Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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NEW YORK (JTA)—It’s being billed as the “Conversation of the Century.” When the main synagogue organization of Conservative Jewry gathers this weekend in Baltimore to celebrate its centennial, there will be a lot to talk about. The number of synagogues affiliated with the group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is in decline. The proportion of American Jews who identify as Conservative has shrunk to 18 percent, according to the recent Pew Research Center study of U.S. Jewry,...
NEW YORK (JTA)—What would happen if some of the biggest players in American Jewish life sat down and debated the implications of the new Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. Jewry? After last week’s landmark study, I talked to nine Jewish philanthropists and organizational leaders about the lessons Pew holds for them and how they spend and invest their hundreds of millions of dollars per year dedicated to American Jewish life. (The result was this story: Engagement trends are negative, but Jewish funders see validation in Pew study.) I thoug...
Jewish National Fund (JNF) will host its annual Tree of Life™ Award Dinner at the Rosen Plaza Hotel on Wednesday, Nov. 6. The event will honor two generations of the Weiner family, Dick and wife Louise and son Ben and wife Maura with the Guardian of Israel Award along with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer with the recipient of the prestigious Tree of Life™ Award. “I believe that anything is possible in Israel through JNF,” said Aaron Gorovitz, JNF Orlando board member. “Having been active in this orga...
NEW YORK—The Jewish Council for Public Affairs released a new study, “Reluctant or Repressed? Aversion to Expressing Views on Israel Among American Rabbis.” The report, written by Steven M. Cohen, research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Rabbi Jason Gitlin, project manager of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s ReFrame initiative, is the first large-scale survey of American rabbis’ connection to Israel and their challenges in expressing their views. “American rabbis have a great deal...
Jewish Family Services Orlando, a Winter Park based nonprofit human service agency that provides social programs to those in need from all faiths, will celebrate its 35th anniversary at its 12th Annual Evening of Valor on Nov. 3, from 5 p.m. – 9 p.m. Evening of Valor is JFS’ main fundraiser and will honor past agency presidents, former George Wolly Community Leadership Award recipients and Spring Fiesta honorees. Among those being recognized are George Wolly, the first JFS executive director and the namesake for the Leadership Award. Wolly and...
NEW YORK (JTA)—If you’re pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Jewish identity building, what do you do when a survey comes along showing that the number of U.S. Jews engaging with Jewish life and religion is plummeting? That’s the question facing major funders of American Jewish life following the release of the Pew Research Center’s survey on U.S. Jews. The study—the first comprehensive portrait of American Jewry in more than a decade—showed that nearly one-third of American Je...
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The first lawmaker to speak at a closed-door Capitol Hill confab convened by the Republican Jewish Coalition’s women’s affiliate was, naturally enough, a woman. So was the second. Against the background of the current federal budget battle, that’s about all that united Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). Ayotte has been a leading Republican voice calling on her GOP colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to stand down in their battle over President Obama’s signature health care law—a fig...
Longtime friends and Orlando philanthropists, Chuck Steinmetz and Harvey Kobrin, have shared many experiences since their days as fraternity brothers at the University of Florida in the 1960s. Kobrin and Steinmetz cemented their friendship at Pi Lambda Phi fraternity on the Gainesville campus, and have remained close for more than 50 years. This October the two men are joining forces to honor their late wives. The Jewish Pavilion’s annual “Walk in the Park” will be co-sponsored this year by Ch...
“There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.” This comment by American educator, teacher and author Mary Ellen Chase could not be truer in an age when books yield to electronic media in the lives of our children. Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, author of “The Barefoot Book of Jewish Tales,” and a mother of three children, brings her latest book to a storytelling and meet-and-greet session on Tuesday evening, Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., at Congregation Beth Am, 3899 Sand Lake Road in Longwoo...
Modern medicine has brought us near miracles. It’s also brought us some of the most difficult decisions we’ll ever have to face. Are we obliged to prolong life even at the cost of terrible suffering? Should we legalize the sale of organs, such as kidneys, to save the lives of transplant patients? May a woman with a multiple-fetus pregnancy opt for fetal reduction, thus forfeiting the lives of some to possibly save others? When it seems that every available option is morally questionable, how do we decide? Torah and the Talmud are not sil...
On Sunday, Oct.27, a panel of four local Holocaust survivors—Sonja Marchesano, Sylvia Rapp, Eva Ritt and Harry Lowenstein—will share their memories of Kristallnacht at a special program at the Holocaust Center, 851 N. Maitland Avenue. They will talk about their experiences on the night of Nov. 9, 1938, that began Hitler’s Final Solution. They will also discuss how they survived the war. The panel will be moderated by Professor Richard Gair of Valencia College. The program, which starts at 2 p.m., is free and open to the public. Free parki...
A new mortgage encumbering the Maitland community campus was recently signed. The campus, home to the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, The Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Academy of Orlando, and the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center, is truly the jewel of our communal assets. Sadly, this process has revealed flaws in the jewel that run so deep it may be cracked beyond repair. When Bank of America announced that it would not renew the letter of credit for the old...
Rabbi Ovadia died at noon on Oct. 7, at the age of 93, after more than two weeks in intensive care and hourly reports of his decline, improvement, and final decline. The eulogies were scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., with burial in the small cemetery of Sanhedria about a kilometer distant. The vehicle carrying the Rabbi’s body moved at a rate of inches per hour, and had not approached the cemetery by the time I went to bed. From the time of the Rabbi’s death, the three television channels had little more than coverage of the clogged streets, occ...
