Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous is launching a Monday-night movie series, from July 27 to Aug. 21, each week airing one of its award-winning documentaries that highlight Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during World War II and the Holocaust. The series is specifically designed for the group's Facebook page in an effort to educate followers on the dangers of anti-Semitism or hateful speech towards ethnic or religious groups. "Social-media platforms, such as Facebook, have become...
The Central Florida Jewish community knew and loved Talia Osteen as one of the three members of the singing group Visions, which began under the guidance of Cantor Allan Robuck of Congregation Ohev Shalom. Each of the girls eventually went their own way and Osteen moved to New York, then to California, to pursue her career in the film industry. She successfully starred in five national TV series, and also formed the band The Wellspring, which released five albums and composed scores for several...
Longwood resident Patricia R. Sigman is a Democratic candidate on the primary ballot for state Senate, District 9. There is one opponent running against her for the seat and she is hopeful voters will turn out for the Aug. 18 primary elections to get her name on the ballot for the elections on Nov. 3. Sigman is a long-standing member of this community. She and her husband, Phil, have been affiliated with Temple Israel and also Congregation of Reform Judaism. "Seminole County is our home and our...
(JNS) - In excavations in Jerusalem near the U.S. embassy conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority, more than 120 of some of the largest and most important collections of seal impressions stamped on jars were discovered, revealing information into tax collection in the period of the Judean monarchs some 2,700 years ago. The impressions were stamped with the letters "LMLK" - meaning "to the King" - and were written in ancient Hebrew script, along with the name of the ancient city in the King...
(JTA) - Mort Klein didn't know much about Ice Cube when he got on the phone with him on Monday afternoon, but by the end of their two-hour conversation, Klein said he was convinced the rapper was not anti-Semitic. In fact, the president of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America said, the rapper had invited Klein and his wife to dinner - once the pandemic is over. "He called me Mort," Klein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "He told me to call him Cube." "Strange bedfellows" would be...
(JTA) — After their vocal calls for Twitter to take down rapper Wiley’s spree of anti-Semitic tweets went unanswered, Jews in the United Kingdom are taking another approach: silence. British Jewish activists and their allies — including high-profile celebrities, both Jewish and non-Jewish — are staging a 48-hour boycott of Twitter to protest the platform’s handling of anti-Semitic posts. Among the people and organizations going silent until Wednesday are British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his predecessor Jonathan Sacks, members of Parlia...
(JNS) - According to the U.N. Trade and Development Commission, some 95 percent of Gaza's groundwater supply is found to be unfit for consumption. The Gaza Strip suffers from a water shortage in general and a drinking water shortage in particular. Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, including the Watergen Company, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Palestinian partners, delivered its first generator, which produces clean drinking water from the atmosphere, to the Municipality of...
(JNS) — In a move that bodes well for Israel, the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee voted on Monday to reject additional language that would make the party’s stance on the Jewish state more critical. The committee voted 117-34 to reject adding the word “occupation” and a condition of U.S. assistance to Israel on the Jewish state not going ahead with its plans to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria. The platform includes language that expresses support for the U.S.-Israel relations...
BERLIN (JTA) — Joining a growing chorus of critical voices, Holocaust survivors have launched an international online campaign criticizing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that is aimed at countering Holocaust denial on his social media platform. Starting Wednesday, a campaign sponsored by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany called “There’s No Denying It #NoDenyingIt” will upload video testimony daily from survivors across the globe to social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and Twitter...
(JNS) — The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center has reached out to the Ontario Minister of Education in search of answers after an anti-Israel video was found to be part of the curriculum of a Grade 10 online civics course, announced the organization in a mass email on Monday. FSWC spoke last week with a parent whose son was required to watch a short video about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of his online summer course taken through the York Region District School Board. According to the video, “The current occupation of the Pal...
(JNS) — We Americans seem quite capable of separating ourselves into fractious groups without the help of our enemies, but that hasn’t stopped many, especially the Islamists of the world, from using the death of George Floyd to fuel our divides. U.S. Attorney General William Barr warned on June 4, that “hackers … associated with foreign governments” have been using Floyd’s death, “playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.” Later that day, something alarmed the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security enough for it to tweet a warning about ...
We can either choose to divide or connect. Dividers spew hate, connectors share love. People can be divided into two categories: connectors and dividers. Connectors look for commonalities, dividers focus on differences. Connectors give the benefit of the doubt, dividers look to find fault. Connectors let things go, dividers bear grudges. Connectors look to compliment, dividers look to criticize. Connectors feel good through (not surprisingly) connecting, and dividers thrive by fostering division. Dividers spew hate, bully, call names, and...
Let me put the disclaimer out first: I am no biblical scholar — I am no expert on ancient Jewish history. So, this column is really in the form of a few questions about belief and my own life. I have stated before that I was raised in a totally non-religious environment. God, in my house, was an afterthought. Outside of having fist fights on a daily basis when he was growing up because he was a Jew, my father had no other relationship with Faith. As I have written, his father, my grandfather Abraham Shiplacoff was an ardent Socialist. Then, i...
