Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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With school and religious school going virtual, this is a wonderful time for children at home to be helping seniors. The Jewish Pavilion has been in touch with the Jewish schools and requested that the children make Passover cards, and "I am thinking of you cards" that the Jewish Pavilion will distribute to seniors. The children are also welcome to make Easter cards, which the Pavilion will help distribute to residents of other faiths. The Jewish Pavilion staff and volunteers are also emailing...
Jewish Academy of Orlando students completed their first week of online learning. Students took part in all of their subjects including math, science, english language arts, PE, art, music and more. They even attended remote community events such as Shabbat and Monday morning minyan. Jewish Academy of Orlando serves central Florida students of all faiths from transitional kindergarten through fifth grade. The school delivers a whole-child education fostering academic excellence and character...
Although JFS Orlando is closed to the public and is currently not accepting food donations to maintain containment during COVID-19, its services are still operational, including the Pearlman Emergency Food Pantry. The staff is doing everything in their power to meet the needs of its neighbors in Central Florida during this critical time. That’s why the 2020 Restock Challenge is STILL on! JFS still challenges you to make your donation stretch further. Are you up to the challenge? During the Restock Challenge (March 1—April 15, 2020), The Wei...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-As his Blue and White party was on the verge of breaking up, its leader, Benny Gantz, was elected speaker of the Israeli Knesset on Thursday evening. Gantz has been tasked with forming a coalition government following elections earlier this month, Israel's third vote in less than a year. The split in his party is over a debate about joining a unity government led at first by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What does it mean: A unity government would provide Israel with a...
(JTA)—As the world shut down around it, the Brooklyn headquarters of the worldwide Chabad movement carried on as usual—until late Tuesday night, when its neighborhood’s rabbinic leadership ordered synagogues closed to combat the spread of the coronavirus. All week, men came and went from the massive building in the Crown Heights neighborhood, crowding in for prayer services and study sessions. After news broke that the headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway would close amid global efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, there was a final...
(ISRAEL21c)—The global Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is donating more than 6 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets to hospitals across the United States to meet the urgent demand for the medicine as an investigational target to treat COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of malaria, lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. The Teva-manufactured drug is not approved for use in treating COVID-19. However, it is under investigation for e...
(JNS)—The coronavirus pandemic is not the first deadly contagion to ravage the globe, but it is clearly the first that modern nations have sought to combat by essentially shutting down public life and much of their economies. While most of us may have initially thought that this necessary effort would be of short duration earlier in the month, few are still laboring under the illusion that things will soon be back to normal. But whether we emerge from this hiatus from our normal lives within a few weeks or a few months, it’s clear that the econ...
Every spring, the Jewish community is treated to a colorful variety of new editions of the Passover Haggadah. There’s something for everybody—you can find haggadahs that focus on everything from the environment to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel TV show. And now, just in time for the 2020 holiday, brace yourself for the most disturbing version yet, courtesy of J Street: The Anti-Israel Haggadah. That’s not its official name, of course. And J Street will surely bristle at the notion that anything it does can be described as “anti-Israel.” But almos...
We can argue if it really happened, but there’s no doubt that the Exodus is a great story, with or without Hollywood stars or best selling authors. Yet it has also been associated with problems. The association of Passover and Easter brought forth an increase in Christian animosity and violence. Too often in European history it was a season of pogroms rather than celebration. There’s no better evidence for the stories of Jesus than for the story of the Exodus. Both rely on what was written by religious partisans, with the story of Jesus’ trial...
(JNS)—Some Israeli political leaders are about to do something that would severely alienate a large portion of Diaspora Jewry. No, I’m not talking about the arguments over prayer areas at the Western Wall or the “Who is a Jew?” dispute. I’m referring to a very different threat to Israel-Diaspora relations: The prospect that terror-supporters will be given a significant role in the makeup and policies of the next government of Israel. Last week, a newly elected Arab member of the Knesset, Mrs. Aida Touma-Sliman, made a dramatic announcem...
With the recent outbreak of the coronavirus in Gaza, all eyes are (strangely) on Israel. Let’s explore why and if that’s well founded or helpful. Some background is important. During the British occupation of the Land of Israel (1917-1948), Gaza was meant to become part of an Arab state per a two-state solution which they, and the rest of the Arab world, rejected. Many refugees fled Israel in the 1948-49 War of Independence, where they lived in squalor under Egyptian occupation. Gaza was captured, along with all of Sinai, from Egypt (and Jud...
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA)—Like so many others, I am feeling the spiritual loss and pain of our current inability to learn Torah and pray together in person. Many mourners are devoted to the customary recitation of Kaddish for a deceased close relative and struggling with how to do so in the absence of a minyan. Some rabbis are encouraging internet-based solutions to hold us over until this crisis abates. I’m concerned that those solutions come with a significant cost. The decision to blur virtual reality with actual reality and relax the rules of...
(Kveller via JTA)—My relationship with Amazon’s Alexa is complicated. I love that she’s politically informed and shares the latest news with me, and she has really great taste in music. Since she’s come into my life, I can’t imagine not waking up next to her every morning—but sometimes she gets on my last nerves. Her listening comprehension skills aren’t the best, she never pronounces my name correctly and she often lies to me about the weather. Alexa also can be very rude and impolite when she interrupts my conversations completely un...
