Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 2976 - 3000 of 4376
Aaron Gorovitz named one of the top fundraisers in U.S. Orlando, FL –Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed is pleased to announce that long-time partner Aaron J. Gorovitz has been honored with a national STOP Diabetes-SHARE award by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) for his outstanding contributions in the fight to stop diabetes. This award is unique, and it has not been given to anyone else in the U.S. during the past 12 months. As the chairman of the local ADA Father of the Year (... Full story
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA)-When Jonathan Sarna was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1999 at the age of 44, it changed his life. Already a highly regarded historian at Brandeis University, Sarna was in the midst of writing his seminal study of American Jewish history when he realized with alarm that he might never finish it. He underwent chemotherapy, radiation treatment and surgery. Though he didn't know it at the time, doctors gave him a one-in-five chance of surviving. Then, slowly, the... Full story
I repeat myself because I'm old?... I'm NOT old. (Oh shut up!) I don't repeat myself. I don't repeat myself. (Okay, I do. Especially last week's joke. Sorry.) Speaking of dementia, I once asked my spouse if he thought I had Alzheimer's because I couldn't remember where I parked the car in the Publix parking lot. He answered that "it's not where you parked it. It's when you don't know what to do with the car that you may have Alzheimer's." And on this subject... I read the following in the... Full story
PARDES HANNA, Israel (JTA)-When Yoel decided, at age 8, to begin observing Shabbat, there was one problem: It meant he couldn't join most of Israel's youth soccer teams, which played games on Saturday. Yoel, now 12, has always lived in the increasingly large gray area between Israel's starkly divided religious and secular Jewish societies. His father observes Shabbat, his mother doesn't. He attended a religious elementary school, but transferred to a secular school this year. He enjoys how... Full story
One-hundred years ago this month, British colonel Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Marie Denis Georges-Picot divided the Middle East loosely and arbitrarily between Great Britain and France. Following that division, which became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a series of further-and often contradictory-treaties and conferences resulted in power battles, internal uprisings, coups, and revolts. A century later, the Middle East-with an explosive array of... Full story
(The Nosher via JTA)-Gluten-free brownies-when made without those unpredictably tricky gluten-free flours-is the kind of dessert that speaks to me: fudgey, rich and, above all, very easy to make. With halvah turning up everywhere from cinnamon buns, to donuts, to ice cream, I couldn't wait to try it out in my favorite baked good. After much deliberation at Russ and Daughters-marbled dark chocolate or seven layer halvah?-I ordered a block of pistachio halvah, which was weighed and wrapped by an... Full story
AMSTERDAM (JTA)-As a Dutch Jewish couple hiding separately from the Nazis, Emmanuel Joels and Hetty van Son were literally drawn together by a comic book of Emmanuel's romantic invention. After narrowly avoiding deportation to Auschwitz thanks to a policeman's tip, the young couple spent 2 1/2 years living less than a mile apart, each in the care of rescuers with ties to the resistance in the city of Apeldoorn, 55 miles east of Amsterdam. It was a fortunate situation in a country where 75... Full story
Tonight, at 8 o'clock, the sirens around Israel were sounded. Everywhere. Not for rockets from Gaza, or Lebanon, or any other place of hate in the Middle East. For the soldiers who died defending Israel, for the victims of terrorist attacks, and for their families and their communities. Today is Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day. There are no sales, and there are no barbecues. There are candles and ceremonies and tears. There are memorials on Memorial Day. It sounds obvious, but to this... Full story
Speaking through her tears it was not clear whether Eliana, 15, was crying tears of sadness because of her loss, or tears of joy because she was in a place where she could express herself, and cry openly. "Before coming to Camp Koby I was so broken. This was my first sleep away camp and on the first day I couldn't eat. But I felt an immediate connection. I have met so many amazing people. There's so much effort put in to help us. It gives energy and strength to continue with everyday life." She... Full story
"Heeeeeere's Johnny"... Just recently I watched a two-hour special on the life of television Tonight Show host for 30 years, Johnny Carson. Not only am I missing all the years of watching him and his guests I actually recognized them! (Not like the guest stars who appear on our current Tonight Show. The audience goes wild and I go who????) Well, for those who get Antenna TV on their sets, you can still watch Johnny Carson's Tonight Show seven nights a week... 11 p.m.-midnight Monday thru Friday... Full story
(Kveller via JTA)-Traditionally, we say the Mi Sheberach prayer for those who are ill and those recovering from illness or accident. For example, I added the name of my friend's daughter to the list to be recited at my synagogue following a terrible accident in which she was burned. As the Mi Sheberach was recited this past Shabbat at my synagogue, I had an epiphany. I wondered aloud to my husband, what about those with mental illness? Do we ever think of adding their names in hopes of recovery... Full story
(The Nosher via JTA)-I had my first proper halva experience at The Halva Kingdom in the Machane Yehuda shuk in Jerusalem. I'd never really liked halva before that-the one or two times I had tasted it, the texture was weird and crumbly and there was a slightly bitter aftertaste. But in the shuk, surrounded by dozens of varieties of blocks of halva, I couldn't resist trying the sample offered by the charming vendor. You guys, it was so, so good! I was pleasantly shocked at how much I liked it. It... Full story
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA)-After Yvonne van Gennep-Bouma discovered that Holocaust victims used to live in what is now her home, she began to think about them constantly. At night, van Gennep-Bouma imagined the former occupants preparing to turn in. And in the morning, she wondered where they had their breakfast. That was in 2012, she recalled, talking to a visitor in the manicured three-story townhouse in the Hague where she has lived with her husband and three children since 2001. It was als... Full story
