Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 43 of 43
“Brasil, where hearts were entertaining June…” Trust me… Brasil is spelled correctly. It is not spelled “Brazil.” I have been to Brasil four times… to record my CDs, to perform shows, to do television, etc., so I know that is the correct spelling in Brasil. My agent is a Brasileiro, born and raised in Sao Paulo. He is also a Jewish man, an entertainment lawyer and owner of his own recording company. His name is ROBERTO DRATCU. Roberto has been here in Central Florida many times to work with me....
Park named for Beastie Boys’ Yauch NEW YORK (JTA)—New York City honored the late rapper Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, by bestowing his name on a Brooklyn playground. The park, formerly called Palmetto Playground, is just a couple of blocks from where the musician grew up. At the recent dedication ceremony, speakers included bandmate Adam Horovitz (a.k.a. Ad-Rock); Yauch’s parents, Frances and Noel, and Borough President Marty Markowitz, who rapped his own version of the Beastie Boys’ “Ope...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Jewish Scouting leaders are taking a vocal role in efforts to pass a historic resolution that would partially lift a ban on gays in the Boy Scouts of America. In a meeting of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting in February, members voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution lifting the BSA’s longstanding ban on gay members. Now the Jewish Scouting group is working to shore up support for a resolution to be voted on at the Boy Scouts of America’s annual convention in Da...
This semester, Tel Aviv University inaugurated a pioneering business development program aimed at Palestinian executives, designed jointly by LAHAV Executive Education, and Kellogg-Recanati Executive MBA program at TAU’s Recanati Business School with USAID. Addressing the unique challenges facing Palestinian high-tech companies, the 12-day course gave participants the tools to effectively manage their business, court foreign funding and break into international markets. Mustafa Deeb, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector l...
By Ben Harris NEW YORK (JTA)—When the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews opened its doors to the public recently after years of delays and tens of millions of dollars in spending, it was in no small part thanks to the work of Tad Taube. A successful San Francisco businessman and philanthropist, Taube (pronounced Toby) has been directing the considerable resources of the Taube Philanthropies and the Koret Foundation, both of which he helms, to support efforts to revive Jewish life in P...
“I think Hank Greenberg was the great American hero,” Washington filmmaker Aviva Kempner says. “What he did on Yom Kippur. What he faced. He was our Jackie Robinson.” Thirteen years after the debut of “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” her documentary about the baseball great, Kempner is rereleasing the film on DVD—including an additional two hours of interviews that didn’t make the original cut. Greenberg, known to Jewish fans as the Detroit Tigers’ power hitter who sat out an important game during the 1934 pennant race because it fell on...
By Steve Lipman New York Jewish Week WARSAW, Poland—At a corner table in the Pod Samsonem restaurant, under framed etchings of the Bible’s Samson and of old Warsaw streetscapes, a middle-aged woman cuts up her “Jewish style” trout one recent evening. At other tables, next to walls lined with framed photographs of rabbis, and menorahs on a small shelf, other customers eat their entrees of “Karp po żydowsku” (Jewish-style carp) and “Kavior żydowski” (Jewish caviar). Pod Samsonem (the name means “under Samson”) is a prominent example in...
Newspaper and magazine articles note how, although most Americans own far more material goods than their ancestors, they’re less content than former generations. The idea that our possessions do not bring happiness is commonly found in religious tracts; those writers suggest the key to contentment is focusing less on the material and more on the spiritual. Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, D.H.L., explores this idea from a Jewish point of view in “Saying No and Letting Go: Jewish Wisdom on Making Room for What Matters Most” (Jewish Lights Publi...
CLEVELAND (JTA)—The voice of the 911 caller is frantic, pleading for help. In the background, the victim is heard moaning, her words unclear. “There’s blood everywhere,” the caller says. “I’ve never seen so much blood.” Paramedics arrive on the scene in downtown Cleveland moments later and rush the victim to the MetroHealth Medical Center some five miles away, but it’s too late. Aliza Sherman, a 53-year-old mother of four, is dead. Sherman sustained 11 stab wounds to her neck, head, back and arm...
