Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Earlier this month, I and a few other Stoneman Douglas graduates, had a meeting at Chabad at UCF. As we knew that the first anniversary of the Stoneman Douglas shooting was coming up and that Feb. 14 would be a difficult day for many, we wanted to create an event that would not only spread positivity and growth, but that would also bring the community together. Within minutes, we thought of a great idea: Let's give students the opportunity to do mitzvot-good deeds. We came up with several meanin...
On Monday, Feb. 25, the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center publicly launched its campaign to raise funds for a new museum in Downtown Orlando, announcing it has already garnered $10 million in gifts. Local benefactors who have made significant contributions include the Ginsburg Family Foundation with $4 million, hotelier Harris Rosen with $1 million, longtime Central Florida philanthropists Jim and Alexis Pugh with $1 million and community leaders Jim and Valeria Shapiro with $1...
At exactly 8:45 p.m. EST a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off the Florida coast at Cape Canaveral carrying the SpaceIL Lunar Lander, named "Beresheet." The night launch was easily seen from Altamonte Springs as it rose into the atmosphere. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched the lift off with his wife, Sarah, South African philanthropist Morris Kahn and a host of others at the Yehud Command Center. At 9:25 p.m. EST, Beresheet separated from the Falcon 9 rocket, deployed its...
ORLANDO (JTA)-He's not just a student at the University of Central Florida, he is the student president. Growing up, Josh Boloña was just like a lot of kids in South Florida: He was a Latino immigrant, from Ecuador, in an area with a lot of Latino immigrants. He was a Jewish kid in an area with many Jews. He was a soccer player in a place where plenty of kids played soccer. Then he tried to get his driver's permit. Boloña had an inkling a year earlier that his immigration status was c...
Actor Hal Linden (of "Barny Miller" fame) has never been to Orlando, but he has been all up and down the east coast of Florida as the national spokesman for the Jewish National Fund, a position he has held since 1997. He came into the world with a father who was a Zionist before World War I. He remembers always putting nickels and dimes into the JNF Blue Box as a kid, but didn't really grasp his father's passion at that time. He also stars in the film "The Samuel Project," which opens today in...
Everyone in the community is welcome to attend the Jewish Pavilion Purim parties. For more information, please call 407-678-9363. Here is the Purim schedule by program director Judy Appleton March 8 @ noon Allegro Senior Living March 8 @ 3 pm Mayflower (Upstairs, Country Kitchen) March 8 @ 4:15 pm Westminster Winter Park March 12 @ 3 pm Palmetto Landing (formerly Brookdale Tuskawilla) March 14 @ 10:30 am Encore at Avalon Park Julie Levitt March 8 @12noon Grand Villa (no entertainment... just...
Join with other Jewish women from Orlando for a special Ladies Night Out on Monday, March 4, 7:15 p.m. Enjoy refreshments and fine wines, guest speaker Sigy Laredo in Montreal, explore your Jewish identity as you hear about the message from Queen Esther and the Purim story and how they resonate with Jewish women today. Also prepare Mishloach Manot for the residents of assisted-living facilities visited by the Jewish Pavilion. This event, hosted by Gesher South Orlando and Mkva USA, will be held at the Orlando Torah Center, 8613 Banyan Blvd.,...
(JNS)-When anti-Israel organization "Combatants for Peace" announced recently that it would protest Israel's alleged annexation of Area C-the Israeli-controlled part of Judea and Samaria-the Sovereignty Movement, an offshoot of Women in Green and headed by Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, immediately responded to the provocation. They mobilized a large group of people to attend a lecture by veteran journalist and Knesset candidate Caroline Glick, of the New Right Party, at the Oz veGaon nature...
The St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society is mourning the Feb. 16, 2019, death of Al Vorspan, a giant in the movement for Social Justice among Reform Jews. He was 95. Vorspan was arrested here in St. Augustine, Florida along with 16 rabbis making for the largest mass arrest of rabbis in U.S. history. Although not a rabbi himself, Vorspan's credentials were considerable. He was a founder of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and served as the longtime director of the Union for Reform...
(JTA)—Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan blamed “the wicked Jews” for the crisis over anti-Semitism and the Women’s March. “The most beautiful sight that I could lay eyes on [was] when I saw, the day after Trump was elected, women from all over the world were standing in solidarity, and a black woman is the initiator of it,” said Farrakhan, referring to Tamika Mallory, a leader of the Women’s March who has lionized Farrakhan and refused to condemn his pervasive anti-Semitism. “The wicked Jews want to use me to break up the women’s movement,...
(JNS)—Last week former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni announced that she was dropping out of politics. Livni came as close to being prime minister as you can get without actually having the job more than once. But only a decade after leading her party to a first-place finish in the 2009 Knesset election, she is finally giving up. Insiders put her down as a difficult political partner. That’s the generally accepted answer to the question of why, after being part of so many coalitions, she was left standing when the music stopped in the...
By Itzhak Levanon (JNS)—After eight years, the Foreign Ministry’s director general decided to keep Israeli embassy staff in Egypt over the weekend instead of returning them home. This was a welcome decision; the staff’s permanent presence in Cairo allows it to develop and maintain continuous diplomatic work, as expected of any embassy. The attack on the embassy by an enraged mob in late 2011 and the staff’s consequent hasty withdrawal left Israel without a building for its embassy, with a very minimal team in place, and diplomats who return...
