Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Congregation Ohev Shalom eighth-grade Shabbaton features "USY University," Jan. 23-25, where the theme was making the transition from middle school to high school with a Jewish lens. Discussions included healthy ways to cope with stress, "ask the experts" question and answers with the USY board about high school, anti-Semitism. On Shabbat afternoon participants learned about the different positions in USY through fun and interactive games and activities. The COS USY board and COS youth staff... Full story
The Roth Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando is honoring Ed and Susie Kleiman and Howard and Pearl Lefkowitz and their families in recognition of their decades of commitment and support of the JCC and the Orlando community at its annual J Ball gala on Saturday, March 7 at 7 p.m. at the Rosen Plaza Hotel. "Over the years, these two families have been actively involved at the JCC," said David Wayne, executive director. "From helping getting the JCC get started in 1973 to participating in... Full story
Recently, the Orlando Sentinel chose Harriett Lake as the recipient of the 2014 Central Floridian of the Year for her generous financial support of many organizations within Central Florida. Since 2003, Lake has given about $1.5 million annually to many causes, from Kinneret, JFS Orlando and the Holocaust Center to MD Anderson Cancer Center and Florida Hospital's boutiques for breast cancer survivors to the multiple performing arts groups, including the Southern Ballet Theatre, Madcow Theatre,... Full story
The Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando announced that applications for the 2015 Coleman Israel Travel Scholarship are now available. The Ronald Coleman Israel Scholarship Fund was made possible by a generous endowment established by the Coleman family to encourage Jewish teens in the Greater Orlando area to participate in educational experiences in Israel. It is open to all Jewish teens who are permanent residents of Central Florida, and are in ninth through 12th grade. Gap year programs are... Full story
Despite the criticism he has received, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner does not regret the decision he made to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in early March. In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" last Sunday, Boehner said he notified the White House of his decision only on the morning that he extended the invitation to Netanyahu. "There's nobody in the world who can talk about the threat of radical terrorism, nobody... Full story
(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... Full story
Tickets are now available and plans are well underway for The Kinneret Council on Aging's 8 over 80 Honorary Dinner that will be held on Sunday, March 1, 2015. This year's honorees are: Avie Abramowitz, Helen Hosid, Morris Rashy, Ron Shader, Sandy Silbert, Mark Silverberg, Betty Stein and Harvey Titen. The event will start at 5 p.m. in the Jessie Render Social Hall where hors d'oeuvres and cocktails will be served. At 5:45 p.m. guests will move into the Delaney Dining Room where a traditional ko... Full story
Congregation Ohev Shalom invites the Orlando Jewish Community to learn about and share the joys of Shabbat with the entire family. COS is sponsoring a Learner’s Shabbat Service and Ritual Fair on Feb. 21. The event is co-sponsored by the COS Ritual Committee and the Adult Education Committee. The Learner’s service will be a non-traditional learning experience that will teach people the “choreography” of Jewish praying; how to properly perform an aliyah to the Torah and the reasons we recite the prayers that we do as well as learning some of... Full story
On Dec. 28, 2014, the members of Congregation Sinai and their spiritual leaders, Joe and Lynn Goldovitz, met to clean their large Torah scroll to prepare it for repair and restorations, which will take place in the spring. Before the actual repairs and restorations can proceed, a full evaluation of the scroll should take place. And before a proper evaluation can be made, the Torah scroll must be cleaned. Since the Torahs are used every week, Congregation Sinai members felt it was their... Full story
Congregation Beth Sholom invites the public to a Shabbat and Tu B’Shevat observance, let by Rabbi Karen Allen, at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb.13th. Tu B’Shevat marks the New Year of the Trees. The Friday evening observance will begin with a short Tu B’Shevat seder at 6:30, followed by the Shabbat evening service at 7. After the service, refreshments will be served at an Oneg Shabbat in the social hall. The holiday of Tu B’Shevat is a festival of the trees and a celebration of nature. At this season in Israel, the earth begins to warm and the fir... Full story
You have to hand it to the United Nations, I guess. It’s hard to think of another body that would organize a special meeting on the subject of rising anti-Semitism with anti-Semites not just in attendance, but making speeches as well. The Jan. 22 meeting on the subject at the U.N. General Assembly, organized in the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, started well enough. The keynote speaker was French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy, who used the occasion to mount a forthright denunciation of what he called “the del... Full story
It didn’t take even a week to be refuted. On Jan. 15, noted Israel critic Peter Beinart declared that Palestinians who hate Israel never claim that they were inspired by anti-Israel incitement. Just six days later, on Jan. 21, a Palestinian who stabbed twelve Israelis on a Tel Aviv bus said he was inspired by “radical Islamic broadcasts.” Beinart is a CNN commentator, a columnist for Ha’aretz, and a fellow at a liberal think think, the New America Foundation. He made a splash in 2012 in the Jewish world with his book The Crisis of Zionism... Full story
The UN may do good somewhere, but the case would take some convincing. Its people are spread throughout the Third World. All told, they are probably not worse than the governments they are meant to help. We often see UN vehicles and personnel in our neighborhood. They are here to help the Palestinians, but living in Israel because it is more desirable. The UN reached the limit of its peacekeeping role in Korea, and has not returned to anything close. That exercise, like later ventures in Vietnam and elsewhere, was managed by the U.S., and... Full story
