Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 35
(JNS)—In 2019, a team of Israelis will make history when an unmanned spacecraft they built will launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., destined for the moon. SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit organization, has teamed up with defense giant Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to build the spacecraft. When it touches down on the lunar surface, Israel will join an exclusive club consisting of the United States, Russia and China, which have sent spacecraft to Earth’s nearest neighbor. “This is a major sourc...
The educators of the Jewish Teen Education Network invite teens in 8th to 12th grades and their parents for an evening with international award-winning speaker Scott Fried from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday, Feb. 11, at Congregation Ohev Shalom in Maitland. “Finding Our Place in the World” is JTEN’s first community-wide program for both teens and parents. The JTEN educators said Fried is the perfect person to deliver this message, having touched more than a million people through his lectures, humanitarian...
In commemoration of International Holocaust Day, on Jan. 27, there will be a presentation by Holly Mandelkern, author of "Beneath White Stars-Holocaust Profiles in Poetry" at the Winter Park Public Library, located at 460 E New England Ave., in Winter Park. The event, a partnership with The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center, will be held from 2 p.m to 4 p.m. On this date in 1945, Soviet troops liberated the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland. International Holocaust Day pays...
(JTA)-The Pittsburgh Steelers' Stronger Than Hate campaign inspired the city and the world to rally around the Jewish community in the wake of the shooting attack on a local synagogue building that left 11 dead. On Sunday, Dec. 30, the Steelers donated $70,000 to help the Jewish community and the families directly affected by the Oct. 27 attack on Tree of Life Or L'Simcha Congregation building while worshippers were gathered for Shabbat morning services. Prior to the Steeler's home game against...
Learning does not have to be regulated to just a classroom. This is evident at Orlando Torah Academy, the learning spills out into the hallways and beyond. During the first half of the school year the hallways, multipurpose room, and the kitchen were transformed into learning spaces. Using a hallway floor as a backdrop, the first and second graders employed a Design Thinking cycle to arrange miscellaneous items into a page for an "I Spy" book. Another time, one may have seen these same students...
The Congregation Sinai Sisterhood will host their 10th annual fashion show on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019, at Gabby’s Banquet & Events Facility in Clermont, Florida. More than 230 women from the Orlando and Central Florida community are expected to attend this major fundraiser event. Doors will open at 10 a.m. for the fashion show and luncheon that will begin at 11 a.m. The Magic of Music Fashion Show will be presented by Janet Carr of Accessories & More. An array of chic and unusual new women’s fashions will be modeled on the runway, while all of...
For those grieving the loss of a loved one and would like to find hope and healing, JFS Orlando and the Jewish Pavilion, in cooperation with The Hospice of the Comforter and VITAS Healthcare, will host a grief support group beginning Thursday, Jan. 24 and running through Feb. 28. The group will meet from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., at Loundes Law Firm, located at 215 North Eola Drive in Orlando. A $5 per session contribution is suggested. To RSVP, please contact Ashlyn Douglass-Barnes, JFS clinical therapist supervisor, at 407-644-7593, Ext. 247...
(JNS)-Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) compared U.S. President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler this week during a sermon he delivered at Atlanta's Friendship Baptist Church. "The Jewish people know a thing about tyranny," said Johnson at the Atlanta NAACP event to commemorate the 156th anniversary of the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in the South during the Civil War. "Hitler did not start the Nazi Party, but he took over the party with charisma and leadership. The...
(JNS) Honduras will be moving ahead with plans to open its Israel embassy in Jerusalem, and Israel is in talks to open its Honduran embassy in Tegucigalpa, following a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo on Tuesday. The meeting occurred on the sidelines of the inauguration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. According to reports, Israel will upgrade its Honduran consulate to a full-fledged embassy and provide Honduras help on cyber security, water...
(JTA)—Georges Loinger, a member of the French Resistance during World War II who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis, has died. Loinger died on Friday in Paris at the age of 108, France’s Holocaust Memorial Foundation confirmed on its website. Loinger, who was Jewish but looked Aryan with his blonde hair and blue eyes, smuggled at least 350 Jewish children whose parents had been killed or sent to Nazi concentration camps in small groups across the Franco-Swiss border, the French news service AFP reported. The children he saved were...
(JNS)-Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) displayed a map on her first day in the House of Representatives with a note posted over Israel that reads "Palestine." Buzzfeed reporter Hannah Allam posted on Twitter, "Someone has already made a slight alteration to the map that hangs in Rashida Tlaib's new congressional office. Even before she was sworn in on Thursday-the ceremony of which was attended by Women's March leader and anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour, who has been criticized for not...
(JNS)—Thank God, it’s over. When 2018 ended, Israel’s withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization took effect. Don’t feel bad. Under existing conditions, there was no reason to keep our place at the table with the gang of hypocritical liars that every few months rewrote another chapter of the history of the land of Israel and the Jewish people, and co-opted it for the Palestinians. Rather than thrilling at the glorious cultural, religious, historic and archaeological legacy of the Jewish people in the la...
