Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS)-March of the Living launched a global Holocaust remembrance project for individuals to pay tribute to Holocaust survivors, victims and the fight against anti-Semitism ahead of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began on the eve on April 20. The March of the Living Virtual Plaque Project, initiated under the slogan "NeverMeansNever," enables people from around the world to compose a personal message and place it on a virtual plaque to be set against the backdrop of the infamous...
JFS Orlando can't wait to welcome back all of our volunteers once the JFS building opens back up due to COVID-19. Two of those wonderful volunteers are Robin and Marty Katz. Teamwork makes the dream work. Robin and Marty have volunteered together with JFS Orlando for about a decade. "I do it with Marty because he does the heavy lifting and I do the sorting and putting away," says Robin. "And so we have a very good teamwork!" Robin, originally from Chicago, and Marty, originally from New York,...
ERUSALEM (JTA)—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz signed a deal Monday to form a “national emergency government” that keeps Netanyahu as the prime minister for now. Israel has spent more than a year under a caretaker government as neither Netanyahu, who heads the right-wing Likud party, nor Gantz of the center-left Blue and White could assemble a coalition government. With the agreement, the country avoids a fourth national election in less than a year and a half. The agreement also accedes to Likud deman...
Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Chris Coons, D-Delaware, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are launching a bipartisan effort to ween the U.S off of medical reliance on China and replace it, at least partially, with Israel. They are also seeking a $12 million appropriation in the Phase 4/CARES 2 bill in order to “enhance partnerships between companies in the United States and Israel to develop innovative medical projects aimed at detecting, treating, and curing COVID-19.” “I’ve long said that China poses the most signifi...
This Passover was different than any other. For many, being unable to gather for the Seder with family, friends and community as they had planned, this was their first foray into preparing and leading a seder themselves. Many people needed assistance. Some people are hungry. They may have lost their job, have increased medical bills or are going through a rough patch. Maybe they have food, but not the traditional Passover delicacies they grew up with. And some people just need help. They are...
One of the dilemmas facing assisted-living facilities during this COVID-19 pandemic is that to protect their senior residents, facilitators have had to initiate complicated routines: Staff members and delivery persons must have his or her temperature taken before entering the premises; residents can't receive visitors; they must eat alone in their rooms and all regular social activities have been canceled. The results: Residents are spending all of their time alone. Facilitators know that...
With the coronavirus pandemic forcing the world’s students and teachers into online virtual classrooms, many Hebrew schools were left unprepared to make the transition. Education technology nonprofit ShalomLearning has been stepping up to the challenge by providing nearly all of its popular and well-regarded learning resources for free, ensuring that all children are able to maintain their connection to Jewish values at this trying time. As Jewish day schools, congregational religious schools and synagogues grapple with school closures, many h...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel will hold its annual Independence Day torch-lighting on Mount Herzl, but only with a television and digital audience because of coronavirus regulations. Among the torch-lighters announced by the Culture and Sport Ministry is the one representing Diaspora Jewry, which has become a tradition in recent years. The honor goes to Lori Palatnik, the founding director of Momentum, formerly known as the Jewish Women's Renaissance Project and colloquially called "Birthright for Moms...
(JNS)—An American patient diagnosed with the coronavirus (COVID-19) has been given a treatment by Israeli-based Pluristem that, so far, has a 100 percent survival rate. The development, which occurred under the Israel’s compassionate-use program, comes days after the company released preliminary data showing that six critically ill coronavirus patients in the Jewish state who are considered high-risk received the Haifa-based company’s placental cell-therapy treatment and survived one week later. The patient, whose condition was similar to the I...
(JNS)—The presidency of Donald Trump has shaped coalition talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White Party chairman Benny Gantz. For weeks, the chief stumbling block holding up a unity government deal was Gantz’s attempt to delay or block Israeli implementation of Trump’s peace plan, which green lights the implementation of Israeli law over parts of Judea and Samaria. Gantz argued that there was no reason to rush ahead, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Israel should wait six months until the dange...
(Jewish Journal via JNS)—On Thursday night, as sundown falls on the holiday of Passover, Sephardic Jews everywhere will celebrate the centuries-old tradition of Mimouna. This is the night when Jews open their doors to their neighbors, offering tables lavish with sweets to usher in a year of sweetness and good fortune. If there’s a Jewish ritual that calls for maximum social connection, Mimouna is it. As I wrote in a column years ago, “Mimouna represented the love and intimacy of a neighborhood. There’s nothing like popping in to see 10, 20,...
These past few weeks have not been good for the American people or for the rest of the world. The coronavirus pandemic has wrecked havoc on not only the general health of the world’s population, but has had devastating effects on all aspects of the human condition, from our economic well-being to our social, religious and personal behaviors. While the pandemic has for the moment quieted our political divisions at home, it has focused and brutally demonstrated our government’s three fundamental policy shortcomings. At the same time, it has hig...
