Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 26 - 42 of 42
The "Seeking Kin" column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. (JTA)-When Brazil native Fabio Rosenfeld brought up launching a search for his grandfather's sister who had survived the Holocaust, I opened my "National Geographic Atlas of the World" to locate her hometown of Reghin. A week later, the surname and the area struck me as familiar, so back to the atlas I went. There was Reghin, in the Transylvania region of Romania and Hungary, near Cluj-Napoca, a town central to a...
Logan Brett Intro, son of Curt and Leslie Intro of Longwood, will be called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015 at Congregation Beth Am of Longwood. Logan is in the seventh grade at Teague Middle School where he plays trumpet in the school band and maintains a strong grade point average. His interests and hobbies include tennis, karate and playing video games. Sharing in the family's simcha will be Logan's brother, Reid; grandparents, Mark and Carol Chaykin, and Max and...
NEW YORK (Kveller via JTA)—Growing up, ours was the only house on the block with a menorah glowing in the window. This should have put me onto the fast track to Christmas envy, but it didn’t. I respected Christmas, but was never jealous of those who celebrated. In fact, watching my neighbors actually gave me a deeper appreciation for the simpler joys of Chanukah. Here’s why: Early-bird shopping Celebrating Chanukah means I usually have an earlier gift-buying deadline to meet than my counterparts. I have to get myself in gear way before Chris...
Anti-Semitism is alive and well and HERE!... I received mail from Hillel International President and CEO ERIC D. FINGERHUT, and in the wake of the anti-Semitic flyers posted around the campus of our own University of Central Florida, I thought I should pass it along in part: "As Thanksgiving break has come and after it, the mad rush toward final exams for 400,000 Jewish college students across the United States, there is something I must urgently convey about life on today's campuses. Is it...
BERLIN (JTA)—A new Torah scroll in a German city was completed with interfaith help, including from a Muslim leader. Bilal El-Zayat, president of the Islamic Community of Marburg placed his hand atop that of Torah scribe Rabbi Josef Chranovski as he penned one of the last 15 letters of the Torah to spell out the statement “Witnessed by all Israel.” Also joining in the ritual to mark the Marburg congregation’s 10th anniversary last week were local Protestant and Catholic clergy, as well as the central German city’s mayor and his predecess...
(JTA)-I first tasted latkes for brunch at a trendy eatery on the Lower East Side about six years ago. Since then, I've seen them across the country on brunch menus everywhere from diners to Michelin Star restaurants. Latkes-or potato pancakes, as they're known to non-Jews-are comfort food that provide the perfect base to any number of savory toppings, but especially a runny egg or salty, fatty smoked salmon. After all, a latke is very similar to hash browns, a quintessential breakfast food....
WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week via JTA)-With the Boy Scouts of America's ban on gay employees lifted this summer, it's a good time to be pitching scouting to the liberal American Jewish streams. So says Bruce Chudacoff, the chair of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting. A representative of the Boy Scouts and longtime advocate for Jewish scouts, he set up shop at the Reform and Conservative biennial conferences last month. From his booth decorated with posters touting the benefits of sco...
Several Chanukah parties are scheduled around town at various Assisted Living facilities. The following is the schedule: Dec. 11 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. Brookdale Dr. Phillips, 8001 Pin Oak Dr., Orlando 11 a.m. - noon Island Lake Center, 155 Landover Place, Longwood Noon - 1 p.m. The Commons & Winsor Towers, 210 Lake Ave., Orl. Noon - 1 p.m. Grand Villa of Altamonte Springs, 433 Orange Dr. 3 p.m. - 4 p.m. Village on the Green, 55 Village Place, Longwood 4 p.m. - 5 p.m. Atria at Lake Forest, 5433 W. State Rd. 46, Sanford Dec. 12 10:30 a.m. - 11:30...
When Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal's authoritarian ruler since 1932, finally was unable to rule effectively and his regime subsequently deposed by a military coup in 1974 (The Carnation Revolution), there was universal agreement that he left Portugal the poorest and most backward nation in Western Europe. Reporters on the scene in Lisbon reported signs of jubilation equaling V-E Day in London or Paris. How is it possible then that when a Portuguese television program ran a survey in...
SECAUCUS, N.J. (JTA)-Welch's is coming to seder this year. For decades, America's kosher grape juice market has been dominated by Kedem, whose sweet libations come in concord, blush, white, peach, diet and a variety of sparkling flavors. But with U.S. sales flat when it comes to non-kosher grape juice, Welch's, America's largest grape juice company, is muscling its way into the kosher market. Starting in January, Welch's will begin selling 100 percent grape juice certified by the Orthodox Union...
NEW YORK (JTA)-They were called "so-called" refugees, told they were alien to American culture and warned against as potential enemies of the United States. This heated anti-refugee rhetoric in America was directed against Jews trying to flee Europe, not Mexicans or Syrians. Back in the 1930s and '40s, the fear was of Nazi and Communist infiltrators sneaking in along with the refugees rather than the Islamic militants or Mexican criminals that some fear today. Here's a snapshot of what...
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Avis car rental agency refused to provide an Israeli businessman with a rental vehicle because of his Israeli identity, the New York Observer reported Sunday. Dov Bergwerk, a senior executive at Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, said that on Friday he and his wife arrived at the Avis branch on West 76th Street and Broadway in New York City and were planning to join friends for dinner in Westchester. Bergwerk told the Observer he has rented from Avis dozens of times before—but when he handed the agent his...
Netanyahu: Palestinian refusal to recognize Jewish state ‘core’ of conflict WASHINGTON (JTA)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and rejected U.S. warnings that Israel was devolving toward a single state. The “root cause of the problem,” Netanyahu said in a video address Sunday to the annual Saban Forum, is that “the Palestinians have not yet been willing to cross that conceptual bridge, the emotional bridge of giving up t...
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-They warn you that parenting means doing a bunch of stuff you never imagined yourself doing. I had always assumed this applied to saying to children things like, "You watch your tone of voice, young lady" or, "Let's not eat things we find in our underwear." But in my case, the moment came before my son was even born, when I found myself begging a Belgian kosher slaughterer, or shochet, to come to the Netherlands and circumcise him. In my native Israel or the United States,...
(JTA)—The menorah bong is having a moment. By now, you may have seen the year-old YouTube video of a bearded guy in a blazer lighting all eight bowls of the Grav Menorah—a cross between a glass bong and a traditional hanukiah—and taking one massive toke. But the religiously inspired cannabis consumption device, which retails for, yes, $699 at 420Science.com, was not originally intended for sale. In fact, David Daily, the 35-year-old glass blower and businessman behind Grav Labs—the scientific glass company he founded a decade ago in Austin,...
NEW YORK (JTA)—The so-called “Kate Middleton effect”—by which anything the Duchess of Cambridge wears becomes an instant best-seller—seems to know no bounds. She has graced the covers of countless magazines; entire blogs are devoted to what she wears. And, as it happens, the duchess is the perfect style icon for observant Jewish women. “She’s modest, demure and modern,” says Adi Heyman, founder of the fashion blog Fabologie. So it’s perhaps no surprise that one of Middleton’s signature style pieces—the fascinator—has caught on as a head cov...
(JTA)-Writer and director Jill Soloway grew up in what she calls a "somewhat normalish, upper middle class Jewish household" in Chicago. Her mom was a public relations consultant (she worked for Mayor Jane Byrne) and her dad a psychiatrist. But she always sensed that "something was a little off," she tells JTA in a telephone interview. "Not much more than that. Just a little bit different. Nothing I could easily identify." What that "little bit" was became clear about five years ago, when her...
