Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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The Jewish holidays at Jewish Academy of Orlando have always been special, and for the second year in a row, they were even more memorable as the students celebrated with their friends, teachers, and the community at two local synagogues On Sukkot, students visited Temple Israel where they celebrated by participating in services, visiting the Sukkah, using the Lulav and Etrog, hearing stories, and playing holiday-themed games. "It was a joy sharing Sukkot with the students and teachers of JAO....
For 21 years The Roth Family JCC's Jewish Film Festival in partnership with Maitland's Enzian Theater has been entertaining the community with exceptional films. This year's crop of films continues this reputation as well as adding one more film. From intrigue to love-in-later-life to a documentary, the films cover the gamut of topics. The series kicks off on Nov. 9, at the Orlando Science Center (777 E. Princeton St.), 7:30 p.m., with the 15-minute film "How To Swim," which isn't really about...
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Benny Gantz said Wednesday that he will aim to form a unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party to "repair the divisions in our society." "I promised I would form a liberal unity government and that is what I intend to do," Gantz said. The Blue and White party leader made the remarks after being officially tasked by President Reuven Rivlin with forming a government. After accepting the mandate at Rivlin's official residence in Jerusalem, Gantz commented, "I...
(JTA)-Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will be honored by the World Jewish Congress. Haley will receive the WJC's annual Theodor Herzl Award, recognizing individuals who work to promote Herzl's ideals for a safer, more tolerant world for the Jewish people, WJC said in a statement. In addition, actor, singer, director, and photographer Joel Grey will be presented with the WJC's fourth Teddy Kollek Award for the Advancement of Jewish Culture. World Jewish Congress...
Rabbi Jeremy Gimpel is a young man who has accomplished quite a bit in his lifetime. A Sgt. Major in the IDF reserves, he is one of Israel's premier media personalities. He and Rabbi Ari Abramowitz are internationally acclaimed media personalities who have been fighting side-by-side to share the truth about Israel with the world for over a decade. On Sunday, Nov. 10, Gimpel will share his message of living in and transforming the hills of Judea with the Orlando Jewish and Christian communities...
For most, talk of urinary catheterization, is an uncomfortable topic, but Tony Ruben, CEO of Blue Halo BioMedical, talks about his start-up's disruptive, innovative and life-altering new catheter with ease. In fact, Ruben speaks so effectively about his company's Blue Halo Coil Catheter, that he won Pitch Madness, the pitch competition held at Synapse Orlando on Oct. 18. Pitch Madness has start-up leaders' face-off in competition for investment capital, forcing founders to think on their feet,...
Mark Beiderman's sixth birthday was very lonely. He wondered why he didn't have more family to celebrate with, as it was just his parents. When he asked his mom why there was no family around his mother said that the family were all killed by the Germans. This sparked his curiosity and interest in learning more about the Holocaust. The entirety of his parents' family had been killed in the Holocaust, leaving him with no knowledge of his extended family, where they lived or their experiences...
Heritage Newspaper’s print audience doesn’t get to read responses to articles that are posted in the online edition of the paper (unless they also read the online edition). Here are this week’s responses: “Call to cancel SJP conference,” 10/11 edition, by TUW, posted 10/12/2019 “Excellent article. Thank you for printing this story on SJP. There are SJP chapters on many Florida colleges, including UCF and Rollins. See SJP interactive map here: https://www.nationalsjp.org/interactive-sjp-map.html” “In Israel, 70 young pastors participate in...
(JTA)—The Tree of Life synagogue building, the site of an attack a year ago that left 11 worshippers dead, will reopen as a “center for Jewish life in the United States.” The Tree of Life Congregation issued a statement to announce its “vision” for the building on Friday. The building, which was home to three different congregations, has not reopened since the Oct. 27, 2019 attack. The attack left the building “unsuitable for worship,” according to the statement. It was in need of serious repair and renovation before the attack took place, i...
(JTA)—Maryland state officials said they will strengthen requirements for Holocaust education in middle schools and high schools. The announcement by State Superintendent Karen Salmon comes days before the one-year anniversary of the shooting by a white supremacist gunman at a Pittsburgh synagogue building that left 11 worshippers dead Among the plans are to teach about the roots of anti-Semitism in middle school social studies classes and deepen instruction about the Holocaust in high school as part of history courses, The Washington Post r...
(JTA)—A teenage boy in Victoria, Australia that allegedly sent threatening messages to a Jewish boy who had been forced to kiss the shoe of a Muslim student and to his mother has been charged for the threats. The boy, 16, was arrested by Victoria police and charged with stalking, harassing and threatening to kill the Jewish boy and his mother, The Age reported. The teen, who reportedly was arrested earlier this month will appear next month in Children’s Court, the newspaper said. The threats were sent after photos of the incident in which a 1...
There is not a new Hanukkah stamp for 2019. The United States Postal Service says the 2018 Hanukkah stamp will be used, again, this year. They also say that the 2018 Hanukkah stamps are already in post offices, left over from last year. There, also, is not a new 2019 “Traditional” (religious) Christmas stamp. Again, the USPS says stock of those stamps are already in post offices. I’m sure every post office will have the Christmas stamps. However many will not have Hanukkah stamps. Past history has shown me this. If your local post office does...