In the March 20 issue of Heritage, the article about Brenda Fisher Wetmore, titled “A hard worker for the Jewish Pavilion,” ran a photo of Miriam Josephs, an equally hard worker for the Pavilion. Shown here is a photo of Brenda Fisher Wetmore. Heritage apologizes for the error....
Biblical Irony: Passover seder may be delayed by the plague. Facebook meme One of Judaism’s most important holidays officially begins with the first seder on April 8. Pesach in the time of coronavirus, however, will be very different. During these difficult times, I think of my parents, Fran and Bill Cohen. As did many of the Greatest Generation, they went through several challenging times. In 1919, the Spanish flu was raging throughout the world. My mother, born in 1917, fell deathly ill. The family doctor saved her life by making a deep i...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The White House has come to an agreement with Democrats and Republicans on a $2 trillion stimulus package, the biggest in U.S. history, in response to the major economic downturn triggered by the coronavirus. Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act as an emergency relief package in response to the needs created by the coronavirus public health crisis and associated economic fallout. The emergency relief package provides tax rebates, expanded unemployment benefits, and numerous tax-relief provisions aimed at shoring up i...
(JNS)-A rabbi who survived World War II and the Holocaust and in January delivered the opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives died on Tuesday-14 days after his 91st birthday-after being hospitalized with COVID-19. Yeshiva World News first reported the death of Rabbi Avraham Hakohen "Romi" Cohn as a result of complications due to the coronavirus. Cohn was born in 1929 in Pressburg in what was then Czechoslovakia. In 1942, when the Nazis invaded, his parents managed to smuggle him ove...
(JNS)—Let’s talk business, shall we? Let’s talk about how businesses are operating in the age of corona. What is open: supermarkets, small grocers, hardware stores, office-supply stores, pet stores, pizza places, some restaurant takeout, gas stations, beer distributors. Beer distributors? My husband tells me that is an essential business; after all, it’s basically food and beverages. He’s not such a drinker, but recognizes that others are. Now, that distinction was not so apparent at first to the nice man named Izzy who runs the nearby la...
On Passover, Jews are prohibited from consuming any foods made with five familiar grains: wheat, oats, rye, spelt (which is actually just an ancient form of wheat) and barley. These grains are considered hametz because of their ability to ferment and rise. The only exception to this rule is, of course, matzah. As a result, many home bakers think that the only way to bake during Passover is to use matzah meal, which has an unfortunate tendency to make baked goods dense and even leaden. But today, as a result of the popularity of gluten-free and...
This story originally appeared on Alma. At Zoom University Hillel, there are no comfy places to study or free snacks. There's no director or rabbinic intern or student board. But there are memes, words of comfort and a sense of community as strong as any university's Hillel house. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced nearly every college to transition to online courses and, in most cases, move students out of their dorms and back to their homes. College students naturally have taken to Facebook...
Curb your Enthusiasm... While watching "Curb your Enthusiam" recently, actor/producer/director/writer of the television show (and formerly producer/writer of the very successful television show "Seinfeld" starring JERRY SEINFELD, LARRY DAVID, mentioned my very famous cousin, writer DANIEL KEYES and also one of Dan's books, "Flowers For Algernon," which, by the way, was required reading in most New York City schools. The book incidentally, was turned into the movie "Charly" starring Cliff...
(The Nosher via JTA) – Haroset is one of the most important food components of the Passover seder. Its intense sweetness symbolizes the optimism in contrast to the bitter maror and salty water, which remind us of our ancestors’ suffering. Every family has its own special haroset recipe, and each year my mother makes ours, which is passed down from my grandmother. Our family recipe includes dates, sweet kiddush wine and lots of cinnamon. It’s delicious and I always spend the majority of my seder making matzah and haroset sandwiches. Still...
(Kveller via JTA)—So I’m just going to come right out and say it: We don’t keep kosher for Passover. I feel a bit like a party-pooping high school senior who chooses not to go to the prom revealing that. After all, we moved to Israel to bring our kids up Jewish and live close to our Israeli family. But we are secular Jews and the simple truth is that we pick and choose how we observe in line with our beliefs about what’s important for us and what’s not. I’ve read on Kveller about how Mayim Bialik makes her Passover meaningful, how Amanda Bradle...
(JNS)-A Jewish mother in Maryland created an illustrated online book in a PDF format that helps parents explain to preschoolers and toddlers the school closings due to coronavirus. "My School is Closed" by Meredith Polsky, co-founder of the Jewish organization Matan, is written from the point of view of a child, who says on one page "I'm not sick now. My friends are not sick. We are staying home to help people stay healthy." Polsky, also a developmental support coordinator at Temple Beth Ami...
(JTA)-Rena Munster was looking forward to hosting a Passover seder for the first time. In past years, her parents or another relative hosted the meal. But this year she had invited her parents, siblings and other extended family to her Washington, D.C., home. Her husband, an amateur ceramics artist, was making a set of dishes for the holiday. And she was most excited for her family's traditional day of cooking before the seder: making short-rib tzimmes, desserts that would pass muster...
