Tag: history

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Sandler Center hosts virtual Jewish film festival

This year, the Levis JCC’s SandlerCenter goes on-line with more  than 50 Jewish-themed films from around the world – from historical dramas to documentaries and shorts in its virtual Judy Levis Krug Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival (BRJFF), running through May 16, 2021.

In addition, there will be Q&A webinars with filmmakers, cast members, and community lecturers, as well as the opportunity to view each film up to 72 hours after its scheduled time.

“Our strong relationship with the film industry has allowed us to present our patrons with a high-quality line-up of films and speakers year after year, in turn, we are able to continue to inspire, educate, and connect with our community year after year,” said Lesley Rich, BRJFF program & production director.

Making its Florida premiere on Mar. 22 is the Israeli documentary, “Shamir, His Way,” by filmmakers Igal Lerner and Erez Friedman, a one-hour documentary film about Yitzhak Shamir, former Israeli Prime Minister and one of the founding members of the State of Israel who has impacted the entire Middle East region for decades.

Shamir passed away in 2012 at the age of 97 and left a deep and on-going legacy in Israel, the state he helped to found. Shamir was the country’s third-longest-serving prime minister after David Ben-Gurion and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Born in Poland, Shamir was a soldier and politician who was elected to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in 1973 and again in 1977. He became Prime Minister in 1983–84,1986–90, and again from 1990–92. Before Israel’s statehood, Shamir was a leader in the LEHI, an underground movement against the British Mandate in Palestine and was a member of the notorious Stern Gang. In 1946 he was exiled to Eritrea by the British but escaped and made his way back to Israel. Shamir was also the head of an elite and secret unit in the MOSSAD

– Israel Secret Intelligence Service where he had served for more than 10 years before entering politics.

His son Yair Shamir, a former Colonel in the Israeli Air Force and now a philanthropist and venture capitalist says, “My father had a unique personality, and we try to show this in the film. He was a leader – a leader of people, a leader of the state, a fighter, and father.”

“Despite his accomplishments, he was a very modest person with zero ego,” he says. “On the other hand, he was always a leader with a unique style – very open and a team player.”

“Shamir’s story is intertwined with the story of Israel,” says Noa Cacharel, the film’s international sales agent. “Through the film, you are able to see how Israel has survived and gotten to where it is today. Shamir cared deeply about his country and is an icon in the state of Israel.”

“We owe him a lot,” she says.

The filmmakers decided to focus on the period in 1991 when Iraqi
missiles launched on Israel, and Shamir, then prime minister, made the decision not to retaliate against Iraq. They wanted to explore his decision-making process and ability to withstand pressure from both the United States and Russia.

Later that year, in September 1991, Shamir represented Israel at the Madrid Peace Conference, which brought about direct negotiations with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. He brought with him, a then-unknown young politician by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu and introduced him to the world stage. The film intertwines exclusive and behind-the-scene insights illustrating the unique path between the terror of war and the hopes of peace. It includes rare interviews with influential people such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, both Former Israeli Prime Ministers, in addition to Ya’akov Peri, Former Head of the Israeli Security Agency Shin Bet, and Shabtai Shavit, Former Director Director General of the Mossad, Israel’s Secret Agencies. All of whom have worked closely with Shamir through the years.

Lerner, a director and producer, is known for his documentary films about Natan Sharansky, and about the murder of an Israeli Jewish-Palestinian political activist, Juliano Mer.

Says Lerner, “Shamir kept his distance from the media and was one of the most ‘mysterious’ prime ministers of Israel. Our greatest challenge was to define and understand his way of thinking. He was a true chauvinist for Israel, an attitude he developed during WWII when his family was murdered by Poles in their village in Poland.”

It was that experience and way of thinking that led him in later years to advocate for both the emigration of Russian Jews to Israel as well as the later absorption of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel, as part of “Operation Solomon” in 1991.

“It was one of his missions in life to bring as many Jews as he could to the Land of Israel,” says Yair Shamir.

“For me, my father is a role model,” he says. “But, not only for me, but for my kids and nieces and nephews. He was a beacon shining a very focused light and providing a feeling of safety and lighting the way to overcome obstacles.”

“He is the beacon for our family,” he says. “It’s a challenge to live up to his ideals.”

“The name ‘Shamir’ means a very strong rock,” says Shamir. “My father lived up to his name.”

In 2012, Shamir was given a state funeral and buried amongst Israel’s other war heroes and prime ministers on Har Herzl in Jerusalem.

“Yitzhak Shamir was a tremendous beacon for all Israel,” says Cacharel. “So many people look up to him and admire him. We have schools and hospitals named in his honor. He stood for something and was steadfast in his ideals and principles – you don’t find that in many politicians these days.”

