Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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”Oy am I fahklempt” department… You know what fahklempt means… eyes tear up and a lump in the throat. That’s how I felt after just seeing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on television with James Cagney. (I know very few actor’s names these days. It feels great to see a name I recognize.) Anyway, although I know that Hollywood movies take liberties with the whole truth, it was still nice to hear the story of George M. Cohan, who at the turn of the last century, wrote songs like “Give my regards to Broadw...
LOS ANGELES—The Rev. Kenneth Meshoe, a member of the South African Parliament and founder of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), sees irony in how the anti-Israel attitudes of his country’s mainstream politicians are depriving them of benefits the Jewish state could bring them. “African politicians who have contaminated water will boycott Israel, whose technology and whose scientists could help bring clean water to the many thousands of Africans who now don’t have it and need it desp...
Becoming a reviewer has made me a better reader. Instead of dismissing works I don’t enjoy, I now analyze why they didn’t appeal to me: Is it something personal, for example, did a character or plot line trouble me? Does the author’s prose or writing style enhance the telling of the story for me or distract from it? Would other readers relish the book even if I didn’t find it to my taste? Two recent novels—“The Middlesteins” by Jami Attenberg (Grand Central Publishing) and “A Town of Empty Rooms...
An Israeli government review of the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura during the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 has officially debunked a French television report suggesting he was killed by direct Israel Defense Forces fire. The 36-page report, which was presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, further concluded that it was highly likely that the boy survived the incident unscathed and therefore may still be alive. The boy’s father, Jamal, urged an international inquest into t...
“I don’t think I’m in any way a sociopath,” said Ariel Vromen, the Israeli-born filmmaker behind “The Iceman,” inspired by the true story of one of America’s most notorious mob hitmen, Richard Kuklinski, who died in prison in 2006. Yet Vromen remembers watching an HBO documentary about Kuklinski in 2007 and feeling a kind of empathy, even a connection, to the 6-foot-5, 300-pound killer who claimed to have whacked at least 100 men between the 1960s and the 1980s, all while maintaining his double life as a devoted family man in suburban New Jerse...
On a warm Sunday morning last month in Washington Square Park, parents were leisurely pushing strollers, sunbathers were strewn about on the grass, and people of all ages were lounging on the wooden benches and sipping coffee. Meanwhile about 15 sixth graders darted around in groups of two or three, their heads bent over iPhones and iPads, shouting out things like, “I just found the foreman. He gave me the money!” “We have to go back to Rose,” and “The shtarkers are after us!” The kids, students at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s religious sch...
PRAIA, Cape Verde (JTA)—A Portuguese rabbi and a Moroccan diplomat stood shoulder to shoulder in a Catholic cemetery here while 200 mourners howled in grief as they buried a resident of this island off the western coast of Africa. The foreigners had come to Cape Verde’s main cemetery earlier this month not to bury a local, but for the rededication of 10 gravestones of Moroccan Jews—members of an extinct community whose roots trace to the 1860s. With virtually no practicing Jews on Cape Verde...
PHILADELPHIA—The summer of 2013 is shaping up to be a pretty good one for the former Melvin James Kaminsky, better known as Mel Brooks. In addition to his son Max’s bestselling zombie apocalypse oral history, “World War Z,” being made into one of the year’s most anticipated blockbusters, Brooks will be given the 41st Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute in June. The recognition is only surprising in that it took so long; three of Brooks’ films are ranked in the AFI’s Top 1...
When Alexander Stille’s mother died in 1993, she left few papers behind—just some letters, photographs and remnants of the lists she maintained to organize her life. Everything was in its proper place; her bills were paid and her will was signed. His father died about two years later, surrounded by mountainous piles of newspapers and books. A man who had been displaced twice in his life—first from Russia and then from Italy—leaving everything behind, he had a hard time throwing anything out. “His closet was kind of a rest home for retired c...
When Rabbi Baruch HaLevi took over as spiritual leader of Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, Mass., which is just outside Boston, Shabbat attendance was anemic and two small rival factions in the synagogue were always arguing over which group was being called to the Torah more often. These days, 300 to 500 people take part in the Conservative congregation’s Shabbat offerings and the place is now considered among the most dynamic in the country. It has been mentioned by some as a suburban version of B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper...
This year, at least seven Jewish athletes will ply their trade on Major League rosters (two more are on the disabled list). It might be argued that a much larger contribution to the game has been made by the scores of Jewish men and women who write about the national pastime. “501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die” includes several such titles by sportswriters, historians, statisticians and novelists. While these may not necessarily be the best books on the topics, they enc...
Writer Jonathan Ames, creator of the HBO television series “Bored to Death,” is known for his fearless and exhibitionistic persona. One can find YouTube videos of him eating herring and boxing at the same time, having knives thrown at him by a person called “Throwdini,” and ranting drunkenly at an awards ceremony. And when it comes to writing, Ames’s essays tend to cover racy topics. Given these exploits, it’s a bit surprising to learn that Ames’s recent trip to Israel made his Jewish mother hap...
The first time that Sid Kaplan saw a photograph being developed he was 10 years old. In a makeshift darkroom in the corner of a bedroom in a friend’s Bronx apartment, he watched the image emerge onto the paper in a bath of chemicals. “I just got hypnotized and addicted to the whole thing,” says Kaplan, now 75 and many, many images later. You may never have heard of Sid Kaplan, but his hand and eye are behind many of the greatest photographs that have been on view in museums and galleries since the 1960s. A master printer, he has done darkr...
If Peter Max’s life had turned out the way he originally planned, he wouldn’t be an artist. “I always thought I was going to become an astronomer because I loved astronomy so much,” Max says. “I thought art was something that kids do, a hobby.” Max’s “hobby” has made him one of the most popular artists of the last 50 years, a painter whose dazzlingly colorful, easily recognizable work is among the most collectible in the art market. He has painted everything from musicians Jimi Hendrix and...
EFRAT, West Bank (JTA)—One Christmas eve, as Jews across the country headed for Chinese restaurants, I found myself in a church choir. The church, on the outskirts of Boston and straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, had hired me to sing for their service. As the clock struck 11, I entered the sanctuary with the choir, our robes and music illuminated only by the candles each of us held. “Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed,” we intoned in a near-whisper as the organ w...
If you’re ever having trouble finding common ground among the generations at a family event, here’s a tip: Bring up David Steinberg. The 70-year-old Steinberg has been making people laugh ever since he began his career with the Second City comedy/improv group in Chicago in 1964. In the ensuing decades, he has cemented his place in the front rank of comedy, performing “sermons” on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the 1960s, doing standup gigs and spending more time with Johnny Carson than...
There might not have been a State of Israel if a Jewish Russian immigrant boy hadn’t found a banana in a back alley by his uncle’s dry goods store in Selma, Ala. That young boy, Sam Zemurray, “fell in love” with the exotic and expensive fruit—they were sold after being cut up at 10 cents per piece in 1876—and became determined to make bananas widely available to the public. Through determination, business acumen, and ruthlessness, Zemurray did just that, in the process controlling armies and...
(JTA)—Itzik Shanan and Abbas Suan watched last week as 100,000 English soccer fans sang along to a live performance by a multiracial quartet at London’s Wembley Stadium. Shanan, who started a campaign to eliminate racism from Israeli soccer, and Suan, a well-known Arab-Israeli player, were in Britain for five days of anti-hooliganism training in advance of Israel’s hosting next month of a major international soccer tournament. For Shanan, the operatic rendition of “Abide With Me,” a Christian...