INDIANAPOLIS-A noted Indiana University cardiologist, Dr. Doug Zipes, has published his third novel, a historical thriller titled "Not Just a Game." The book follows three generations of Olympic athletes over eight decades, culminating in intrigue and danger at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil. With some historical basis in fact and characters loosely based on real people, Zipes' story chronicles the challenges of Olympic competition experienced by a grandfather, father, and daughter... Full story
(JTA)-It's just before Rosh Hashanah in 2013, and New York City's mayoral campaign is heating up. Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who in a surprise move had thrown his hat in the ring a few months earlier, is doing one of those obligatory photo ops at a Jewish bakery in Brooklyn. All is going well. Weiner has picked up an order of cookies laced with honey-sweets for the New Year-and even insisted on paying full retail. As he is leaving the store, though, a man wearing a kippah... Full story
In January 2016, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Manpower Directorate report revealed that 36 Israeli soldiers died in 2015, marking the lowest single-year death toll the Israeli military has experienced in a decade. But although no major military operations took place in Israel last year, the fall season saw the start of a months-long (and ongoing) wave of Palestinian terror attacks that has so far claimed the lives of 34 people and injured 411 others since Sept. 13, 2015. The attacks began in... Full story
ISRAEL21c—Think of marketing as a way of moving potential customers through a funnel: enticing them to enter at the top, to stay inside until making a purchase, and to go back inside for future purchases. Think of marketing technology (mar-tech) as smart automated solutions for every stage of that sales funnel, says Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove, one of the growing number of Israeli companies specializing in mar-tech software for B2B and B2C clients. “Mar-tech is a very hot field,” Yakuel tells ISRAEL21c. “In the old days, marketing was perceiv... Full story
(JTA)-"Rabin in his Own Words," which opened last Friday in New York, Los Angeles and South Florida, is more than a tribute to the two-time Israeli prime minister tragically gunned down in 1995. The aptly named cinematic autobiography, which uses archival footage going back to the statesman's childhood, is entirely narrated by Yitzhak Rabin himself. Filmmaker Erez Laufer, 53, designed it that way because, he tells JTA, "I got tired of hearing people analyzing him, people talking about him, both... Full story
Fala Portuguese... Which means I speak Portuguese. And I do! Portuguese, as you know, is the language spoken in Brasil. (Americans spell it Brazil with a Z) My entertainment agent, ROBERTO DRATCU, is Brasilian (and Jewish) so I have sung and performed in Rio, Sao Paulo and many other cities in Brasil a few times. There is a thriving Jewish community in Sao Paulo, which is a large robust city in Brasil. I read this recently in the LUBAVITCH INTERNATIONAL newspaper under the heading "Memorial... Full story
BRUSSELS (JTA)-I was feeling nervous about coming to Brussels for seder with my family. Making the 130-mile trip there from my home in Amsterdam meant taking my 5-month-old son on a train that last year saw an attempted jihadist attack, and into a city that is still reeling and on alert from the March 22 Islamist bombings that killed 32 people. I wasn't worried about terrorism, though. Having experienced, by the time I turned 19, two intifadas and the Gulf War missile attacks in my native Israel... Full story
JACKSON, N.J. (JTA)-Pinchas Cohen spent most of Monday wandering around Six Flags Great Adventure under a blazing sun, wearing a knee-length black coat and carrying a big box of shmura matzah under his arm. An imposing, Russian-born Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid who now lives in Brooklyn, Cohen came to this amusement park in New Jersey with his 11-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, the two youngest of his nine children, to have some fun on the first day of chol hamoed, the intermediate days of Pass... Full story
TEL AVIV (JTA)-On an army base in northern Israel, a scrawny nerd with glasses shakily patrols in the dead of night. Suddenly he's ambushed by a group of militants in kaffiyehs, and he's forced to fight for his life, using everything from a gun to a knife to a desk lamp, until he's left with blood dripping down his face. This isn't the most recent flare-up in the Israeli terror wave. It's a scene from the recent horror film "Freak Out," starring Itay Zvolon-who is famous in Israel for a... Full story
Two representatives of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando joined more than 200 participants from seven countries who gathered April 10-12 in Baltimore for the 8th Annual PJ Library Conference. Jennifer Cohen, JFGO's director of Outreach and Engagement, and Aleah Mathews, volunteer co-chair of JFGO's Shalom Families committee, represented Greater Orlando at the conference. PJ Library, a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that is administered and subsidized locally by the Jewish... Full story
A monthly update on current issues from the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando’s Jewish Community Relations Council Hello, and welcome to the first monthly column from the Jewish Community Relations Council! We look forward to sharing news, information, and action items on how you can make a difference in Central Florida and beyond. For our first column, we want to simply introduce ourselves and tell you what we do. As part of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, the mission of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) is to live our... Full story
(JTA)-The story of Chiune Sugihara-the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania, who disobeyed his government's orders in 1940 and issued transit visas through Japan to thousands of Jews seeking to flee war-torn Europe-wasn't widely known until 1985, when Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial authority, honored him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. But I grew up hearing Sugihara's story because he saved my father's life. My father, the attorney Nathan Lewin, is a Sugihara survivor. I also... Full story
