Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — Among the many honors accruing to King Charles III coronation was a new version of a traditional prayer performed by a British-Jewish children’s choir. United Synagogue, the union of British Orthodox synagogues, commissioned a new recording of “Adon Olam,” a prayer perhaps most recognizable as the conclusion of Shabbat services, and dedicated it to the new king. The rendition was composed by a British-Jewish musician who teaches at a Jewish school and was arranged by the brothers in the indie rock due Portnoy, according to the Jewish...
(JTA) — In a surprise move, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed out of his appearance at a major conference of U.S. Jewish leaders in Tel Aviv, just hours before a speech that was expected to draw mass protests. But in a sign that the conference organizers did not expect Netanyahu’s cancelation to head off the protests, Jewish Federations of North America told attendees that it was not changing the schedule of the buses bringing them from their hotels to the conference center. The group had told attendees to plan extra tim...
(JTA) - Perhaps the greatest influence on Al Jaffee, known to readers of Mad Magazine as the creator of the "Fold-In," was the time he spent living in a Lithuanian shtetl as a child. Jaffee had been born in Savannah, Georgia, but returned to his mother's native country with her after she became disillusioned by the irreligious character of life in America. Living in her small town, Zarasai, from ages 6 to 12, he became steeped in both the Yiddish and the "anti-adultism" that would infuse his...
(JTA) - The most notable message Melissa Klapper got during her four-night run on "Jeopardy!" didn't come because the Jewish studies scholar was unable to answer a question about Yom Kippur. It also wasn't an unkind note from a game-show stickler who believed she'd gotten credit for a wrong response. Instead, it was an email from a past student who recognized herself in the story Klapper told as part of her self-introductory stage banter - a staple of the game show. Klapper, who teaches history...
(JTA) — Like hundreds of thousands of her fellow Israelis, Kelly Breakstone Roth’s instinct on Sunday was to take to the streets. The only wrinkle: She and her family have been in Brooklyn for the last two years, part of the diaspora of hundreds of thousands of Israelis living abroad. They couldn’t just walk out the door of their apartment and join the sweeping nationwide protest that ignited after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister, who had called for a pause on proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary. So they bought...
(JTA) - Chaim Topol won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of an immigrant to Israel, stepped off the stage in London to fight for his country and had his sketches of Israeli presidents turned into postage stamps. But the actor was, by far, best known for his embodiment of Tevye the Dairyman in "Fiddler on the Roof," first in the Israeli and London stagings and then in the 1971 movie that brought the musical about poor shtetl Jews to the masses. Topol died March 9 in Tel Aviv at 87, a day after...
(JTA) — A “National Day of Hate” against Jews planned by white supremacists that triggered sweeping warnings from law enforcement and Jewish security officials came and went without significant incident on Saturday. Synagogues and Jewish institutions across the United States had spent the preceding days shoring up their security procedures, reassuring their congregants and requesting extra patrols from local police. Reports from synagogues suggested that the pews were crowded on Shabbat with Jews who said they would not be deterred by hate. In...
(JTA) — Richard Belzer wasn’t just a hard-boiled Jew who rose from a troubled childhood to the top of his field — he played one on TV. Belzer, who died Sunday at 78, was a familiar face because of his longstanding roles on “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “Law and Order: SVU” and other TV shows. In each of those series, he played a presumptively Jewish detective named John Munch whose biography overlapped significantly with Belzer’s own. Belzer was born in 1944 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and had what he described as a difficult child...
(JTA) — The Israeli minister responsible for relations with Jews in the Diaspora has a message for the government of the country where most of them live: “Mind your own business.” Amichai Chikli made the comment Sunday in a radio interview in Israel, where he was asked to address recent comments by U.S. ambassador Tom Nides, who said he was urging Israeli leaders to “pump the brakes” on their controversial effort to change the country’s judiciary. Nides was echoing sentiments expressed by U.S. President Joe Biden about the judicial reform prop...
(JTA) — One of the Israeli teams dispatched to Turkey to assist after the devastating earthquakes there has headed home after being informed about a “concrete and immediate threat” against them. United Hatzalah told its team of roughly two dozen personnel in Turkey to end their rescue mission and leave the country, the emergency services organization announced early Sunday. Because of a shortage of available planes to evacuate them, the philanthropist Miriam Adelson donated her private jet to facilitate the evacuation, the group said. “We k...
(JTA) — A New Jersey synagogue is crediting recent safety improvements after a Molotov cocktail thrown at its door overnight caused little damage. Still, Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield canceled activities on Sunday as the police investigated, marking the second time in recent months that the suburban congregation suspended activities because of an antisemitic incident. Last November, the Reform synagogue of about 500 families near New York City briefly closed its doors while the FBI investigated a “credible threat” against New Jersey synag...
(JTA) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff extended his focus on Holocaust remembrance by inviting a Washington, D.C.-area survivor to be his guest at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. Ruth Cohen, who survived multiple concentration camps including Auschwitz, joined Emhoff at the annual policy address in Washington. Emhoff first met Cohen last year before International Holocaust Remembrance Day with his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a press release from the White House. This year, Emhoff spent Int...
(JTA) — A prize established to honor a single inspiring Jew with a lifetime of achievements has been awarded this year to a nameless group whose work is ongoing: Jewish activists in war-ravaged Ukraine. The Genesis Prize Foundation said the war in Ukraine required a change in the approach it has taken since creating the prize, known by some as the “Jewish Nobel,” a decade ago. “Recognizing the extraordinary nature of events dominating the past 11 months, The Genesis Prize Selection Committee has decided to depart from the usual custom of awar...