Other film screenings in March include Michael Lopatin’s “Code Name: Ayalon,” a David and Goliath story during Israel’s War of Independence, Jacek Borcuch’s “Dolce Fine Giornata,” a story about a clash of great creative intellect and femininity, with the backdrop of eroding democracy in Europe, and Oren Jacoby’s “On Broadway,” with Broadway legends including Helen Mirren, Christine Baranski, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, and Viola Davis sharing their experiences On Broadway lifting the curtain to show behind the scenes, with glimpses into the world of live theatre.

Visit Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival (bocajff.org)

Tickets range from $4.99-$12 and film pass packages range from $59-$299 (prices are per household); tickets and packages are available for purchase online at Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival (bocajff.org). Movie rentals can be enjoyed on various platforms by downloading the Eventive TV app which is available on Apple TV, Roku, Firestick, Chromecast, etc.

The film will be screened in Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival on March 21-23. Together for a Q&A with Yair Shamir (son of Yitzhak Shamir) and filmmakers Igal Lerner and Erez Friedman on March 23.

Find a link to the film’s page at bocajff.org.

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Portrait of a lady: Marjory Stoneman Douglas

She was an environmentalist, a suffragist, and called herself a “writing woman.” Marjory Stoneman Douglas was born April 7, 1890, in Minneapolis. Douglas graduated from Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1912, where she had been elected Class Orator. Wellesley, in fact, had a Department of Expression that Douglas believed “prepared me for all my later public speaking.”

Her mother, Florence Lillian Trefethen, but she went by Lillian, died of breast cancer after Marjory finished college. She was the one who made the funeral arrangements. She had been told her father was living in Florida at the time, her parents having separated when she was 6. In September 1915, after a brief and unsuccessful marriage to a man named Kenneth Douglas, she left Massachusetts and moved down to Florida to live with her father, Frank Bryant Stoneman.

Stoneman had started a paper in Miami, the “News Record” in 1906. He strongly opposed Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward’s eff orts to drain the Everglades. Marjory believed this is where her earliest love of the Everglades came from Stoneman and Frank Shutts reorganized the paper as the “Miami Herald” in 1910. Marjory started work at the “Herald” as the society editor. After a year, her father and step-mother took a month’s vacation and Marjory oversaw the editorial page in her father’s absence.

In 1916 Marjory Stoneman Douglas was enlisted by Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, along with Mrs. Frank Stranahan, founder of Fort Lauderdale, and the widows of two former Florida governors, to speak to the state legislature about ratifying the suffrage amendment.

“All four of us spoke to a joint committee, wearing our best hats.” She writes in her autobiography. “Talking to them was like talking to graven images. They never paid attention to us at all. They weren’t even listening.”

That same year Douglas was assigned a story for the “Herald” on the fi rst woman to enlist in the Naval Reserve in the state of Florida. She didn’t just get the story, she became a part of it as she, herself, enlisted. The Navy made her a yeoman first class. She convinced the commandant at Key West to help her put in for an official discharge in 1917. “The Navy was as glad to get rid of me as I was to leave,” she writes.

Douglas then joined the American Red Cross, Civilian Relief department. By the summer of 1918, she was on her way to an overseas assignment in France. She was gazing down the Rue de Rivoli when the peace treaty ending World War I was signed in June 1919. “…the guns went off from up and down the river…” and “everybody was kissing everybody,” she wrote. Douglas stayed on with the American Red Cross overseas, traveling from place to place and writing stories about the turning over of Red Cross clinics to local authorities.

Douglas returned to Miami in 1920. She returned to the “Herald” as an assistant editor making $30 a week. She also got her own column called “The Galley,” which she describes as “a string of short items, sayings, and musings on local and national affairs.” Douglas spent time with many friends after her return, including Ruth Bryan Owens, daughter of William Jennings Bryan, and Mrs. Bryan. Owens “lectured, ran the women’s clubs, and eventually ran for the legislature.” Ruth Bryan Owens was elected to the 71st Congress in 1928.

The idea for Everglades National Park started with landscape designer Ernest F. Coe, known as “The Father of the Everglades,” and Douglas supported it in print. A committee was formed which included botanist David Fairchild, writer and explorer John Oliver LaGorce of the “National Geographic,” and, of course, Douglas herself.

She writes: “The seasons of the Everglades are the mosquito season and the non-mosquito season. During the worst part of the mosquito season, people would move their cows up to Florida City where the cows wouldn’t be killed by the bugs.”

“People sent hives of bees down from Pensacola on flatboats to get the mangrove honey, but in the mosquito season, they’d take
the bees away so the mosquitoes wouldn’t kill them, either.”

