Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA)-It may be America's most iconic kosher brand, famous for its hot dogs that in the words of its unforgettable ad slogan, "answer to a higher authority." So consumers might be confused to find videos on Hebrew National's homepage suggesting they grill up their kosher franks with some bacon or halloumi cheese. Hebrew National's "Simple Summer Skewers" video serves up several unusual kebab combos, including Sweet & Spicy Halloumi (halloumi cheese, Hebrew National franks, pineapple,...
NEW YORK (JTA)—For the first time in about a century, a rabbi from outside the Lookstein family will lead New York’s storied Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. The Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side voted last week to hire as its new senior rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, who for two decades has led the Montreal congregation Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, 83, who has been at the helm of Kehilath Jeshurun since the death of his father, Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, in 1979, will become rabbi emeritus. The 1,100-member shul...
(JTA)-Israeli consumers are no strangers to high prices. Basic household goods like food and toiletries cost more in Israel than in all but two countries in Europe, a recent Nielsen research study found. Israeli real estate prices are up nearly 60 percent since 2008. Tel Aviv is the world's third-most expensive city in which to buy beer, and furniture prices at IKEA Israel are more than double those at IKEA Norway, recent surveys have shown. Now Israeli consumers are worried about high natural...
NEW YORK (JTA)-If there's one thing that can be said of longtime Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman, who is stepping down this month after nearly 30 years at the helm, it's that he never holds back from speaking his mind. In an age of canned, anodyne statements from public figures reticent to say what they really think, Foxman offers an authentic, unabashed voice free of artifice, hesitation or restraint. Foxman also has something else when he speaks: listeners. Though the ADL doesn't...
NEW YORK (JTA)-When Stephen Kaufer, the CEO of TripAdvisor, an $11 billion company that runs America's leading user-generated hotel review website, thinks back to all the places he has visited, one stands out as his favorite. Jerusalem. "Oh my gosh, looking at all of these amazing structures, the history that you could still visually appreciate from thousands of years ago with modern life going on all around it-I just thought it was magical," Kaufer said of his 1989 visit to Israel. "It...
(JTA)-How do you tell a joke in China about Jews when the only things most Chinese think they know about the Chosen People is that they're smart and good with money? That was Jesse Appell's quandary when he moved to China three years ago from Massachusetts with plans to become a comedian-and, like many stand-ups, to mine his own upbringing for material. "All the bad stereotypes about Jews in the West are considered good in China," Appell told JTA. "Chinese say: 'The Jews control the media and...
(JTA)-Two synagogues and the homes of countless Jewish residents were damaged in the floods that swept through Houston on Monday and into Tuesday, inundating homes and businesses, sweeping away cars and leaving at least five people dead. Houston, America's fourth-largest city and home to more than 40,000 Jews, was paralyzed when many of the canals that run through the city (known locally as bayous) crested after torrential rains soaked the city. Some 8-12 inches of water fell in a matter of...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Pew Research Center’s newly released 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study offers a trove of data on American Jews based on interviews with 35,071 American adults, 847 of whom identified their faith as Jewish. Here are some of the more interesting findings about the Jews. We’re highly educated: There are more American Jews with two or more university degrees than those who have just one—31 percent have a graduate degree and 29 percent have just a bachelor’s degree. With a college graduation rate of about 59 percent (more tha...
NEW YORK (JTA) – Almost as soon as news of Nepal's devastating earthquake reached the wider world, Jewish aid groups began mobilizing humanitarian efforts to help the victims. In Israel, that meant dispatching first responders to Nepal; in America, it mostly meant raising and allocating money. How is the Jewish aid being deployed in Nepal? Israel The biggest Jewish on-the-ground response has come from the Jewish state, which currently has more than 260 Israeli soldiers, doctors and rescue expert...
BOULDER, Colorado (JTA)-Omer Mei-Dan has jumped off more cliffs than he can count-not to mention helicopters, skyscrapers and bridges. Just don't call him a skydiver. An orthopedic surgeon and extreme sports athlete, Mei-Dan, 42, is a BASE jumper-one of an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 worldwide who jump from the fixed platforms for which the sport is named: buildings, antennas, spans and earth. Skydiving is a cakewalk by comparison. Because BASE jumpers leap from much lower altitudes, they often...
(JTA)—For President Obama, the framework agreement reached last Thursday with Iran is a “historic understanding” that does more to roll back Tehran’s nuclear program than any possible alternative and avoids the risk of a destructive war in the Middle East. But to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s the complete opposite: a pact that “threatens the survival of Israel” and would “increase the risks of nuclear proliferation in the region and the risks of a horrific war.” With many of the deal’s details yet to be worked out before t...
NEW YORK (JTA) – In 20 years, there will be more Muslims in North America than Jews, according to a new Pew Research Center report. The report, which was released Thursday, also found that more American Jews are leaving Judaism than non-Jews are joining the Jewish people. According to "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050," Muslims will overtake Christians in the last quarter of the 21st century as the globe's largest religious group. In the United States, Musl...
