Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JTA) — A lavishly illustrated children’s book about a Chinese Jewish family who celebrate both Rosh Hashanah and Lunar New Year is among the top winners of this year’s Sydney Taylor Book Awards for Jewish children’s books. Meanwhile, the publisher of the imprint behind the popular Sammy Spider Jewish holiday books won an award for her lifetime of contributions to Jewish children’s literature. Both prizes were revealed Monday as part of the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards. Michelle Margolis, president of the Association...
According to Biblical law, there is a seven-year agricultural cycle, concluding with the Sabbatical year. When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, on years one, two, four and five of this cycle, farmers were required to separate a tenth of their produce and eat it in Jerusalem. This tithe is called Maaser Sheni, the Second Tithe, because it is in addition to the (two percent which must be given to the Kohain, and the) ten percent which is given to the Levite. On the third and sixth years of the...
Venturing into the heart of South Africa, Veronica Quinones embarked on a two-week journey of discovery, seeking to unravel the tapestry of culture, cuisine, and most importantly, the people. In a land known for its rich and diverse heritage, the elderly population stands as a testament to wisdom, experience, and invaluable contributions. A Tapestry of Tradition: South African Elderly Culture Respect for Elders: Picture a society where reverence for elders is not just a tradition but a way of life. In South Africa, this respect runs deep....
(JNS) — Marc Tracy’s New York Times article on Jan. 14 refers to “left-wing” Jews and a “left-wing” Jewish publication, and a “far-right” Israeli government and its “extreme-right ministers.” The avian metaphors add up to the culture reporter to implications for human appendages as well. “If I forget you, O’ Jerusalem,” states Psalm 137:5, “let me draw a blank on my right hand.” The Times article headline has a different notion of the Jewish faith than does Jewish scripture. “Is Israel part of what it means to be Jewish?” the article asks, n...
On a beautiful, chilly January morning, my family and I made our way up the path in Muir Woods National Monuments. As part of a planned family reunion, our children had made early morning reservations. A weak sun shone through the trees, a small creek caught the light, the redwoods soared above us. I was in the woods again - an absolutely pristine national monument that had survived fires and earthquakes to awe us with its beauty. Muir Woods, managed by the National Park Service, is located on...
(JNS) — Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) gave the annual Martin Luther King Jr. sermon at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, lashing out at American indifference or even enthusiasm in response to the brutality of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel. Calling it “the moral crisis that we’re facing in a post-Oct. 7 world,” Torres said on Jan. 12 that he was “profoundly shaken not only by Oct. 7 but by the aftermath. I found it utterly horrifying to see fellow Americans openly cheering and celebrating the deadliest massacre of Jews since the...
(JTA) - Israeli-American celebrity chef Michael Solomonov's renowned hummus has only been available in his Philadelphia and New York City restaurants - until now. Hummus using the recipe from Zahav, Solomonov's flagship Philadelphia restaurant, is now available at over 150 Whole Foods stores. The packaged hummus, like that at Zahav, doesn't use oil - just a lot of tahini. Unlike the hummus at Zahav, however, it is certified kosher, bringing the recipe to a new cohort of customers. The Whole...
(New York Jewish Week) — Picture a group of children having fun at summer camp, learning archery, swimming and playing tug of war, all while the Nazi flag flies next to the American flag. Or a packed crowd at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, where men and women of all ages give the Hitler salute. These are some of the real-life disturbing images depicted in “Nazi Town, USA,” a new documentary about the German American Bund (organization) — a pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organization that, at its peak, had some 100,000 members in the United St...
Here are some senior discounts you can use when traveling (train and car rental) gleaned from the Orlando Sentinel: Greyhound: 5 percent off for 62 and over Amtrak: 10 percent off for 65 and over Hertz Car Rental: various discounts to those 50 and over Avis: up to 30 percent off to AARP members Payless Car Rental: various discounts to AARP members Here are some senior discounts you can use when flying: Southwest Airlines: Offers various discounts for 65 and over United Airlines: Offers senior fares to selected travel destinations for customers...
(JNS) — A Telegram channel for UNRWA teachers in Gaza with over 3,000 members contains messages glorifying the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 and encouraging the execution of Israeli hostages, an investigation by Geneva-based human rights NGO UN Watch has found. “This is the motherlode of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to jihadi terrorism,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. The Telegram group provides a forum for Gaza-based education workers from the United Nations agency tasked with supporting Palestinians displaced during the 1948 wa...
(JNS) — Operation Israel, a U.S.-based nonprofit, has provided more than $7 million worth of supplies, medical equipment and protective gear to IDF soldiers since Hamas launched the current war with its massacre of 1,200 people on Oct. 7, the NGO said on Thursday. Since then, the organization has received requests from nearly a thousand IDF units and provided some 10,000 soldiers with a total of more than 50,000 items, including ceramic vests, ballistic goggles and tactical gear together weighing over 66,000 pounds (30,000 kilograms). The group...
(JNS) - Kindertransport survivor Walter Bingham, recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest living working journalist, celebrated his 100th birthday in Jerusalem on Jan. 4, 2024. Born Wolfgang Billig in 1924 in Karlsruhe, Germany, Bingham escaped Germany after Kristallnacht in 1939 by way of the Kindertransport, which sent nearly 10,000 unaccompanied children, most of them Jews, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig to Great Britain. Bingham...
In mid-December, Central Florida was experiencing a cold snap, and I decided to make chili. I had the canned tomatoes and chopped green chilis and the soy meat crumbles for the recipe, and I had all the ingredients for cornbread, a must whenever I made it. Once I checked my pantry, however, I realized I was out for canned beans. No problem! I had been meaning to use up the dried red kidney beans tucked away for a while. What I quickly realized that the “while” was at least 9 years. Yes, as evi...