This article is part of a collaboration between the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Kveller about pandemic parenting and school reopenings. HIGHLAND VILLAGE, Texas (JTA / KVELLER) — I’m dubbing “school shaming” the new Mommy War of 2020. If you’re a parent of school-aged children and you’ve been on social media even once in the past few weeks, you know all about the heated and contentious back-to-school debate that is raging fiercely. It’s one of the many truisms of the internet: No matter what parents do, it will never be good enough for so...
NEW YORK (JTA) — On Friday afternoon, a few hours before Shabbat, I found myself scrolling through Twitter when I stumbled upon an anti-Semitic rant. This by itself is hardly unusual — the amount of anti-Semitic vitriol on Twitter is horrifying. But when I checked the account, I found that it had nearly half a million followers. Wiley, a Black British musician, used hateful language to articulate several conspiracy theories about Jews. I, along with many others, reported the tweets, but Twitter was slow to remove them. Again, this is not unu...
Dear Editor: There seems to be a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding concerning the United States government’s allocation of the sum of $3,800,000,000 of military assistance to the State of Israel for defense purposes. In reality, only 20 percent, or $760,000,000, leaves the United States. These funds can be used to purchase other military goods and services from other U.S.-approved nations. Of the remaining funds, $3,040,000,000 is designated to be used to purchase U.S.-manufactured military equipment. Those funds never leave the U...
MORNING MINYANS (Please note, because of the coronavirus, all minyans have been canceled or held virtually.) 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...
(JTA) - Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 Holocaust novel "The Painted Bird" was mired in controversy almost from its release. The film adaptation, which became available through on-demand platforms this weekend, has raised eyebrows as well. In the 1960s, the author suggested that the novel - about a Jewish boy who witnesses sexual deviance and violence while wandering through Eastern Europe during World War II - was autobiographical. Prominent Jewish reviewers, including survivor Elie Wiesel and Cynthia...
(JTA) — Israeli poetry scholar Rachel Korazim had been thinking about cutting back on travel when the coronavirus pandemic made the decision for her. “I said I really want to shift my teaching to distance learning because, you know, I’m not getting any younger. Travel is tiring,” she said she had told her husband. But Korazim soon realized that her regular appointments at two leading destinations for adult learning, the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies and the Shalom Hartman Institute, would not happen and felt disappointed. Then one morning...
TEL AVIV (JTA) - Noam Ofer might have been an unlikely candidate to join Israel's burgeoning protest movement. At 76, he is older than most of the people who have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis. He also doesn't share the political views of many of the protesters. But Ofer was there anyway on Tuesday evening marching outside the Tel Aviv home of Israel's internal security minister in charge of law enforcement, Amir Ohana, who wa...
BOSTON (JTA) - More than 350 years ago, a plague took a deadly toll on Hamburg, Germany. As the High Holidays approached, fear and panic set in and many of the city's Jewish families fled. Among them were Glikl and Hayyim Hamel, successful Jewish merchants who left with their three young children, including an 8-week-old daughter. En route to Hayyim's parents, they spent time with relatives in Hanover, where some locals came to suspect their oldest daughter, 4-year-old Tsipor, was infected....
We need some "light" news these days ... As a vocalist, I am constantly adding to my repertoire. I am so delighted when I realize who the composers were! For instance, "You're Gonna Hear From Me," a terrific song made famous by BARBRA STREISAND (who, incidentally, is a fellow Jew and a school rival of mine who attended Erasmus High School while I attended Tilden High School back in Brooklyn when we were kids.) The song was written by a Frenchman, Andre' Previn, (I thought). His real name was...
(JCPA via JNS) - The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis triggered the most widespread racially charged protests in the United States and Europe since the 1960s. International protests over Floyd's death, led by the Black Lives Matter movement, have generated expressions of sympathy and support from Western prime ministers, legislators, law-enforcement officials and local government. Prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives "took a knee" in a historically unprecedented public dis...
Prior to the pandemic, my family of five rarely attended Shabbat services at our Reform synagogue in Connecticut. There was always something else to do — sports practices and school dances, birthday parties and weekends away. Now, however, with our calendars cleared because of the coronavirus, we tried services on Zoom one Friday night when we were stuck at home. I found it a pleasant, meaningful way to mark the end of another confusing chaotic week in my new role as the kindergarten teacher known as Mrs. Mom. Plus, I reasoned, with no c...
Renee Moss, age 93, passed away on July 27, 2020, at Lake Mary Health and Rehab Center. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 17, 1927, to the late Max and Molly Fischer. Mrs. Moss was a graduate of City College of New York with a degree in accounting. She utilized her expertise primarily in the health care field, employed for decades as a Grants Administrator by such institutions as Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harvard and Tufts Universities. Her husband of 68 years, Warren Moss, died in 2015. They were active in the 39ers...
