Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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One of the bitter ironies of history is that Hitler and the Nazis loved music but it did nothing to soothe the savage breast of Nazi Germany. A second irony is that the high culture of Western Europe, including its heritage of classical music, featured the compositions and performances of a great many Jewish musicians. The irony suffuses the romantic tale that Carol Jean Delmar tells in “Serenade: A Memoir of Music and Love From Vienna and Prague to Los Angeles” (Willow Lane Press, $27.99). Her parents, Franz and Franziska, met and fell in lov...
The “red line” associated with Iran’s nuclear program or Syria’s use of chemical weapons has sparked an ongoing international debate, in which both Israeli and Diaspora Jews have made their voices heard. But a debate that hits closer to home for American Jews is about where Jewish federations in their communities draw the line on funding programs associated with varying opinions about Israel. Boston In the Boston area, a recent test case for the local Jewish federation—Combined Jewish Philanthr...
(JNS.org) Arab Member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi (Ra’am Ta’al) said in a televised interview with Arab media that Jews will not be allowed to “contaminate” the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is a place of prayer for Muslims alone. Period! Not for others,” said Tibi, a member of the Ra’am Ta’al party, Israel National News reported. “We repeat: the occupation of Al-Aqsa by the Crusaders was long, but it ended; the same was true of the British Mandate, and the same will be true...
While this may look like an ordinary sukkah, it is an extraordinary one. Due to their ongoing partnership with the Jewish Pavilion, the folks at Atria at Lake Forest wanted to provide their residents with all the traditions of their faith. For Rosh Hashanah they provided a lovely holiday meal where a volunteer from the Jewish Pavilion led a beautiful service. When Activities Director Donna Hilliker talked to Pavilion leadership about Sukkot, she decided to arrange for a sukkah to be erected....
Tampa Bay Bucs offensive lineman Gabe Carimi usually fasts on Yom Kippur, but this year, the day before the team’s Sept. 15 home opener against the New Orleans Saints, he decided not to. In past seasons he has observed 25 hours of fasting for the holiday of Yom Kippur; even if it came during the day before a game, as it did this year — sundown tonight to sundown Saturday. But this year he decided to postpone it because he has been battling a cold. “I’ve fasted on the day before a game, but it wa...
DENVER (IJN)—Before the start of Yom Kippur, a flood of historic proportions swallowed Boulder, Colo., and surrounding areas, displacing families, damaging synagogues and threatening services on the holiest day of the Jewish year—until determination came to the rescue. Orthodox Boulder Aish Kodesh hit the Internet first, sending a mass email to 500 residents announcing that heavy rains and flooding had destroyed the tent it had prepared for the holiday. The email offered alternative loc...
BAKU, Azerbaijan (JTA)—With less than a month to go until presidential elections, the moustachioed smile of Ilham Aliyev stares down at his countrymen from giant posters scattered around this bustling metropolis on the Caspian Sea. The Azerbaijani president has been in office since 2003 and is widely expected to be re-elected, extending the leadership of the Aliyev clan into its third decade. Aliyev’s father, Heydar, held the post for a decade prior to his son’s ascension. Ilham Aliye...
NEW YORK—A new Pew Research Survey has shown that a large majority —62 percent—of Palestinians justify the use of suicide terrorism. In the words of the Pew Survey, “in some countries, substantial minorities of Muslims say attacks on civilians are at least sometimes justified to defend Islam from its enemies; in the Palestinian territories, a majority of Muslims hold this view.” Among Palestinians, 37 percent said suicide bombing was often justified and 25 percent said it was sometimes justified. Only 16 percent of Palestinians said that suic...
The Roth Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando’s after-school program, J University, is offering a new sibling discount at its Maitland location. Families with multiple children in the after-school program receive 50 percent off the second child’s tuition, 75 percent off the third child’s, and any additional children’s tuition is free. Additionally, all children new to the program receive their first month for free. Program organizers introduced the new discount as a way to increas...
Camp Barney Medintz, summer resident camp of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, will present their annual new musical slide production in Orlando on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando, beginning at 7p.m. Jim Mittenthal, camp director, will meet with new and returning families, answer questions pertaining to the 2014 summer camp season, and provide applications for registration. Camp Barney Medintz is located in the North Georgia Blue Ridge mountains on more than 500 wooded acres surrounding two...
It is Temple Israel’s tradition to award the honors of Hatan Torah and Kallat Bereishit to congregants who have provided outstanding service in the areas of ritual, educational and/or spiritual life of the congregation. This year’s honorees, who were selected by the entire synagogue membership under the auspices of the ritual committee, are Steve Berg and Mollie Savage. These honorees were announced by President Arlene van de Rijn during the Yom Kippur services. They were recognized during the S...
The family of Bunny Rosen has requested donations in her memory be made to The Jewish Pavilion. The Pavilion is establishing “The Bunny Club” in her memory. The fund will be used to enrich Jewish holiday celebrations in 54 long-term care facilities in the Orlando area. Bunny was a beloved volunteer who went out of her way to insure that residents enjoyed festive holiday meals. She often prepared the brisket and matzah ball soup herself so that she could be certain that holidays were extra special. Her compassion and warmth were boundless. She...
Rabbi Werthman of Congregation Bet Chaim is teaching a weekly class in basic Judaism each Tuesday night at the synagogue, 426 Lake Port Cove, Casselberry. The class is one hour, from 7:30 p.m.—8:30 p.m. and will include discussion, lecture, multimedia presentations and other methods to explain and understand the basics of Judaism Topics will include The nature of G-d; Man’s relations with G-d; Jewish prayer; holidays and traditions; the role of Israel in human history; the Jewish truth about gender and equality; Torah as a history, moral gui...
