Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Some personal thoughts... Joan Rivers was a friend. She once said, "whenever I hit bottom, the only thing I think of has been set down by Jerome Kern (another Jew and, of course, a great composer)). "Pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again." (Unfortunately, Joan suffered a tragic death.) Another friend... (And also a talented Jew) NEIL DIAMOND, recently came out of retirement (he retired 2 years ago because he contracted Parkinson's Disease) to perform in Las Vegas. (I went to...
"Representatives of the World Jewish Congress met with JAN HAMACEK, minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic, as a follow-up to methodology provided by the WJC to the government for protecting soft targets in the country. As part of this work, the WJC compiled guidelines of methodology for coordinating protection of sites including malls, stadiums, concert halls, and other crowd-drawing locations and often targeted by terrorists and other violent offenders. The guidelines include...
Oy Gevalt… Please excuse the language but these two words express exactly how I felt after reading the following report from the World Jewish Congress Digest: “A new study by Israeli researchers reports that anti-Semitic violence worldwide soared 30 percent in 2012. Sponsored in part by the World Jewish Congress affiliate European Jewish Congress (EJC), the study conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, recorded 686 attacks (including vanda...
“Chicago, Chicago, a todd’lin town”… This native New Yorker recently returned from Chicago where the temperature was in the 60s and the natives were wearing shorts and t-shirts, flip flops, and some even wore swimsuits! (I had to borrow a jacket to wear over my sweatshirt!) Of course, when my plane landed back in Orlando, I faced the mid 90s and a lot of humidity. (I’m living here almost 49 years but will never get used to the extreme heat… yuck!) The trip to Chicago was purely for pleasure… n...
Happy Birthday to me… Today, Friday, June 14 is my birthday. It is also Flag Day, the official day when Betsy Ross created the American Flag. When I was just a young kid, I asked my mom why people waved American Flags on my birthday. She said it was to celebrate me! (Of course, I thought!) Would you believe that today I turn 35 years old? (How about 45?...55?...65?... seventy something? HELL NO! My cousin, BENNETT PRIETO, was also born on this very same day. We were always known as “the twi...
Shades of Mel Gibson… Television’s Military Channel has been showing many WWII films, mostly in honor of Memorial Day and the week after. One of the series titled “Nazi Collaborators,” shows the gathering of Jews in different cities of the German occupation. In most cases, they were loaded on to railway cars and sent off to concentration camps. You know their fate. Some were lucky enough to survive the war and even make it to Israel! Israel is very special to our people. This fact makes the fol...
It looks eerily similar… I’m not that old, but I do remember photos of the devastation after the bombing of Berlin near the end of World War II. (I was merely a toddler). I just saw the photos on television of the devastation caused by a monster tornado that hit a town in Oklahoma. It looked eerily similar! Of course, the first thought that comes to mind is that we must help. But where do we start? What should we do? Let me suggest: The Jewish Federations of North America have opened a mai...
”Oy am I fahklempt” department… You know what fahklempt means… eyes tear up and a lump in the throat. That’s how I felt after just seeing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on television with James Cagney. (I know very few actor’s names these days. It feels great to see a name I recognize.) Anyway, although I know that Hollywood movies take liberties with the whole truth, it was still nice to hear the story of George M. Cohan, who at the turn of the last century, wrote songs like “Give my regards to Broadw...
“Brasil, where hearts were entertaining June…” Trust me… Brasil is spelled correctly. It is not spelled “Brazil.” I have been to Brasil four times… to record my CDs, to perform shows, to do television, etc., so I know that is the correct spelling in Brasil. My agent is a Brasileiro, born and raised in Sao Paulo. He is also a Jewish man, an entertainment lawyer and owner of his own recording company. His name is ROBERTO DRATCU. Roberto has been here in Central Florida many times to work with me....