(JTA) —Diplomats in Lausanne, Switzerland, have come to an agreement on a framework accord on Iran’s nuclear program. But even with this agreement, it’s merely a way station toward a comprehensive deal that is due by June 30. The six world powers—the United States, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany—negotiating with Iran managed to reach a final deal, however, Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei still must grant his approval and President Obama will have to overcome opposition in Congress. The deal need not be subject to a congression...
(JTA)-World Zionist Congress elections began earlier this month and run through April 30. Here's a primer on what the congress is, how (logistically) to vote, who's on the ballot, and why you just might want to sign up for PayPal before casting your vote. What is it? The World Zionist Congress is a 500-person representative body of the Jewish people that wields substantial control over three key institutions with significant assets at their disposal: Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, or the Jewish...
(JTA) – The mysterious death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman seems ripped straight out of a crime thriller. Nisman-the indefatigable prosecutor collecting evidence of culpability in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people-was found dead in his apartment just hours before he was to present evidence to Argentina's congress that he said implicated his country's president and foreign minister in a nefarious cover-up scheme. The charge? That the t...
(JTA)-Amid persistent budget deficits, the Jewish community center building in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park may close this spring. The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit announced Monday that a committee is going to recommend that the building shut down in light of annual losses of $1 million and a total deficit of $6 million. The structure, situated on 10 Mile Road, is one of Detroit JCC's two buildings. The other is in West Bloomfield, Mich., about 30 minutes away. After the JCC's...
NEW YORK (JTA)-United Synagogue Youth voted to relax its rules barring its teenage board members from dating non-Jews. The amendment was adopted Monday in Atlanta at the annual international convention of the Conservative movement's youth group. The change affects the 100 or so teen officers who serve on USY's national board and 17 regional boards. The thousands of teens who participate in USY programs have not been subject to any such bans. After some debate at the convention, the USY board...
NEW YORK (JTA)-Ari Engel is homeless. It's been a decade since he last held a regular job and two years since he gave up his apartment. But don't shed any tears for him. Over the last 10 years or so, Engel has grossed about $5 million playing poker. The son of an Orthodox rabbi, Engel, 31, has become one of the world's best professional poker players-ranked No. 23 worldwide by the poker magazine Bluff-and probably the only top-tier player who wears a kipah. When Engel decided to give up his Toro...
(JTA)-For many Cuban Jews-the majority of whom now live in the United States-it has been a bittersweet week. Like countless Jews around the world, they cheered the release of Alan Gross, the American Jewish telecommunications contractor who had been held in a Cuban prison for the last five years. But then there's the matter of reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana. For those old enough to remember the most brutal years of the Castro regime, the idea of rapprocheme...
NEW YORK (JTA) – If Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Teaneck, N.J., had his way, Arab rioters and stone throwers would be shot with live ammunition. Arabs would be barred from the Temple Mount for six months. Any village from which two or more terrorists originated would be razed and its residents deported. Arab terrorists would be executed, their bodies cremated and buried with dead pigs, their families deported and their homes destroyed or given to Jews. "There is a war for the land of Israel that i...
(JTA)-Even amid the unceasing horrors of Sierra Leone's Ebola epidemic, it was a case that stood out. A 5-year-old boy had been found in his home in a remote village, the lone survivor in a house riddled with the corpses of family members. He needed to be extracted; the bodies needed to be buried. The operator who took the call at the Freetown hotline that coordinates the dispatch of ambulances, police and burial teams was shaken. Enter IsraAid. The lone Israeli or Jewish disaster relief organiz...
OXON HILL, Md. (JTA)-There was the vice president of the United States, two Supreme Court justices and an Academy Award-winning actress with a compelling Jewish story. There were Jewish professionals, lay leaders, clergy and recent college graduates. The West Point cadets' Jewish choir performed. The Israeli prime minister appeared via satellite from Jerusalem. Part pep rally, part training and part family reunion, this week's annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America...
NEW YORK (JTA) – The Anti-Defamation League's new national director will be social entrepreneur Jonathan Greenblatt-a special assistant to President Obama who earlier in his career co-founded the bottled water brand Ethos. Greenblatt, 43, will succeed Abraham Foxman, who announced in February that he would be stepping down effective July 2015. Foxman, 74, has been the ADL's national director since 1987. The news was first reported by JTA on Thursday and followed shortly afterward by a formal a...
NEW YORK (JTA)—There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a Jew. The road to conversion can be long and difficult for many prospective converts to Orthodox Judaism, filled with uncertainties and fear about gaining final rabbinic approval. Yet even once they emerge from the mikveh as newly minted American Jews, many find the cha...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Jewish day school enrollment in the United States is up 12 percent from five years ago, primarily due to growth in haredi Orthodox schools. Nearly 255,000 students are enrolled in 861 Jewish day schools from the pre-K level through 12th grade, according to a new census of the schools conducted by the Avi Chai Foundation. The day school survey, which has been conducted every five years since 1998-99, found 59 more schools and 26,437 more students since the last study, in 2008-09. Previous surveys found enrollment growth rates o...