In 1924 Douglas began to experience nervous fatigue. Eventually, her father called a doctor who said the “Herald” was too much pressure and she needed to get away from it. After returning from WWI she had contributed to other magazines.

In the summer of 1924, Douglas visited relatives in Massachusetts and the agent who had been selling her work, Robert Thomas Hardy. He recommended she write for the “Saturday Evening Post,” and she decided to freelance full time.

Douglas’ house in Coconut Grove was finished in the fall of 1926. The work had gone slowly as she had to pay the contractor based on the money she made selling her writing. The City of Miami designated it an historic site in 1995. From 1926 to 1941, Douglas continued writing magazine pieces, and for the local civic theater. In February of 1941, her father died. He and Shutts had sold the “Miami Herald” to the Knight family in 1939.

She took this time to get out of the newspaper business and write a novel, “The River of Grass,” about the Everglades. Her friend, publisher, and fellow novelist Hervey Allen had asked her to write about the Miami River, but she managed to change his mind.

She was referred to state hydrologist Garald Parker and worked with him through her three to four years of research. The book itself took four to fi ve years to complete but came out longer than the agreed-upon 120,000 words. Her publisher told her to cut 20,000. She wired back: “Cut 19,000. Refuse to cut another word. If you don’t agree, I withdraw the book from publication.”

“They say I’m pigheaded,” she cheerfully confessed.
“Pigheadedness covers a multitude of virtues as well as sins.”

“The River of Grass” was printed in November 1947 to great commercial success. It also coincided with the founding of the Everglades National Park. Douglas attended the ceremonies where President Harry Truman formally dedicated the park. Ernest Coe had wanted the park to encompass a much larger area and was upset with the result. He had to be convinced to attend the ceremony.

Douglas began lecturing in the 60s, and “The Rivers of America” series, of which her “The Everglades: River of Grass” was a part, was quite successful. She was also recruited to write a book for a series about regions of Florida. “Florida: The Long Frontier”was published in 1967.

Her next book project was a biography of ornithologist and naturalist W.H. Hudson. So, at the age of 77, sporting a black eye patch after cataract surgery, she traveled to Buenos Aires to begin research. She visited Hudson’s birthplace, then traveled to England to visit his old publishing house, J.M. Dent. She cut her travels short and returned to Miami when her eyes began to fail her completely. She turned over the rough draft to friend and editor Margaret Ewell.

In the late 60s, some 20 years after the publication of her seminal “The River of Grass,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas became an ardent environmentalist. The National Audubon Society in Miami got in a fi ght to stop a proposed oil refinery on the shores of lower Biscayne Bay. Immediately afterward, a jetport in the Everglades was suggested. Joe Browder, head of the National Audubon Society in Miami, showed up on Douglas’ doorstep to ask her to issue a “ringing denunciation” of the jetport. She said she felt those types of things were more effective if they came  from an organization. Browder then asked her to start one.

The Friends of the Everglades’ first member was weather historian Michael Chenoweth. Douglas enlisted a treasurer, vice president, and secretary, and started giving speeches wherever they would let her. The jetport was stopped, “not necessarily through my efforts,” Douglas said, “but through the efforts of many people and the responsiveness of the Secretary of the Interior under President Nixon.”

In 1990, a high school in Parkland, Florida was named after her when it opened, for her 100th birthday. In 1993 President Bill Clinton awarded Douglas the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor granted by the United States of America. Marjory Stoneman Douglas was active in environmental conservation in Florida until her passing in 1998 at  108.

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State Representative D-96 Christine Hunschofsky

On March 1, 2020, we had the first announcement that two Floridians
had tested positive for COVID-19. The virus has impacted our lives in so many ways from our health to our economy, from how we connect with one another and how we do business, from how we learn to how we shop. So much has changed in our lives this past year and now with several vaccines available, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. As we wait for more vaccine supplies to become available, please visit https://floridahealthcovid19.gov for updates and continue to take precautions to minimize the spread of COVID-19.

March 2, 2021 is the opening day for the Florida legislative session. The Florida Legislature meets every year for 60 consecutive days of session and while some things will be different this year, there is much work for us to get done. We will be tackling unemployment, insurance rates, early literacy, climate change and flooding, among many other issues important to the residents of the State of Florida.

During the session I will continue to provide you with updates.

If you wish to join our email list, please email Lisa.Librizzi @myfloridahouse.gov to be added to the list. Additionally, you can visit www.myfloridahouse.gov to watch meetings, review agendas and presentations, and track bills that have been submitted. Please reach out to us at HDIST096@ myfloridahouse.gov regarding any particular concerns you have with bills coming in front of us for debate and vote. I value your input and your perspective.