Oy vay… ”Oy Vay”! That expression really describes how I feel. I’ve written about the terrible increase in anti-Semitism in Europe recently. Now I find that the trend seems to be surfacing in America as well! I’ve described in this column what my childhood was like in the very poor and very tough section of Brooklyn called Red Hook, where, with my family, I lived in the section’s low rent project for folks on welfare. I told how I was beaten daily because I was Jewish. I was only 5 or 6 years...
Welcome Jewish Americans… May is designated “Jewish American Heritage Month.” (I bet you didn’t know that. I certainly didn’t!) It is the official time we celebrate the contributions of Jewish Americans who have helped weave the fabric of American history, culture and society. (You can learn more about it at www.jahm.us.). Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz (a familiar name to most of us) and his wife Nesha Manischewitz are the first to be the founding corporate sponsors of Jewish American Heritage...
A correction… In last week’s column I suggested sending garbage pails filled with doggie poop bags over to North Korea as a missile. I now realize that was such a bad idea because human poop is used to fertilize the soil in North Korea. If they are accustomed to inhaling that, well… what more need I say? Texas, Boston, Ricin poisoned letters… What a week. I shudder to think what’s in store. It’s starting to feel like we are living in Pakistan! So much hate, so many sick and twisted people. We do...
Shades of Mel Gibson… The following information comes directly from the Simon Wiesenthal Center with asides by me: “Vicious attacks on the memory of the Holocaust…from denial to distortion…to revisionism…are erupting in countries worldwide. Every day in ways big and small, the deniers and anti-Semites are chipping away at our history, savaging the memory of the six million who perished. Some examples are: The senior Egyptian official in charge of appointing editors of all state-run Egyptian...
Wow! Talk about your good ideas… Have any of you seen the latest Febreze commercials? (You know… the ones where people are blind-folded and asked to sit in a room or in a car.) They don’t know that there is either garbage, dirty underwear, or some other fowl-smelling items placed near them. And the reason they don’t know, you ask? The air-effects-product Febreze is placed near them to disguise the odors. Comments the blind-folded people make sound something like this: “It smells like a garden....
See something? Say something… This saying really doesn’t apply here… but if the following email (or photo) I recently received, rings a bell in any way… do say something to someone, please. Especially, contact HANAN SHOMRONY via the email address below: “My name is Hanan Shomrony and I’m searching for my brother. He was born in 1946 , his parents’ first born, in Europe after the Second World War. In 1949, when he was 2 ½ years old, he and his parents made aliya to Zfat in Israel. He was hospita...
“Tele-Vangelizing” in Israel?... What else could you call it? The name “tele-vangelizing” seems perfect! This comes from The World Jewish Congress Foundation Digest with my asides: “There’s something stirring in the air over Jerusalem and Israelis are feeling the static. It’s one thing for evangelical Christians to show their fervid support for Israel. It is quite another thing for them to tell Jews to convert in time for the Second Coming.” (Really? Sure, I pretended to convert when I was 5 ye...
So what else is new?... According to an international agency that studied Israel’s delivery of health care, the agency finds Israel has a quality system overall (again I repeat, what else is new?) but with some improvements needed. The World Jewish Congress Foundation reports (with asides by me) that “the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which Israel is a member, dispatched an international team to the Jewish state more than a year ago to investigate hos...
Don’t speak badly of the dead… My parents taught me that lesson…but it is hard to follow when the deceased is Hugo Chavez. The following information comes directly from The World Jewish Congress Foundation Digest (with asides by me). It was published a few months ago, before the death of Chavez: “Under the administration of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, half of the nation’s Jews have reportedly fled the country. “Now that Chavez has retained his office in the recent fall elections for anothe...
Farewell, my friend… Just a little tribute to a wonderful man I was fortunate to meet when he visited our Orlando Jewish community some years ago. I refer to former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who died recently. Mayor Koch was a man I always admired, especially my being a native New Yorker (Brooklyn), and realizing all the good he had done. For one, I can remember Times Square in Manhattan being a really seedy place with X-rated movies and show bars where “low-life” criminal types hung out....
