Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) - Last week, the chances that the United States would rejoin the Iran nuclear deal seemed higher than they had been in years. CNN and Reuters reported that Iran had dropped multiple demands in the ongoing negotiations over a new accord that would update the original reached in 2015. Senior U.S. officials were confident that the new deal would be sealed in days. Then on Monday, Iran's government said it wanted more time - extending into September - to examine the U.S. response to a recent...
(JTA) - Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader whose reforms, including allowing massive numbers of Jews to emigrate to Israel, changed his country and the world, died at 91. Russian media said Gorbachev died Tuesday in a Moscow hospital. "Michail Gorbachev has died," Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Moscow's chief rabbi from 1993 until this year, said Tuesday on Twitter. "3 million Soviet Jews owe him their freedom." It was clear when Gorbachev rose to power in 1985 that he would be different from his...
For the second year in a row, RAISE has been named a top-rated program by GreatNonprofits, the leading platform for community-sourced stories about nonprofits. Being named by this organization means that RAISE is really making a difference in the lives of its participants and the community. RAISE is also in partnership with Amazon in Orlando. This is a great opportunity for RAISE alumni, as any raise graduate who would like to work at Amazon will have a guaranteed job....
One of the pleasant surprises I receive as Jewish Pavilion program director is meeting a resident who has extraordinary stories to tell of their lives and people they have met or worked with in the past. One of these residents is Marshall Stoltz. He was happy to share with me the experiences he and his wife Eileen have had with various Jewish comedians in California and is especially proud of his relationship with Norman Rockwell. The story that captured my interest was when Marshall and Eileen were visiting with Rockwell and he asked Eileen...
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, six in 10 people with Alzheimer’s disease will wander. Wandering is best described as a tendency to roam or walk around without a clear destination or purpose. For those with Alzheimer’s disease, the destination or purpose of the walk is often forgotten, causing them to become confused or lost. As a caregiver, you are must be concerned about the safety of someone who wanders. There may be no harm in wandering a contained space, but for someone with dementia who gets lost outside, the risk of injur...
School schedules don’t always line up with work schedules. This is why the Rosen JCC offers School Out Days for kindergarten – 5th grade. When Orange County Public Schools close for holidays or staff training the Rosen JCC offers a fun alternative for your children. This year its first School Out Day will be Friday, Oct. 7. It runs from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. and there is an option for extended care 7 a.m.-9 a.m. or 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Children are dropped off and picked up at the Rosen JCC, 11184 S. Apopka Vineland Rd. Each School Out Day has a theme...
(JNS) — After the Jewish investor network, JLens placed General Mills on its “Do Not Invest” list, it says the conglomerate is partially reversing its decision to remove its subsidiary Pillsbury brand entirely from Israel, months after selling its stake in a Jerusalem refrigerated-dough manufacturing plant. JLens CEO Julie Hammerman told JNS that her organization “spent the past couple of months engaging in dialogue with General Mills and also doing our own research.” Hammerman said that after sending people into grocery stores in Israel to...
(New York Jewish Week) — NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a press conference on Monday evening that the police will increase patrols near synagogues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, due to an increase in antisemitic attacks happening throughout the neighborhood. “In the wake of these senseless attacks, we deployed round-the-clock house of worship cars to routinely visit synagogues,” Sewell said at the press conference on Lynch Street in Brooklyn — the same location where a suspect allegedly slapped a 27-year-old man dressed in traditional Or...
Iranian leaders feared former President Donald Trump, and after the killing of a top Iranian general, Tehran adhered to the terms of the nuclear deal, a former top Israeli national security official said Tuesday. Speaking with Channel 14, Jacob Nagel, former chief of Israel’s National Security Council and former acting National Security Advisor to then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that President Trump’s dramatic steps vis-à-vis Iran kept the Islamic regime in compliance with the nuclear deal – even after the U.S. withdrew from t...
(JNS) — Mikhail Gorbachev is being hailed as the man who ended the Cold War, broke up the Soviet empire and freed Soviet Jewry. The former leader of the Soviet Union, who died this week at the age of 91, deserves a great deal of credit for those outcomes and as such is likely to be remembered kindly by history—or at least those histories written outside of Russia—for the foreseeable future. Yet as much as we should be grateful that it was he who succeeded a series of geriatric tyrants at the head of the nation that President Ronald Reaga...
(The Ettinger Report via JNS) — During the October 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty ceremony, top Jordanian military officers told their Israeli counterparts that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would doom the pro-U.S. Hashemite regime. They said it would transform Jordan into an uncontrollable terrorist haven, haunting the highly vulnerable pro-U.S. regimes of the oil-producing Gulf states, as well as Egypt. In June 1967, Israel gained control over the topographically dominant mountain ridges of the Golan Heights, Judea and S...
Recently the Florida Press Association held its annual newspaper contest, and I was pleased to learn that I won second place in the Serious Column category. The article, titled “Substance use disorder is a community problem,” (June 4, 2021), was a result of the initiative taken by many members of the community to make a difference in the fight against drug abuse. The program I talked about — B’ri’ut (Hebrew for acceptance and wellness), sponsored by the Jewish Federation and backed by several synagogues and agencies — kicked off with a meet...