NEW YORK—There was a good deal that was wrong and fantastical in President Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations last week—such as the idea that al-Qaeda is “splintering” (actually, it is proliferating) or that Russia and Iran need to “realize that insisting on [Syrian president] Assad’s rule will lead directly to... an increasingly violent space for extremists to operate” (actually, neither Moscow nor Tehran have wish or motive to abandon Syria, their most important Middle East ally). Here, however, we focus on a single issue also misa...
Not surprisingly, there has already been a large wave of reactions to the first major national survey of American Jews in more than a decade, with its sobering, if not bleak, portrait of a community on the fast track toward assimilation. The responses to the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project report, based on interviews with nearly 3,500 Jews, tend to fall into one of three categories: Oy Gevalt, We’re Doomed: With the study indicating that an increasing number of Jews, particularly among the young, are moving away from form...
It’s funny how the American Jewish community has a way of getting all breathless and excited when a new study comes out, as is happening right now with the new Pew survey. As if we needed all this sophisticated evidence to remind us that Judaism in America is in trouble, and that we must find ways to make it more attractive and relevant if we want a healthy, pluralistic Judaism to survive over the next century. When it comes to the decline of Judaism in America, we have this habit of getting bogged down with research specifics and losing the b...
Above all, [the new Pew survey of American Jews] vindicates a thesis championed by the late sociologist Gary Tobin. He argued that calling up a random stranger and asking right off the bat about their religion is a sure way to get a false reading. Many people regard the matter as private. That will be especially true of Jews.... Well, the Pew folks say they started off by asking respondents about the quality of life in their neighborhoods and then came around to bringing up religion...—J.J. Goldberg, writing in The Forward Caller One: Hello, c...
Join Rabbi Karen Allen on Friday, Oct. 25 at Congregation Beth Sholom for the inaugural meeting of the Rabbi’s Torah Roundtable, a lively discussion of contemporary issues in the context of Jewish tradition. The program will begin at 4 p.m. with conversation and light refreshments. This informal and interactive forum is a unique opportunity to talk with the rabbi as we explore together the meaning and impact on our lives today of the Torah portion we will read at our Shabbat service on the following morning. On Saturday, Oct. 26 at 10 a.m., R...
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, OCTOBER 18 Light Shabbat candles at 6:35 p.m...
“You are on a special mission behind enemy lines. The enemy is chasing you. Your mission is complete, but the journey home is even more perilous. As you quietly make your way across a rocky embankment in the dark, you hear the tell-tale sounds of enemy soldiers as they approach your position. Your heart is pounding. Exhausted, famished and dehydrated, you know that one false move could be your last.” Stressed? At 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, in The Homewood Suites, 755 Currency Circle in Lake Mary, Chabad Lubavitch of North Orlando presents Min...
Raymond Khoshnou of Heathrow, passed away on Sunday, Oct. 6, 2013, at Hospice of the Comforter in Altamonte Springs. He was 64 years old. He was born in Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 23, 1949 to the late Habib and Soltan Rahban Khoshnou. In 1967, Mr. Khoshnou immigrated to the United States living in California where his brother, Fred, was already established. In August 1992, in Los Angeles, he married the former Vida Sadeghani, his wife of 21 years who survives him. Mr. Khoshnou graduated from the University of Central Florida and was a real estate...
Ilene B. Korn of Ocean Ridge Fla, passed away on Friday, Oct. 4, 2013, at Florida Hospital – Orlando. She was 59 years old. A native of Manhasset, N.Y., she was born on Feb. 5, 1954, to the late Sheldon and Laurel Malmed Korn. She was an artist and homemaker. Ms. Korn is survived by her sisters Stacie (Gary) Spielfogel of Boca Raton and Melanie Stanton of Westchester, N.Y. Funderal arrangements were entrusted to Beth Shalom Memorial Chapel, Orlando....
Alvin L. Michael of Maitland, passed away on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, at his residence. He was 85 years old. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he was born on Feb. 26, 1928, to the late Benjamin and Beatrice Rapkin Michael. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later attended Case Tech, now Case Western Reserve University, becoming an engineer in the aerospace industry. On April 4, 1954, in Cleveland, he married the former Shirley Weiss, his wife of 59 years, who survives him. In 1963 the family relocated to the Orlando area from St. Petersburg. In...
Sheldon M. Sherr of Longwood, passed away on Friday, Oct. 4, 2013, at VITAS Hospice in Winter Park. He was 72 years old. Mr. Sherr was born on Sept. 22, 1941, in Detroit, Mich., to the late Jules and Zelda Steinberg Sherr. He served in U.S. Air Force and was a graduate of Wayne State University. He relocated to the Orlando area in 1983 from Detroit. Mr. Sherr was a Risk Management specialist for the city of Orlando. He is survived by his brother Ron (Carolyn) Sherr of Delaware. A graveside service was held at Temple Israel Cemetery with Rabbi...
In 2012 the Holocaust Center created a drama, titled “Witness,” that tells the story of Kristallnacht through the words of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders who were there on that fateful night. Because of its format—a readers’ theater that requires no costumes, memorization or special staging, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation of historic photographs—it provides a simple but powerful way to focus on the human cost of Nazi persecution. In recognition of the 75th anniversa...