(New York Jewish Week) - Jewish outfielder Harrison Bader is headed back to New York, this time as a member of the New York Mets. The 29-year-old Bronxville native agreed to a one-year, $10.5 million contract with the Mets Thursday, becoming the team's first Jewish player since Kevin Pillar and Robert Stock donned the blue and orange in 2021, according to data compiled by the Jewish Baseball News site. Bader's father, who is Jewish, told the Forward last year that his son is considering...
When a parent needs long-term care or nears the end of life, siblings may argue about a range of caregiving issues. Sometimes these disputes are bitter, and they can break up a family. In these situations, it can be helpful to have an objective professional in the room — someone to diffuse the anger, ask appropriate questions and find common ground. These people are called eldercare mediators, family mediators or adult family mediators. While most seniors face major adjustments when transitioning to an eldercare community, Jewish seniors f...
(JTA) — One of the movies up for best picture at the 2024 Golden Globes awards is about the Holocaust. One of the most notable displays during the ceremony alludes to a current attack on Jews. In the lead-up to the awards ceremony Sunday night, advocates for Israeli hostages in Gaza worked to supply attendees with yellow ribbon pins to affix to their red-carpet garb. Terrorists in Gaza are still holding approximately 136 hostages, who were kidnapped when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the ongoing war. Yellow ribbons are a l...
(JTA) - When I spoke with novelist Elizabeth Graver in August about her novel "Kantika" - inspired by her own Turkish Jewish family - I asked her how she managed to breathe life into a tired genre like the Jewish family saga. "I want the characters to be flawed and complex, and for the turns that they take to come out of their intersections with both history and their own very particular circumstances," she told me. The flawed and the complex; the historic and the particular. These are the...
(Jewish Journal of Greater Boston via JTA) — Sarah Freudenberger has spent a lot of time being told “no.” A year and a half out of college, the “no” came from cantorial schools when she applied for ordination. Months later, when she got engaged, it came from the three rabbis she had worked with at a Reform synagogue in Florida, when she asked if they would officiate her wedding. Both refusals were because – like 42 percent of married American Jews, according to a 2020 Pew study – Freudenberger’s spouse is not a Jew. Peter, her husband and the...
(JTA) — In a 1988 episode of the British television show “That’s Life,” British stockbroker Nicholas Winton was invited to sit in the audience as host Esther Rantzen dramatically revealed to him that the entire crowd was composed of the Jewish children — now adults — he had saved during the Holocaust. That tear-jerking clip periodically goes viral on social media, but now, Winton’s story is coming to bigger screens — in a dramatic film, “One Life,” where he is portrayed by two-time Academy Award-winning actor Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins wa...
(JNS) - Harold Rhode has a PhD in Ottoman history and lived for years in the Muslim world. He served as an adviser on the Islamic world to the U.S. Department of Defense for 28 years. I recently had the opportunity to speak with him. Q: Do all of the signatories to the Abraham Accords, Arabs and Israelis, see the Abraham Accords the same way? A: We Jews want people to love us. And the peace we're looking for is that you'll stop fighting, and we'll stop fighting, and everyone will live together...
(JNS) - Mark Podwal's "Shabbat: A Taste of Heaven," an acrylic and colored pencil drawing on paper, was part of his 2003 exhibition "A Sweet Year" at the Israel Museum Ruth Youth Wing in Jerusalem. (His book "A Sweet Year: A Taste of the Jewish Holidays" came out the same year.) "When the Jewish people were gathered at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, God told them that olam habah (the world to come) would be their reward for keeping the commandments," the New York artist tells JNS, quoting "Ot...
(JTA) - The bright, colorful movie musical "The Color Purple," which opens in theaters on Christmas, tells a story that has by now become a familiar part of the American canon - of a young Black woman's self-empowerment and discovery of her own sexuality amid the horrific, abusive conditions of her life in the early-1900s rural South. It's far from the first time Americans have heard the story of Celie, the protagonist of Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple." Walker's novel debuted in 1982...
(New York Jewish Week) — The late Brooklyn klezmer musician Pete Sokolow would sometimes take the stage as “Klezmer Fats.” But many players used a different sobriquet to refer to the pianist, who served as a link between generations: “the youngest of the old guys.” Sokolow started playing klezmer in the summer of 1958 with older musicians at resorts in the Catskills. Twenty years later he was part of the klezmer revival. “When it mattered, Pete was there,” klezmer historian Henry Sapoznik told the New York Jewish Week. “Pete was able to bui...
(JNS) — ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the news, not a keyboard was clanking, except in New York to target the Jews. The “gem” of Gaza City “was destroyed by Israeli bombardment,” its mayor Yahya Sarraj wrote in a Dec. 24 New York Times op-ed. “The Israeli invasion has caused the deaths of more than 20,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and destroyed or damaged about half the buildings in the territory,” Sarraj adds. “The Israelis have also pulverized something else: Gaza City’s cultural riches and municipa...
By Ben Sales (JTA) — On Oct. 6, JTA led its morning newsletter with an article that had long been in the works — and that we expected to drive conversation in the days ahead: It was a profile of a Jewish dad in Florida who had pushed to ban hundreds of books — including Anne Frank’s diary — from school libraries. The ongoing saga of book bans in school libraries, and how they ensnared works about the Holocaust and other Jewish topics, is a story our reporter Andrew Lapin, and JTA more broadly, had focused on all year. For much of 2023, book ban...
