WOMEN IN ACTION Federation Women’s Division decorates JFCS visiting room. page 7
July
2012
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Tamuz/Av
PARTNERSHIP Israel Partnership chair visits Jacksonville.
COMMUNITY Teen films foundation oral history project.
ART WALK Shalom Jacksonville plans Art Walk and scavenger hunt.
JEWISH NEWS
5772
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Teens and Israel: best summer ever
Jacksonville
Published
by
Jewish
Federation
of
Jacksonville
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www.jewishjacksonville.org
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BACK TO SCHOOL 2008 Jewish schools gear up to start another year of learning.
August
2008
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Nissan/Iyar
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Election program set
20
pages
MISSION 2009 Family mission 2009 theme will be Extreme Israel.
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page 14
Published
by
Jacksonville
Jewish
Federation
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www.jewishjacksonville.org
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Volume
21,
Number
1
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28
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MISSION: DINING IN THE DESERT
By JOANNE COHEN
Assistant Executive Director
On Tuesday Sept. 16 at 7:30 p.m. the Jacksonville Jewish Federation Women’s division will welcome First Coast News Anchor Shannon Ogden and Jewish Council for Public Affairs Associate Executive Director Andi Milens to discuss the November presidential election. The program is designed to be an educational session for Jewish voters, men Shannon Ogden and women alike. The presenters will describe many of the key issues in the upcoming election and why they are important to our community as U.S. citizens, Floridians, Jacksonvillians and Jews. The program will be presented by the issues of interest and will not reflect any particular candidate or party. Jewish voters, although they make up only 3 percent of the U.S. electorate tend to turnout and vote in unusually high numbers. Political scientists note that Jewish voters can be the most attentive foreign policy voters in the country because of the Middle East and Israel. As a community, Jewish voters are regarded as highly sophisticated and engaged in the political process. In a state like Florida, with about 400,000 Jewish voters in presidential election years, it is incumbent on voters to be informed about the issues. “We hope to provide a broad look at the key areas that are important to us as American Jews and as citizens of Jacksonville, Florida, and that should be considered when we vote,” said Francine Kempner, Women’s Division president. “We want this to be an evening of information and not a political debate. Continuing to educate our community so they can make informed choices is the top priority.”
Jacksonville.Jewish.News.fi.rst.edition,. August/September.1988
Jewish News coverage of now Israeli President.Shimon.Peres’.visit. to.Jacksonville,.February.1997
The Jewish News, as part of and the Federation’s Communications Department, As of this edition, the Jacksonville Jew- is guided by a volunteer Communications Committee, formerly the Editorial Board. ish News has turned 25. Here’s what some former chairmen and The Jewish Federation of Jacksonville’s free community newspaper has seen chairwomen had to say: “I have had the opportunity to see so some milestones over the years, including many changes durShimon Peres’ visit ing my involvement in 1997 and publishwith the Jacksonville ing in full color in Jewish News. Going 2008. The Jewish send your name and email address to to a color paper has News’ predecessors improved the look included the Comjjn@jewishjacksonville.org of the paper. Even mentator, published in this day when so in the 60s and 70s, much of the news has moved to electronic and Kehillah, published in the 80s. media, such as Facebook and Twitter, it is For its 25th birthday, the Jewish News still fun to be able to turn the pages of the will celebrate another milestone: going online — in addition to continuing the print Jacksonville Jewish News and see what the Jewish Community and my friends are version. The Jewish News invites you to doing,” Jon Israel said. test the online version before it goes live. “Over the years, the Jewish News has Please send your name and email address served as a catalyst to unite our communito jjn@jewishjacksonville.org, and the Jewish News will send you a link. Then, let ty. Instead of each member of the community serving disparate agencies in isolation, us know what you think. By.Jewish.Federation.of.Jacksonville
Test the JJN online
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JEWISH NEWS
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LOLA CULVER Federation says goodbye to a long-standing relationship.
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25,
Address Service Requested
This July, Jacksonville and the Hadera-Eiron region of Israel will be buzzing with teenagers. Jacksonville will be participating for the fifth year in the Tikkun Olam project of our Israel Partnership in early July. At the end of July we will welcome a group of teen counselors from the Hadera-Eiron region of Israel, for the 11th consecutive year. We will end the summer in Nashville, Tenn., with all the Israelis who have been in the Southeast region and any interested community teens for a joint U.S. & Israeli Teen Peer Seminar. The Tikkun Olam program allows American teens to travel to Israel and live in an Israeli home. Unlike other travel programs to Israel, Tikkun Olam offers the opportunity to see Israel from the Israeli perspective, not just as a tourist. While in Israel we will visit Jerusalem and spend time exploring the city. We will also travel to the Dead Sea, play in the mud, explore the waterfalls of Ein Gedi, and climb to the top of Masada. While in Israel the teens will participate in community service projects within the region. The Israeli teens, ages 15-18, along with a chaperone will work at all three Jewish camps in Jacksonville this summer. They will be welcomed at Jacksonville Jewish Center’s Camp Ki-Tov, the Jewish Community Alliance Summer Camp and Etz Chaim Synagogue’s Camp Sheves Achim during the last two weeks in July. They teach campers what it is like to live in Israel today, while learning what it means to be a Jew living in America. This year they will participate in a leadership seminar in coordination with the OneJax Metrotown program and do a community service project together. In addition they
Volume
Jewish News celebrates 25 years
By.Jewish.Federation.of.Jacksonville
Jewish Federation of Jacksonville
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page 4
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By ALAN MARGOLIES, Federation executive director Israel at 60 mission participants celebrate by dining in the desert. Above, mission chairpersons Steve and Judy Silverman visit a vineyard.