(JNS) — Forget Big Brother, Big MUM is Google’s new tool for suppressing conservatives. MUM, or Multitask Unified Model, was hyped last year as the company’s new machine learning algorithm. MUM had been initially described as an innovative way to allow Google’s dying search service to answer natural language questions by drawing on multiple sources. While MUM’s applications initially appeared to be apolitical, that quickly changed. Google first unleashed MUM to fight what it considered COVID “misinformation” by making sure that everyone saw “hi...
(JNS) — You didn’t read about it in The New York Times or see the footage on CNN, but last week, yet another Jew walking near a synagogue was brutally beaten by assailants yelling “Kill the Jews!” The mob assault took place on Aug. 26, near the synagogue at Kever Shmuel, the Tomb of the Prophet Samuel, which is located close to the northern edge of Jerusalem. A cell-phone video of the attack has been shown by the Israeli media but has been ignored by the international media. It shows the screaming attackers—many waving PLO flags, piling on...
MORNING MINYANS Chabad of North Orlando and Chabad of Altamonte Springs are holding in-person minyans. 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...
(JNS) — Under pressure from Washington, Israel appears to be slowly withdrawing from its business relationship with China, while simultaneously building one with India. According to Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, over the last two years, the United States has been urging Israel to decouple from China. Sam Millner, a policy analyst for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, noted earlier this month that the U...
(JNS) — The question of whether America’s oldest Jewish university must recognize an LGBTQ club is now heading to the Supreme Court. New York City-based Yeshiva University filed an emergency request on Monday to stay a lower court ruling that it must immediately endorse the YU Pride Alliance student club. In June, the New York County Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students, stating that Yeshiva University does not qualify as a “religious institution.” The court pointed to organizational documents in which the university states that it...
(JTA) - Eugene Ginter was 12 days shy of his sixth birthday when he was liberated from Auschwitz in January 1945. Emaciated and alone, Ginter landed first in a hospital and then in an orphanage in Krakow, the Polish city where he was born. Several months later, miraculously, he was reunited with his mother. Her first order of business was to help him regain weight and health, but he had no interest in food after being deprived of it for so long. So she created a rich sandwich made of things she...
Asking for help can be intimidating, but trying to do it all yourself will put you at a higher risk of stress and other health concerns. Very few of us can navigate this world alone. When you feel overwhelmed, try reaching out to your trusted support system. Even journaling can be a great starting point to prioritize emotions and help recognize when you might need a hand. And when you're ready for guidance through life's turbulent times...we're here for you. JFS Orlando is here to help with our...
This past Friday the residents of The Grove at Trelago celebrated Shabbat with Jewish Pavilion. Sadly, this was Julie Levitt Bain's last scheduled week serving this community. Lauren Sharfstein is looking forward to fulfilling the role moving forward and to make the transition seamless for the residents, they led Shabbat as a team and it was enjoyed by all. Next month Jewish Pavilion will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah by sharing apples and honey with our Jewish friends at The Grove and other...
(JTA) - For nearly a millennium, 17 Jewish children and adults lost to history at the bottom of a well kept a secret about the genetic markers that distinguish Ashkenazi Jews. In 1190, in Norwich, a riverside city perched near England's eastern coast, crusaders on their way to the Holy Land massacred 17 Jews and threw them down a well. The town was already a locus for antisemitic fervor: In 1144, its people originated the first known blood libel, blaming Jews for the ritual murder of a child....
(JTA) - "Whoever needs, come and eat." That's the quote from the Talmud - the book of Jewish law - that welcomes customers to Goldie's Bagels in Columbia, Missouri, telling them that people who cannot afford to pay can get a coffee and a bagel, with cream cheese, free of charge. The promise is core to the shop's mission: Launched as a popup in 2020, Goldie's aims to imbue Jewish values into its daily operations. "My whole thing in opening Goldie's is we're going to be so outwardly proud to be...
(JNS) The city of Milan, Italy, has been named an honorary member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation in recognition of its residents’ efforts to help rescue Jews from Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. IRWF chairman Eduardo Eurnekian and its founder Baruch Tenembaum sent the city a request to join the foundation, which was immediately accepted, Italian media reported last week. The foundation is named after the Swedish diplomat Raul Wallenberg, who helped save 200,000 Jews in Budapest in 1944 by giving them protective...
(JTA) — Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen, a symbol of the country’s left, announced during a recent concert in the West Bank that he regretted his past criticism of settlers living there — whom he had long denounced as obstacles to peace. “It’s very moving to be here. I went through a personal journey that was not simple and not short and I understand that me and my brothers — you — were made to separate for any number of reasons including my ignorance, which came from a desire to please part of my audience,” Geffen said during a concert Aug. 24...
(JNS) — Echoing pronouncements by American and Israeli government officials, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called for the disbandment of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Israel. The Conference of Presidents issued a statement on July 29, blasting the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments made by commission member Miloon Kothari during a recent interview. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, it wrote that “since the U.N. General Assembly admitted Israel as a member...
