling that ushers in the Passover holiday. Unlike most festive meals in the Jewish holiday calendar, this festive meal unfolds in a specific order and ritual. Food and tradition are inextricably bound up in the story and commemoration of the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt, an e...
As reported in this newspaper several weeks ago, a number of prominent local Jewish philanthropists have pledged millions of dollars to relocate the Holocaust Memorial, Resource and Education Center from the Jewish campus in Maitland, Florida, to an expanded site in Orlando. Along with the relocation, the Holocaust Board has decided to change the name of the new facility to “The Holocaust Museum of Hope and Humanity.” The decision to relocate and to change the name were apparently made without broad discussion and input from the general Jew...
This past week we celebrated the holiday of Purim. It is a festive holiday because it commemorates the victory of the Jewish citizens of Persia over their fellow citizens who were given license by the king’s decree to destroy the Jews in their midst. How did it come about that the people of the Persian Empire, who peacefully lived side-by-side with their Jewish neighbors for many generations, suddenly were manipulated to follow the king’s decree to vanquish their fellow citizens of the Jewish faith? And a more poignant question is what led the...
On Feb. 21, 2019, in collaboration with Space X, NASA, and tracking facilities of other nations, an Israeli spacecraft, carrying scientific instruments to add to our knowledge of lunar science, was successfully launched into earth orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This spacecraft, named in Hebrew, “Beresheet,” meaning “Genesis,” is special. When, not if, it succeeds to soft-land on the moon in April, Israel will be in the company of the United States, Russia and China as the only nations on earth to acco...
By Mel Pearlman Betty is a very ordinary American name. The Betty I am writing about was born more than 91 years ago in the small scenic town of Ruskova, nestled in the Carpathian mountains in the Southeast corner of Romania. Ruskova was for the most part a peaceful town where Jews and their gentile neighbors got along very well. Betty’s father worked for the railroad in the next town down the road, where the railway station was located. Life was pretty uneventful for Betty and her family in her early childhood days. Then beginning in 1940, B...
On July 19, 2018, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament passed what is known as a basic law, declaring that the State of Israel is the Nation State of the Jewish people. Why did a majority of the 120 members of the Knesset feel it necessary to memorialize in legislation that which was already declared more than 70 years earlier, when on May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel as the sovereign nation of the Jewish people in their historic homeland? The answer lies in the fact that of all the nations in t...
As I mentioned in my column two weeks ago, whenever my wife and I travel overseas we always listen for the sounds of Jewish. In that column I described how, upon boarding our cruise ship on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, I was hoping to have Shabbat services that evening aboard ship. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many co-religionists appear despite their long journeys to the ship and enduring the hassles of the boarding process. What followed was a beautiful pluralistic service led by a very knowledgable self-appointed female...
Whenever my wife and I travel overseas we always listen for the sounds of Jewish! Our latest adventure began on the Friday before Christmas when we boarded a cruise ship destined for the Southeast Carribean Sea. Since the cruise began a few days before Christmas, and Chanukah had already passed, we were not sure if the passenger manifest would contain a significant number of Jewish people to create a meaningful Shabbat service on board our cruise ship. Compounding our uncertainty, the ship was scheduled to depart late Friday afternoon, only an...
In this year’s Time Magazine’s Person of the Year edition, editor Edward Felsenthal published a letter from 12 of the Silence Breakers (Time Magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year). In the letter to Time Magazine the 12 authors tell of the hardships they and the other Silence Breakers endured this past year as whistle blower’s in publicizing the widespread sexual harassment and abuse plaguing almost every aspect of American life; and the important work still to be done to “formalize and expand their push for enduring reforms.” In explaining the wor...
This Shabbat is the sixth day of Chanukah, a holiday of eight days duration commemorating, according to Jewish tradition, the miracle of finding a small jar of uncontaminated oil in the defiled Temple to light the Temple Menorah and to rededicate the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The small jar of oil was sufficient to light the menorah for only one day, but it burned for eight days until a new supply of consecrated oil could be secured; thus the holiday became known as the “Festival of Lights.” The “Festival of Lights” precedes by many centuries ot...