(JNS)—Microbes are changing our lives, our economy, our culture. You should know—though it will provide no consolation—that it has ever been thus. Perhaps you assumed that the ability of pestilence to change the course of history was... well, history, in the sense that modern science, modern public health systems, and such modern bureaucracies as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization would show those nasty little germs who’s boss. The Ebola outbreak of 2014-16...
(JNS)—It is rare, at times like this, to begin the week—yet another week in the shadow of the coronavirus—on a note of joy and excitement. The crisis persists, and with it, heartrending stories of people lost, as well as of loneliness, of challenges to livelihood and of worries about what yet awaits us. But it is precisely at such moments that the heart looks to the small stories, of individuals. And it is on one such story that I would like to embark—a story that heartens me in these dark days. It is the story of Eli Beer, an esteemed friend...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A pro-Israel group is warning Israeli leaders that reports of planned annexations of parts of the West Bank would cause “long-term damage” to the U.S.-Israel alliance. “Such a move would make a two-state solution harder—if not impossible to achieve—and would likely have far-reaching negative consequences for the U.S.-Israel alliance,” Mark Mellman and Ann Lewis, the president and the co-chairwoman of the Democratic Majority for Israel, wrote to the three leaders negotiating to form a new government in Israel. The warning lette...
Jewish Academy of Orlando will offer daily activities during Passover/spring amidst the COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Head of School Alan Rusonik said, "All of us, students, teachers and parents alike, need a break! In just a matter of a few short weeks, our world was turned upside down." He continued, "No matter what or how our families celebrate over the next few days, we wanted to make the best of the situation and connect with family and friends (virtually) and enjoy the holiday and rest." Ea...
The world is going through a pandemic right now and it has changed everyone's life in one way or another. Passover is a time for the family to gather together and celebrate. It is the closeness of family and being together that makes the meaning of the celebration all that more powerful. Here is how three families usually celebrate Passover and what they did differently this year, the challenges they faced and if this experience provided them with any changes they would make permanent? And...
The Kinneret Council on Aging, a nonprofit agency that provides ongoing programs and services to residents of Kinneret Apartments, provided Kosher for Passover meals to limited income Jewish seniors in the community. While it's an annual tradition at Kinneret to hold a communal Seder, stretching back over 50 years, this year it was not permitted due to Covid-19. Instead, Seders were brought directly to our residents and community while they were staying safe at home. Keeping things upbeat and...
Combat thru education... I read this recently in the World Jewish Congress Digest and pass it along to you: "The WJC, together with UNESCO and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently held a high-level workshop in Geneva on the role of education in combating anti-Semitism. The event follows two previous workshops for policymakers held in Warsaw an...
(JTA)—With its glittering assembly of stars, jokes that worked and attendees who could, well, sing, it was the Zoom Seder you wished you had. The Saturday Night Passover Seder that aired on YouTube over the weekend brought together dozens of celebrities and raised $2.6 million for the CDC Foundation, the nonprofit wing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government agency guiding America through the coronavirus pandemic. The broadcast, which drew more than 1 million viewers, had a distinctive liberal coastal Jewish o...
Unfortunately, the Jewish Pavilion program directors and volunteers couldn’t celebrate Passover with area senior residents in the many assisted-living facilities this year, but they made sure the seniors are never forgotten. Here is what the Jewish Pavilion good bags catered for the residents looked like....
(ISRAEL21c)-The constantly intensifying battle against viruses and antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" isn't only about finding stronger drugs against infection. The focus is moving to preventing infections in the first place. That's why large companies such as Carrefour and a Far East luxury hotel chain are looking at unique germ-vanquishing textiles invented by Jerusalem's Argaman Technologies and manufactured inside its custom-built factory. Carrefour Group, a French-based superstore chain with...
(JTA)-Elisha Nochomovitz, a 32-year-old French Jew, was to be among the 17,000 participants in the Barcelona Marathon on March 15. But the marathon, one of Europe's most popular running events, was postponed to October because of the coronavirus outbreak. Still, Nochomovitz found a way to do what he had been training for despite being forced to spend the past month confined to his apartment in Balma, near Toulouse, under lockdown. (He had worked at a restaurant in Toulouse, but that was shut dow...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Jewish community’s expression of solidarity with Chinese Americans during the coronavirus pandemic has yielded an unexpected return: scads of personal protective equipment for Jewish organizations. David Bernstein, the president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish public policy umbrella that initiated the solidarity letter toward the end of February, said Tuesday that Chinese-American groups have sent thousands of much-needed items to Jewish social service agencies in the Washington, D.C., Boston and New Yo...
SHARON, Mass. (JTA)-When Neil Morris heard the news that his hometown schools were closing for at least two weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, his first thought was about the kids who would lose access to their free or reduced lunches. Morris, the owner of A Perfect Taste, a kosher catering company, called his friend and fellow Sharon resident Avi Shemtov, a chef and owner of Simcha, a restaurant here where both grew up. Both are passionate about reducing food waste and curbing food...