(Cleveland Jewish News) Hennes Paynter Communications, a firm co-owned by a Jewish resident of Cleveland, has been tapped to handle public relations for the victims of the Cleveland kidnappings that have become a global news sensation. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight on May 6 broke free of Ariel Castro’s house after nine to 11 years of captivity. Bruce Hennes, a Cleveland Heights resident who is Jewish, is co-owner of the Hennes Paynter Communications company with Barbara Paynter. On May 10, Jones Day, the Cleveland law firm h...
Since the Boston Marathon explosions in April, the largely Muslim Russian territory of the North Caucasus has come back to the forefront via Chechnya, where the family of the Boston bombers’ father originated, and nearby Dagestan, the native land of the bombers’ mother. Flashbacks to the wars of the 1990s between Russia and Chechen separatists, and alerts of Islamic insurgency spilling out of Chechnya, appear more prominently in news outlets. Just a couple of weeks ago, a bomb exploded and kil...
Chaya Appel-Fishman hatched the idea for a network of Jewish businesswomen at age 16, when she rented a college campus and created a conglomerate of creative arts programs with 120 participants and a 20-person staff. “I wanted mentors who could give me advice and deal with my religious needs,” she recalls. “And many women reached out to me for support, asking me ‘How did I do it?’” Now 24 and the founder and executive director of The Jewish Woman Entrepreneur nonprofit, Appel-Fishm...
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (JTA)—The thick scent of a peppery rub wafted through the Margolin Hebrew Academy and Corky the Pig embroidered his chef’s hat with a K and became a cow. Just before Purim, the famed Memphis barbecue joint Corky’s, with a hog for its mascot, koshered one of its smokers for a brisket fundraiser on behalf of the city’s Orthodox Jewish day school. Organizers explained that the unusual marriage of brachas and BBQ was a product of a parlous economy, a small school in need of refurbishi...
Brussels as the headquarters of the European Union is the nominal “capital of Europe.” One would expect the city to be the center of enlightenment—the exemplification of political and social tolerance and freedom of speech, assembly and religion, not to mention an advocate of human rights. Disappointingly, recent events have shown that Brussels has increasingly become a place of lies, deliberate disinformation, political manipulation, anti-Semitism and attacks on Israel. Recent developments, particularly Islamist political as well as physi...
PHILADELPHIA—When comedian Susie Essman meets fans and is nice and gracious to them, they are often visibly disappointed. What they really want, she says, is Susie Greene, Larry David’s nemesis on the HBO show, “Curb Your Enthusiasm. ” They ask to be told off, the way she does to David when, for example, he says her hideous, homemade bedazzled sweatshirts aren’t his “cup of tea.” She responds, “All right, you know what, f--- you and f--- your tea.” Essman, who will be performing here May 18, wil...
By Robert Wiener New Jersey Jewish News As the author of the new book, “The American Jewish Story Through Cinema,” Eric Goldman believes you can chart the history of Jews in the United States by studying their roles in films: as actors, moviemakers and moguls. Goldman is an adjunct associate professor of cinema at Yeshiva University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He spoke with the New Jersey Jewish News in a recent telephone interview. NJJN: To what extent did the early films involve Jew...
(JTA)—The Jews of Corpus Christi knew a decade ago they had to act fast to save their two synagogues. With at most 1,000 Jews left in the Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the 60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in 2005, B’nai Israel Synagogue merged with Temple Beth El, a Reform shul, to form Congregation Beth Israel, combining customs and sharing sacred spaces to preserve Jewish life in an area that saw its heyday around World War II. The combined synagogue, and a small but growing num...
If it’s a sign of the times, boy, is it a doozy. The sign at the entrance to Temple Beth Shalom of Smithtown, N.Y., at first glance, seems standard-issue; it stands about six feet high, with white letters (announcing the times of services) on a black background inside a glass frame. But look again, and the bottom part of the sign holds a revelation, so to speak. “JCL,” the sign announces in bright colors, an orange flame inside the curve of the C — Jesus Christ Lives. And underneath that the Spanish version: Ministerio Jesuchristo Vive, a...