(The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs via JNS)—According to senior figures in the Fatah movement, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan have begun cooperation in anticipation of the announcement of the new U.S. peace plan known as the “deal of the century.” This new collaboration is based on understandings reached between Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in August 2017 after the crisis of the metal detectors that were set up at the gates to the Temple Mount. King Abdullah, for his part, made a special...
(JNS)—The precise details of the forthcoming Trump administration Mideast peace plan are not yet known, but the basic principle was declared by senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at last week’s Warsaw conference. “Both sides will have to make compromises,” he said. Kushner’s statement follows numerous similar statements by American officials, including the president himself. In his Feb. 9, 2017 interview with Israel Hayom, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “I think that both sides will have to make significant compromises...
(JNS) The Israeli security cabinet decided on Sunday to put into effect a law passed in July to deduct half a billion shekels (approximately $138.2 million) from the annual tax revenues it transfers to the Palestinian Authority each year. The purpose of the legislation—like its precursor, the Taylor Force Act, which was approved by the U.S. Congress in May—is to coerce the P.A. to cease rewarding terrorists with hefty “pay-for-slay” stipends. Initially, Israeli security officials opposed cutting the funds on the grounds that doing so could e...
(JNS)—These are dark days for France... days that are giving rise to questions about the future of its Jews. For months, we have witnessed the “yellow vests” popular protests. The demonstrations, which began because of justified claims against the government, are becoming more radical from day-to-day, and sadly, along with the calls against the establishment and for social justice, we are hearing shouts we never thought we would hear in the streets of Paris in 2019. Some of the “yellow vests” protests are based on myths and stories that woul...
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...
Celebrate Shabbat on Friday, March 8 with the synagogue that feels like family. Our Shabbat evening service led by Rabbi and Cantor Karen Allen starts at 7pm. Socialize with our members and enjoy refreshments at the Oneg Shabbat following the service. The Rabbi’s Roundtable Discussion Group on Thursday, March 14 at 11 a.m. with Rabbi and Cantor Karen Allen of Congregation Beth Sholom, will be held inside the library at the Sumter County Administration and Library Building (with the golden dome) at 7375 Powell Rd. (near Pinellas Plaza and 466A),...
If you thought that the Jewish National Fund only planted trees, you are way behind the times. JNF was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlements well before Israel became a nation in 1948. By 2007 it owned 13 percent of the total land in Israel and the nonprofit has planted over 240 million trees. Now JNF is invested in many other ways to support the land and the people of Israel through water solutions, research and development, education and most recently, becoming a key...
As I-4 traffic became aggravatingly slow on a recent late Friday afternoon, Michelle Bilsky arrived at Cascade Heights Senior Living in Longwood a little breathless from her rush to make it on time from her job downtown at the Lutheran Towers senior complex to the 4 p.m. Jewish Pavilion Shabbat service. She and her husband, Wayne, who live nearby, leave their jobs early one Friday a month and meet at Cascade Heights to lead the service, which is offered weekly with different leaders. "Good...
(JTA)—With the announcement last month that it had picked Robert Kraft as its 2019 laureate, the Genesis Prize seemed poised for a calmer year. Last year the foundation that awards the “Jewish Nobel,” as it’s called, picked actress and director Natalie Portman as an example of someone who provides “inspiration to the next generation of Jews through their outstanding professional achievement along with their commitment to Jewish values and the Jewish people.” The selection backfired, however, when Portman refused to attend the prize ceremony in...
Tunnel Anyone?... When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, New York, if a gate (or a wall) was around a school playground, locked on weekends and too high to climb over, we dug under... not quite a tunnel but enough to get through. (Just saying) According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation ... "A Jewish Telegraph Agency article highlighting data recently released by the FBI noted that hate crimes against Jews in America rose by more than a third in 2017 and accounted for 58 percent of all...
Congratulations to Kevin Stewart, chairman of the Maitland Chamber Health Expo on his successful event. A portion of the proceeds were generously donated to the Jewish Pavilion for their support of seniors in elder-care communities. Pictured are board members of the Maitland Chamber of Commerce presenting a check for $950 to Nancy Ludin, CEO of the Jewish Pavilion Shown here (l-r): Micheleen Raines, Patti Gutter, Mary Penn, Nancy Ludin, Kevin Stewart, Brian Weber and Scott Ha...
(JNS)-What do you get when you toss in a bit of "Toy Story," The Little Engine That Could and The Magic School Bus book series? An optimistic (and very blue) "Berrie," a spacecraft with her eyes set on reaching the moon. But "Berrie" has the odds stacked against her. As far as spacecrafts go, she's pretty small and can't pack the energy punch necessary to launch her into orbit. But she has come up with many innovative ways to compensate for it-strategic collaborations, solar panels, tracking...
If you and your tweens still aren't watching the Disney Channel show "Andi Mack," you must start ASAP. It deals with so many kinds of identities, including Jewish, in a way not usually seen on TV aimed at the pre-teen set. "Andi Mack" - the first Disney Channel show to focus on an Asian-American family-has broken new ground for the channel time and again. The premise is that Andi (played by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) discovers that Bex (Lilian Bowden), the woman she thought was her sister, is really...