Chaos in both of my countries: Israel’s government collapses, and calls an election for April 9th; U.S. government is wrapped up in a dispute about the wall, pulls out from Syria, and several other claims about the president. Israel’s election came under dispute about a bill for drafting Haredim, as well as looming charges against the prime minister. Contenders are clamoring, with a major question focused on Benny Gantz. He’s a tall, handsome, and quiet former head of the IDF who is polling in the range of 11-15 Knesset Members, but hasn...
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...
(JNS)—If the “West Bank” was part of the “Hashemite Kingdom” up to 1967, how did it suddenly become the Palestinians’ long-yearned-for homeland which, up until then, they were submissively willing to cede to an alien potentate? Not since the time of Dr. Goebels, head of the Nazi propaganda machine, has there ever been a case in which continual repetition of a lie has born such great fruits... Of all the Palestinian lies, there is no lie greater or more crushing than that which calls for the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in th...
(JNS)—Imagine that you are a Jewish doctor in a Nazi concentration camp. About 100 of your fellow inmates suffer from diabetes, and you only have a limited supply of insulin, with no guarantee of more on the way. Do you give each patient the same amount regardless of individual need, knowing that all of them will likely die within a month? Or do you reserve your supply for those with a greater chance of survival, meaning that those with severe diabetes will die much sooner as a result? Or imagine that you are the Greek Jewish teenager from Salo...
Since it came into our lives last year, I’ve had mixed feelings about “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Its jokes sometimes feel like the kind of things we say among other fellow Jews, but not to the rest of the world. The show does have a comforting familiarity that makes it easy to binge watch; I watched the whole first season in a single day. It’s like the matzah ball soup of TV shows: It feels like home, with all of the wonderful and less-than-wonderful associations that home can have. One of its more discomfiting aspects (besides the mostly...
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) Chabad of South Orlando—Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. and 10 minutes before sunset; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 8:15 a.m., 407-354-3660. Congregation Ahavas Yisrael—Monday - Friday, 7:30 a.m.; Saturday, 9:30 a.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-644-2500. Congregation Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Daytona—Monday, 8 a.m.; Thursday, 8 a.m., 904-672-9300. Congregation Ohev Shalom—Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-298-4650. GOBOR Community Minyan at Jewish Academy of Orlando—Monday—Friday, 7:45 a.m.—8:30 a.m. Temple I...
In his new book, “We Want Mashgiach Now—Tales From A Kosher Cop,” Allan Lieberman tells what’s really going on behind the kitchen doors in the Kosher food service business. Lieberman, a South Florida mashgiach (Kosher Food supervisor) has put together a witty and entertaining account of some of his on-the-job experiences. Always humorous, sometimes irreverent and often educational, each chapter tells the story of incidents that occurred at Kosher restaurants or events and in kitchens of Kosher...
Butterflies. Beautiful butterflies. Blue. Yellow. Even black and white. I am so enthralled by them. But butterflies have a greater meaning to me than just their beauty. In 1993, I read a book called "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," a collection of short pieces, poems, and drawings completed by the children in one of Nazi Germany's infamous concentration camps. The eponymous poem was written by Pavel Friedmann, a 21-year-old man who was transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on...
(JNS)-Residents of an illegal Bedouin outpost adjacent to Maskiyot were served with demolition orders. But instead of pulling up stakes, they are carrying out a takeover through agricultural projects on state land-land that is registered to the state, straddling the area's major traffic artery, in an area under military closure orders. The Bedouin residents of the illegal outpost, which has grown significantly in recent years thanks to the support it receives from the Palestinian Authority and a...
Dena Rose Kolin, daughter of Lawrence and Karen Kolin of Orlando, will be called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, at Congregation Ohev Shalom in Maitland. Dena is in the seventh grade at Lake Highland Preparatory School. She is a member of Kadima and has participated in many student productions through the Youth Program at Ohev, The Roth Family JCC and school. Dena also studies dance. Sharing in the family's simcha will be Dena's sister, Abi; her father's brother, Marc...
The Congregation Sinai Sisterhood will host their annual Tu B’shvat holiday celebration service starting at 7:30 p.m. on Friday night, Jan. 18. Congregation Sinai will host a special Rebbe’s Table service welcoming Shabbat with a special focus on Tu B’shvat. This open participatory service will be filled with music, special foods and a celebration. Everyone is welcome. Tu B’shvat is a Jewish holiday occurring on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat each year; Tu B’shvat is also called “Rosh HaShanah La’Ilanot,” literally meaning “New Ye...
Memories... Back in 1964, when my husband, Irv, and I moved to Orlando, one of the finest restaurants in Central Florida was Al and Linda's La Cantina. More than half a century has past, yet, after going there with our son, RON, the other night (Irv is deceased), I have to say it is still one of the finest restaurants in the area! And the service was as good as the food. (Our server, a beautiful gal, happens to be the granddaughter of Al and Linda!) Uh Oh... upsetting news from Germany... "The...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., reintroduced pro-Israel legislation that did not get passed in the last Congress. Rubio, together with Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, on Thursday, the first day of the new Congress, combined a number of Middle East-related bills into a single bill, jump-starting the process. “First item the Senate will take up in the new Congress will be our bill to deal with the crisis in #Syria & support our allies in the Middle East,” Rubio said on Twitter. Among the items is the Ileana Ros-Lehtinen United States-Israel...