(JNS)—“...a military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state. To lose a single war is to lose everything.”—Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmach and deputy Prime Minister (Labor), 1976 “One does not have to be a military expert to easily identify the critical defects of the armistice lines that existed until June 4, 1967.” — Yigal Allon Since the early 1990s, and certainly since the Oslo process (1993), the “land for peace” principle has bee...
(JNS)—The decision by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to serve as one of the featured speakers at the upcoming J Street conference should trouble every supporter of Israel. It’s both a boost for the Jewish critics of Israel and a disturbing sign of trends within the Democratic Party. It was 10 years ago this week, in October 2009, that the New York senator announced that he would not be speaking at that year’s J Street conference in Washington, D.C., following reports that he had initially accepted its invitation to speak. J Str...
(JNS)—Israelis are still trying to sort out the fallout from their second unsuccessful attempt to elect a government this year with little sign of a break in the impasse between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz. But no matter who emerges from the latest maneuvering—or from a third election that might be held early next year—Israel’s next leader needs to be concerned about the way a Democratic president might transform relations between the United States and Israel. Much of the rhetoric about the shift w...
(JNS)—To speak about Kurds has suddenly become a cry in favor of human rights and self-determination by the Western press, and rightly so: The assault they are suffering is lethal and may become genocidal. More frightening is that it is being perpetrated by the Turks, who are already stained by the Armenian genocide and are led by a leader who considers himself an almighty sultan. And it’s really odd that Europe is only now discovering who he really is. How can this be? Didn’t Europe know that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during these...
Dear Editor: I am writing in response to Bari Weiss’s article “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” (New York Times, Sunday Review, Sept. 8) and Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s critique of that article published in your Oct. 18th edition. Weiss’s article challenged me to re-examine traditional stories that defined my Jewish heritage. In Bovy’s lengthy op-ed there was no mention of two statements that stunned me. Every Passover holiday, we reread the story of the Israelites’ courageous exodus from Egypt. Without citing any source, Weiss stated that “a majority o...
MORNING AND EVENING MINYANS (Call synagogue to confirm time.) 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 of Orlando—Monday—Friday, 7:45 a.m.—8:30 a.m. Temple I...
NEW YORK—A new study of millennials from 51 communities mainly in North America and Europe reveals that disengagement with traditional Jewish communal organizations like synagogues and community centers is far worse than previously documented. However, while only 30 percent said they had interest in joining a synagogue and only 7.5 percent had interest in activities of Jewish Federations and their community centers, 84 percent were interested in Jewish learning and holiday/life cycle participation and nearly 70-percent were interested in J...
(JTA)-Bernie Sanders was one of only two Democratic presidential candidates to address the Islamic Society of North America Convention in August, the largest annual gathering of Muslim Americans in the country. Organizers invited the 10 highest-polling contenders at the time to the Houston event, but the Vermont senator and Julian Castro were the only ones to accept. Sanders received loud applause and a standing ovation for a speech that repeatedly invoked his refugee father's flight from...
NEW YORK (JTA)-When New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the Harvey Weinstein story on Oct, 5, 2017, it started a #MeToo revolution: Women began sharing personal experiences of the sexual harassment and abuse they had faced. Even though the activist Tarana Burke coined the concept of MeToo in 2006, the reporting by Kantor and Twohey about Weinstein helped transform it into a global movement. Their new book, "She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped...
(JTA)-John Demjanjuk was a retired Ukrainian-American autoworker living a comfortable life in the suburbs of Cleveland-until his past caught up with him. A group of Holocaust survivors identified him as the Treblinka death camp guard who earned the sobriquet "Ivan the Terrible" for torturing and killing a large number of Jews during World War II. What happened next is the subject of "The Devil Next Door," a five-episode documentary series that debuts on Netflix on Nov. 4. It requires that much...
Canada, our true friend... I read this in a recent issue of the World Jewry Digest and pass it along: “The Canadian government has decided to formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism as part of its anti-racism strategy. The definition was approved by all 31-member states of IHRA in May of 2016 and has since been adopted on a national level by more than a dozen countries. In response to the announcement made by Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism, PABLO RODRIGUEZ, WJC...
Over the past decade, comic books and superheroes have become a staple for mainstream pop culture. But did you know that they are super Jewish? The industry was created by Jews who were prevented from working at American newspapers in the 1930s by anti-Semitic quotas. And these creators did not shy away from their Jewishness, taking on Jewish issues like the Holocaust and domestic anti-Semitism through their art. With the rising popularity of the industry, more and more Jewish superheroes were...
WASHINGTON (JTA)-More than eight in 10 American Jews say that anti-Semitism has spiked in recent years and even more believe it is a problem in the United States, according to an American Jewish Committee survey. Nearly three-quarters of respondents strongly disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling anti-Semitism and significantly more see the extreme political right as more of a serious threat to them than the extreme political left. The telephone survey of 1,283 Jewish adults...