Mission included a visit to the Old City, Masada and tour of one of Israel’s high-tech operations. By DIANE RODGERS Communications Director
Spas, vineyard tours, upscale restaurants, even belly dancers. Sound like a resort-style Mediterranean vacation? Well it is – in Israel. Just add cultural, philanthropic, educational and spiritual adventures. Chaired by Steve and Judy Silverman, The Jacksonville Jewish Federation Israel at 60 Mission, May 4-13, held special
significance, as well as an exotic vacation for many of the 45 participants. For Leslie Held, who has visited Israel many times, the highlight of this trip was seeing how meaningful the experience was for those on their first mission, such as Laurie Dubow and his daughter, Susan Dubow. “It’s a very intimate thing to do together – father and daughter,” Held said. Held also enjoyed seeing the result of Federation allocations in Israel.
The “monumentally successful” Parents and Children Together is an educational, intervention program for Ethiopian-Israeli preschoolers, sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee. “We’re trying to raise them up,” Held said. The group met some of the Israeli counselors who were in Jacksonville last week for camp exchange, through Partnership 2000. Joan Levin, another frequent Israel visitor, was also impressed with the work done in the Hadeira/Eiron region, of which the Federation is a partner in the
See MISSION, p. 14
Israel deputy consul visits Jacksonville By DIANE RODGERS Communications Director
Israel is booming with high-tech capabilities, and Florida needs to be capitalizing on those capabilities through increased trade. That was the message from Paul Hirschson, deputy consul general with the Consulate General of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico, during his recent visit to Jacksonville. Hosted by the Federation, Hirschson met with The Florida Times-Union Editor Mike Clark – which resulted in an editorial the following week – and spoke at the 17th Annual Meeting of Jack-
sonville’s Jewish Agencies. At the time Hirschson had been in Florida three months, having moved here from Israel. Hirschson’s office is in South Florida, the home of the second largest Jewish community in the United States. “I hear Hebrew in the supermarkets,” he said. His May 29-30 visit was his first to Jacksonville. Hirschson, born in London and raised in Johannesburg, first visited Israel in the mid 80s as a young man. Then, the country was economically challenged, with 400 percent inflation. Now, Israel has taken a semiwestern economic outlook, and
See HIRSCHSON, p. 20
Paul Hirschson, deputy consul general with the Consulate General of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico, and Federation Campaign Chairman Gary Perlman at the Annual Meeting.
Jewish.News’.fi.rst.color.edition,. August.2008. the Jacksonville Jewish News has made each of us aware of the impact each agency has on the others and how our whole community benefits when we establish goals and work to meet them together,” said Lenny Maiman. The Jewish News is an award-winning Jewish community newspaper, said Marsha Pollock. In the early 90s it was the lifeline to educate and inform our Jacksonville Jewish community. Email and social media were not available. Every community Jewish event and simcha was transmitted through the paper. “Everyone looked forward to the paper’s arrival, even if it was only printed in black and white, with little or no pictures,” Pollock said. “There was only a handful of ads to help us balance costs of the paper.” Over the years so much has changed and it is all getting better. “We have a professional editor, producing a color-enhanced paper. Digital pictures and lots of national and interna-
See JEWISH NEWS, p. 18
Spotlight: Speaking in tongues in Israel This month’s feature of one of Federation’s beneficiaries: JAFI’s Masa
Israel. With six other intelligent, driven, college graduates, I settled into Rehovot and began to experience a very new life here, one only loosely related to the world I grew up in. Everything bustles here in Israel. Everyone By Brian Levenson knows everyone. People on the bus go from meeting to intense friendship and spirited conversation in the blink of an eye. My phone Speaking in tongues can have a lot of difstopped working in September and a friend of a ferent meanings. Speaking in tongues can be friend offered to help me get a new one and acspeaking a language that is foreign to you, tually followed through. Rarely, something religious like ancient in my experience, does a friend prophecies, or it can make you of a friend follow through on sound completely insane like the an offer like that, but it happens rants of a psychotic homeless at jewishjacksonville.org, here all the time. man. In some ways, my experiThere’s a reason for this ence of speaking in tongues in openness: Israel is new for Israel could be compared to all everyone. It’s only 64 years old, and there are three. populations representing Russia, North and In August 2011 I set out to participate South Americas, Yemen, and Ethiopia just to in Masa Israel’s Israel Teaching Fellows, a name a few. Even in the Begin School, where 10-month Teach for America-style program in
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Brian Levenson
See MASA, p. 12