(JTA) — In 1923 in New York, a Yiddish play that featured the first lesbian scene on a Broadway stage was censored for being indecent. In 2023 in Florida, a play about the first play has been canceled for the same reason. For many involved in the new play, including its Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish playwright and the Florida high schooler cast in a lead role, the déjà vu is alarming. “The 100-year anniversary of Sholem Asch’s ‘God of Vengeance’ being shut down on Broadway is the same week that our production of ‘Indecent’ would have open...
(JTA) — George Santos’ first Chanukah party with the Republican Jewish Coalition was his last. The group said it will not host Santos at any future events after the congressman-elect lied to RJC officials and to the public about being Jewish and the descendant of people who escaped the Holocaust. Santos participated in an event with the group on the first night of Chanukah, Dec. 18, where he was feted as one of two incoming Jewish Republicans in Congress; he had been elected in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The next day, the New York...
(JTA) — Yes, Lionel Messi will forever be the face of Argentina’s long-awaited World Cup championship on Sunday. But the voice of the victory belongs to the Argentinean Jewish sportscaster who cried as he announced the win. Andres Cantor, a prominent soccer announcer, responded to Argentina’s game-winning penalty shot with his signature elongated “Gooooooool!” In a video clip that has gone viral, Cantor can be seen grabbing onto his broadcast partner as he yells “Argentina, campeon de mundo!...
(JTA) - Michelle Williams is one of the only non-Jewish actors with a starring role in "The Fabelmans," director Steven Spielberg's autobiographical film based on his Jewish family. But it turns out that Williams, who plays the Spielberg character's mother, has a Jewish family of her own. She told the Wall Street Journal that she and her Jewish husband, director Thomas Kail, are raising their two young children with Judaism and that she is studying the religion herself. "I can't teach it to...
(JTA) — Itamar Ben-Gvir, the right-wing Israeli politician called a “pyromaniac” by his critics because of his penchant for inflaming his country’s deep tensions, will head Israel’s police forces, under the terms of a deal inked with Benjamin Netanyahu early Friday. The deal would expand the ministry of internal security, the old name of the cabinet position in charge of the police, into the ministry of national security and would also give Ben-Gvir authority over border police in Palestinian territories, according to the terms reported...
(JTA) - Two bombs rocked bus stops at crowded entrances to Jerusalem early Wednesday morning, killing a teenager and sending about 20 people to the hospital, some in serious condition. The fatality was a 16-year-old yeshiva student named Aryeh Shtsupak from Har Nof, a largely Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. He may have held Canadian and American citizenship, according to local media reports. The attacks represented the first time in years that terrorists used bombs in a deadly assault...
(JTA) — It was unseasonably cold on Sunday morning when thousands of rabbis crowded on risers in front of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn to snap a photograph. The group photo is a signature moment during any gathering of the Orthodox movement, allowing the movement to create a visual record of its growth: Unique among Hasidic movements, Chabad is known for sending rabbis and their wives to far-flung locations around the globe to minister to local Jews, regardless of denomination or beliefs. (A picture taken at a smaller gathering o...
(JTA) — The Orthodox Union has endorsed federal legislation that would enshrine the right to same-sex marriage, marking a reversal of its previous positions. When more than 100 Jewish groups endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act this summer, the OU, an umbrella group representing Modern Orthodox synagogues, was not among them. The group had previously sat on the sidelines as well when the U.S. Supreme Court weighed Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, in which the court ruled that same-sex marriage was protected under the Constitution. But things c...
(JTA) — Students at one of Chicago’s most selective public high schools are calling for improved Holocaust education after a classmate goose-stepped across the stage of a Halloween costume contest while wearing a German military uniform. The principal of Jones College Prep, which draws high-performing students from across Chicago, has already been suspended over his handling of the incident, which he initially downplayed. The Chicago school district has launched an investigation into whether the school followed “protocols for processing bias-ba...
(JTA) — Since Feb. 24, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Jewish groups from around the world have flooded the country with support, from food to medical care to evacuations. Now, as temperatures fall and Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid ramp up, those groups are directing their efforts toward making sure that Ukrainian Jews can remain warm and safe in the coming months. A Ukraine response group organized by the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement, whose rabbis are the Jewish leaders in many Ukrainian cities, is raising funds to buy...
(JTA) — Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving is defending his decision to promote a movie that argues that Jews were responsible for the transatlantic slave trade, despite criticism from his team’s owner. “I’m disappointed that Kyrie appears to support a film based on a book full of anti-semitic disinformation,” Nets owner Joe Tsai tweeted on Friday, shortly after Irving tweeted a link to the Amazon listing for a 2018 film called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” The film is based on an earlier book by the same name advancing the oft-rep...
(JTA) — As Kanye West extended his antisemitic spree by tweeting about Jewish agents in Hollywood, the rocker John Mellencamp took the stage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and said this about his longtime lawyer: “Allen is Jewish.” The line began an impassioned speech about the importance of non-Jews standing up for Jewish people at a time of antisemitism and anxiety for many of them, especially as white supremacists have taken up West’s comments as a rallying cry. Mellencamp was speaking on behalf of Allen Grubman, a prominent music i...