For a look at the voter’s guide, please see page 2. (Forward)—Fed up with the American Jewish community and the big-mouth nobodies who think they own it? Good news: There’s an election going on. And you can vote. No, really. An actual, honest-to-goodness election. Until April 30 you can go online, pay $10 to register and cast a vote for a delegation that will represent the Jews of America at an international convention in Jerusalem next fall. The convention, in turn, will choose officers and set budgets and policies for several major Israe... Full story
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (JTA)—While nascent talk of the Holocaust was in the air when I was growing up in New York City, we did not learn about it in school, even in lessons about World War II or the waves of immigration to America’s shores. There were no public memorials or museums to the murdered millions, and the genocide of European Jewry was subsumed under talk of “the war.” My father was a somber man who arrived here from Poland after the war and, like many survivors, kept to himself, trying his best to block out the past. Growing up, my... Full story
(JTA)—Three weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in a Parisian kosher butcher store several miles west of the supermarket where four Jews were murdered on Jan. 9. The shop in our neighborhood was well patronized, with lines stretching out to the sidewalk before Shabbat. We were staying in an apartment in Paris’ 12th district while I promoted a new book about the treatment of Jews in France during World War II. During our stay, we spoke with dozens of our Parisian friends, including some who are Jewish, about whether the year 2015 evokes for t... Full story
Dear Editor: Upon a world marred by Islamic turmoil, terror, and violence, a gift of inestimable value has been bestowed. On Dec. 28, 2014, in a speech directed at Islamic religious scholars and clerics, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said, “It is inconceivable that the ideology we sanctify should make our entire nation a source of concern, danger, killing, and destruction all over the world. Honorable Imam (the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar), you bear responsibility before Allah. The world in its entirety awaits your words, because the I... Full story
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) Chabad of South Orlando—Monday and Thursday, 8 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 Israel—Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-647-3055. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6 Ligh... Full story
(Jewniverse via JTA)-It might seem that the only Jews left in Pakistan are underground-in Karachi's lone Jewish cemetery. But that's not quite so. Faisal (Fishel) Benkhald, the son of a Muslim father and Iranian Jewish mother, dares to call himself a Jew in a country where the Jewish minority began dwindling in the 1940s with the British partition of India and today has all but vanished. Benkhald also leads a one-man campaign to save the Karachi cemetery from being sold to provide more burial... Full story
Ruth F. Goldey of Altamonte Springs, passed away on Monday, Jan. 26, 2015, at Florida Hospital—Altamonte. She was 87 years old. Mrs. Goldey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 23, 1927, to the late William and Ida Messey Friedman. She received her bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and was married for 52 years to her late husband, Richard “Dick” Goldey when he passed away in 2000. They moved from Pennsylvania in 1963, and lived for over 50 years in the Daytona Beach area where they owned and operated several hotels,... Full story
Michael A. Kaplan, age 73, of Winter Springs, passed away on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, at his residence. He was 73 years old. Mr. Kaplan was born on Sept. 28, 1941, in New York City to the late George and Rose Bronston Kaplan. He was a high school graduate and served in the U.S. Army. On May 28, 1964, in Spring Valley, New York, he married the former Eileen Stein, his wife of 51 years, who survives him. Mr. Kaplan was an entrepreneur in the sales and marketing industry moving from Cherry Hill, N.J. to the Orlando area in 1972. In addition to his... Full story
Thelma “Teri” Marks of Fern Park, passed away on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015, at Florida Hospital—Altamonte. She was 91 years old. Mrs. Marks, a native of Brooklyn, New York, was born on Aug. 5, 1923, to the late Joseph and Fay Barban Mehlman. She worked as an administrator for Metropolitan Life Insurance for many years and was the widow of the late Frank Marks who passed away in 1993. Mrs. Marks, a former member of Congregation of Reform Judaism and a long-standing member of Hadassah, relocated to the Orlando area in 1997. For many years, Mrs.... Full story
Riff Masteroff of Arlington, Va., passed away at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington on Friday, Jan. 9, 2015. He was 66 years old. Mr. Masteroff was born in New Jersey on Sept. 9, 1948 to Evelyn Weinstein Masteroff and the late Harry Masteroff. He was a computer specialist in the construction industry. In addition to his mother, Mr. Masteroff is survived by his cousin, Bernie (Roz) Weinstein and family of Maitland. A graveside funeral service was held at Temple Israel Cemetery with Rabbi Arnold Siegel officiating. Funeral arrangements... Full story
The Seeking Kin column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA)-Miriam Grab has almost nothing to go on in her search for relatives, not even names. While the retired teacher in Haifa has five children, 29 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren, she lacks an extended family. Her father's relatives from her native Czechoslovakia were wiped out in the Holocaust. Grab figures, though, that someone on that side of the family must have survived. She concedes that the... Full story
Lee Karlinsky, son of Paul and Erica Karlinsky of Heathrow, will be called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah on Feb. 13, 2015, at Congregation Beth Am in Longwood. Lee is in the seventh grade at Lake Mary Preparatory School where he is vice president of the National Junior Honor Society, plays football, and often lends his voice to the morning news. His hobbies and interests include acting in theater, film and commercials; traveling to auditions; attending acting workshops; and performing magic.... Full story