My wife and I recently took our first vacation in years, a four-day trip to New York City. We caught up on ourselves, on each other. We heard the amazing Emily Wells at an outdoor Lincoln Center concert. We visited museums. We saw the 9-11 Memorial. We walked. And walked. And walked. And we saw two plays—“The Assembled Parties,” a story that spans 20 years in the life of a once-wealthy Jewish family in Manhattan, and “The Book of Mormon,” one of the funniest and most outrageous plays to hit Br...
There has been a flurry of items coming to my in-box describing the latest under the heading of anti-Semitism. It is, alas, a very long story, going back at least to the beginning of the Common Era. For those who aren’t familiar with Jewish ways of recording the dates of the goyim, that’s the year 0. The current wave grows out of the post-World War II and post-Holocaust era, when Christians renounced what they had been preaching for two millennia, and Muslims quickly picked up what Christians discarded after Israel’s War of Independence. Now w...
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana said this in his “Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1”... and it’s still true. Look, call it “Arab Spring,” “Uprisings,” “Revolution”—the end result is that some of Africa and most of the Middle East has been stood on its head in the past three years. I listen to some supposedly really smart people parse the situation in Egypt, Syria, Libya and elsewhere. And I keep waiting. Okay? Now, tell us the real problem! Once in a great while, a writer l...
By Ben Cohen JNS.org From the brink of war, the Middle East has moved at dizzying speed to the cusp of peace. Or so we are led to believe. The issues at hand are Iran and Syria—and incidentally, there is good reason to feel some relief from that fact, since it’s a timely reminder that Palestinian opposition to Israel’s legitimacy is not the core dispute in the region, but a sideshow in the larger civil war with Islam that has engulfed much of this neighborhood. In Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad claims, under the watchful eye of the Russi...
JERUSALEM (JTA)—At a recent kids-included party in Jerusalem, I spent much of the time either on the floor with my daughter Mari or trailing her around to make sure she didn’t eat anything toxic. A successful American journalist living here chatted with me for a few minutes, and as I left her to intercept my daughter before she reached a stairwell, she told me, “Don’t worry. They get older. You get your dignity back.” Funny, I didn’t even have any spit-up on my clothes. But her words tapped into the part of me that feels inadequate....
I suspect you are already tired of hearing about Syria. The future path is blurry—even to our president. Assad will still be in power. How many has he killed without chemical weapons? Who is using the chemical weapons? It sounds to me like the real problem is the one issuing the orders in Syria. Americans are now on the verge of committing billions of dollars of money we do not have to impact an area of the world that already hates us. Here at home we have millions who cannot find a job. We have millions more who cannot feed their families w...
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) Chabad of South Orlando—Monday and Thursday, 8 a.m. 407-354-3660. Congregation Ahavas Yisrael—Monday - Friday, 7 a.m.; Sunday, 8 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 of Orlando—Monday—Friday, 7:45 a.m.—8:30 a.m. Temple Israel—Sunday, 9 a.m., 407-647-3055. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 Shemini Azeret Light Shabbat c...
Some very creative teachers have brought the Jewish holiday of Sukkot into their Room 4 at the Roth Jewish Community Center’s Richard S. Adler Early Childhood Learning Center. The class, taught by Mickey Hibbard and Stefani Rabideaux, takes turns eating and sleeping in the indoor sukkah. Traditionally built outside, the sukkah is a temporary hut built during the weeklong Sukkot festival to symbolize the temporary shelter the Jewish people lived in while wandering in the desert for 40 years. T...
Norman H. Goldman of Orlando, passed away on Monday, Sept. 23, 2013, at Florida Hospital—East Orlando. He was 64 years old. A Brooklyn native, he was born on March 22, 1949, to the late Morris and Dora Mehlman Goldman and was married to the former Phyllis Victor, who predeceased him in 1990. Mr. Goldman relocated to the Orlando area from New York in 1985 and worked as a technician in the telecommunications industry. He is survived by his brother, Martin (Ellen) Goldman of Coconut Creek Fla.; two nephews and a niece; and two brothers-in-law. A...
Joy Goldstein of Miami, passed away on Sunday, Sept.15, 2013, at her residence. She was 85 years old. Though she considered herself a “native,” she was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 14, 1928, to the late Samuel and Betty Stone Alpert, moving to Miami when she was three years old. Joy attended school in Miami, graduating from Miami High. She went to the University of Miami prior to her marriage to the love of her life, Harold, in 1947. He passed away in March 2007. She was a member of Temple Beth Am in Miami for nearly 55 years. After her chi...
Lynn Klein Watch of Orlando, passed away on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013, at her home following a brief illness. She was 71. Mrs. Watch was born Sept. 15, 1942, in Chicago, Ill., to the late Michael and Inez Klein. She moved to Orlando in 1972 and retired here from her teaching career. Mrs. Watch is preceded in death by her brother Mitchell Klein, and is survived by her children, Libby Watch of Miami, Mike Kabina of Orlando; sister, Jane Siegal of Chicago; and four grandchildren. A memorial service was held Sept. 18 in the chapel of Beth Shalom...
Hilda “Bunny” Rosen passed away Sept. 17, 2013. She was 85 years old. Mrs. Rosen was born to Michael and Fanny Epstein in Cologne, Germany. She lived in the German ghetto, spending every weekend with her doting grandparents. “My youthful memories are of a close-knit, loving and supportive community, where I lived comfortably,” she once said in a Heritage interview. Though she was living in pre-war Germany, she never experienced anti-Semitism until Hitler rose to power in 1936. Foresee...
