Orlando’s Jewish History

Jews settled in Florida long before it became a destination for vacationers and retirees. In Orlando, the first recorded Jewish settlers arrived shortly after the Civil War. Sala Levin describes the community’s early days:

Henry Benedict, an immigrant from Germany, settled in Orlando around 1890 and got started in pineapple packing and eventually became a major player in the development of the downtown area. Other Jewish Floridians worked in the dairy and citrus industries. In the early part of the 20th century, Moses Levy—originally from Pittsburgh—bought 24 acres of groves in the area. In addition to producing oranges, the grove also served as a gathering place for prayer services. “On Friday, before Shabbat, they’d hitch up their horses and spend the night, and the small community would gather on that farm,” says local historian Roz Fuchs Schwartz. High holidays were also celebrated at the orange grove. Community members contributed in other ways, too; dairy farmer Peter Wittenstein, for example, moonlighted as the kosher butcher and mohel.

Read more at Moment

More about: American Civil War, American Jewish History, Florida, History & Ideas, Synagogues

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society