Scene Around

Brilliant and Jewish ...

Jonas Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine. Of course, Jewish!

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud on May 6, 1856 and died Sept. 23, 1939. He was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.

In founding psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis, Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego. Freud postulated the existence of libido, sexualised energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression, and neurotic guilt. In his later works, Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.

Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities. It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate concerning its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or hinders the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud›s work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. W. H. Auden's 1940 poetic tribute to Freud describes him as having created "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives".

One of my sons is a psychologist. He says I have the mentality of a child. I'm flattered!

When will it ever end? ...

I read this recently in the World Jewish Congress digest and pass it along to you:

"A German court has concluded its five-month trial of the attacker who attempted to break into a synagogue on Yom Kippur in the town of Halle and then shot to bystanders. The perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison.

The WJC expressed gratification that the German justice system appropriately brought the assailant, a far-right extremist and Holocaust denier, to justice.

WJC President Ambassador RONALD S. LAUDER said: "I commend the German justice system for imposing the harshest possible sentence on a heartless, vicious anti-Semite who attempted to murder Jews in a synagogue on the holiest day of the Jewish year, and took the lives of two innocent people who happened to be in his way. Federal Prosecutor KAI LOHSE appropriately emphasized to the court and the world that the assailant attacked Jewish life in Germany as a whole, and that the rampage was a product of his racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic ideology. The speed, follow-through, and decisiveness of this trial is a definitive example of how the judicial system must respond to such horrific violence, making crystal-clear there is no place for such hateful, harmful rhetoric or behavior in society."

About a year after the fatal shooting, the day after Yom Kippur, the WJC convened Jewish leaders at the synagogue in Halle, to mourn the deaths of Jana Lange and Kevin Schwarze and to push for concrete action to fight anti-Semitism.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando...

Adult Jewish Learning explores the impact of collective memory on our ongoing historical development and our understanding of Judaism today.

Participants will encounter in a number of different ways, one of the most powerful keys to Jewish survival: the enduring determination to never forget.

This 4-session course of the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning explores the impact of collective memory on our ongoing historical development and our understanding of Judaism today.

For more information about this program, phone the Federation at 407-645-5933.

Winter Park Playhouse ...

(I said I would repeat it!)

On July 30 thru Aug. 22, the show "Crazy For Gershwin" will be performed at the Winter Park Playhouse.

This high-energy song and dance celebration will put a smile on your face and a song in your heart. (And on my face and heart as well! I am so proud!!) "Who could ask for anything more?"

Special recognition ...

I want to give a shout-out to LARA ROSALES, a server at the Outback Steakhouse on Aloma Avenue, Winter Park. She was fast, funny, precise and beautiful. (I really can't handle competition but she was awfully good at her job!'

And that's not all ...

How about a shout-out to MAXUS VIDAL, a server at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Altamonte Springs.

Maxus was wonderful, gave fast service, had a wonderful personality and was very good-looking!!

(I can say anything I want to at my age!)

One for the road ...

NEIL JOSEPHBERG sent this to me. Thanks, Neil!

Overheard at the Shabbos table: "Yizzy, you're in terrific shape for a 60 year old! You have the body of a 35 year old! Tell me, how old was your father when he died?"

Yizzy answered: "Who said my father died?"

"Wow! He's still alive? How old is he? Is he still active?" was the response.

Yizzy answers:"Dad is 82 and he skis three times a week!"

His friend finds that amazing and asks:"How old was your grandfather when he died?"

Yizzy's response:" Who said my grandfather died?

He's 102, still skis and is getting married again."

His friend was dumbfounded! " Why on earth would a 102 man want to marry again?"

"Who said he wanted to," answered Yizzy. His mom is making him do it!"