March is also Women’s History Month and a time we recognize and celebrate the contributions women have made to our country and history. Our office is holding a Women’s History Essay contest for students grades K-12 in District 96.

To participate, please send us your essay of 500 words or less about a woman who you look up to or who you feel has made a positive contribution to our  society.

We want to know why this woman is special to you. It could be someone from history or someone you know today. Email us the essay to Lisa.Librizzi @myfloridahouse.gov with “Essay Contest” in the subject line.

Please include your name, email, and phone number. We will have three winners from grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to serve you in the Florida House. Please reach out to our office if we can be of assistance with unemployment issues, vaccine distribution information, or if you have a concern you would like addressed. It is our pleasure to help wherever we can. In the meantime, follow me on Facebook at @RepHunschofsky and on Twitter at @chunschofsky for more updates. As always, I look forward to hearing from you!

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The storied history of a South Florida-born Black baseball team

On December 16, 2020, Major League Baseball (MLB) officially designated the Negro Leagues as “Major League.” By doing this, MLB “ensures that future generations will remember the approximately 3400 players of the Negro Leagues during this period as Major League-caliber players.” MLB continued by stating, “the statistics and records of these players will become a part of MLB’s history.”

MLB and the Elias Sports Bureau (the primary source of statistics for ESPN, Comcast Sportsnet, Turner Sports, NFL Network, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football,Thursday Night Football,  league and media websites, and dozens of broadcasters of MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS telecasts) have begun a review process to determine the full scope of this designation’s ramifications on statistics and records.

This means Miami’s first MLB team is not the Marlins. Instead, South Florida was the birthplace of another illustrious “Major League” team, founded as the Miami Giants in 1936.

The team will see among its alumni many names baseball fans would recognize today – Hank Aaron, all-time MLB home-run record holder till it was broken in 2007 by Barry Bonds, and Satchel Paige,  the Hall of Fame pitcher. Also, the first female professional baseball player, Toni Stone, was on the team. All their history will now be incorporated into the story of MLB.

Unfortunately the owners, looking for a publicity stunt, decided to cash in on a faraway conflict. As Italian dictator Mussolini, in a prelude to World War II, invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the team was renamed to the Ethiopian Clowns.

The team owners appear to have borrowed from the headlines of local black newspapers, which often featured sympathetic headlines to the Ethiopian plight. The team’s Ethiopia reference was seen by some as the exploitation of black sympathy, which encouraged some Negro league owners to oppose adding the Clowns to their ranks.

Homestead Giants (playing in Pittsburg) co-owner C. Posey, for example, wrote in his weekly Courier column in 1942 that sportswriters would “always feel disgusted at Syd [the Clowns owner] for… capitalizing on the rape of Ethiopia when that country was in distress.” In the Afro-American, the longest- running black weekly newspaper in the US, E.B. Rea took a different view, calling the move to block the Clowns “as funny as the Clowns themselves.” “If so many were paying to see them joke and jest, how much more ardently would they turn out to see them play Negro American competition?”

The Clowns were known for their antics. The box scores featured King Tut, Abbadaba, Tarzan, Ulysses Grant Greene, Wahoo, Goose Tatum, Highpockets West, Peanuts Nyassas, and Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia.

At the same time, the Clowns were also known as a first-rate baseball team. Legendary pitcher Satchel Paige, playing on a visiting team in 1939, described the team as, “fast-fielding, hard-hitting” and “one of the greatest clubs [he] has ever played against.” Exactly what all baseball teams aspire to be remembered for.

The Clowns won the Negro American League championships in 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1954.

The Clowns name stayed with the team through its transition to the Indianapolis Clowns, where it signed a 17-year-old shortstop and cleanup hitter with the nickname “Porkchop,” because of his fondness for them.

“Porkchop”, aka, Hank Aaron, played three months for the Clowns before being purchased by the Boston Braves for $10,000, but it had an impact on him.

“Everything I learned [from the Clowns] got me ready for the big leagues,” Aaron said in an interview with mlb.com. “I honestly believe that I wouldn’t have gotten to the big leagues as quickly as I did if I hadn’t even played those few months with the Clowns.”

The team left the Negro American League in 1955 to pursue a full-time barnstorming schedule (like the Harlem Globetrotters). You can get a taste of their antics if you have seen the 1976 movie “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings”, starring James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor, and Billy Dee Williams. The movie is loosely based on the barnstorming Clowns.

On August 16, 2020, the Florida Marlins honored the first South Florida Major League team by donning the Miami Giants uniform on the 100th anniversary of the Negro League’s founding. They played against the Braves, long time home to the “Hammerin’ Hank”, who outgrew his earlier Clown nickname.

The Marlins did not quite channel the “fast-fielding, hard-hitting” Clowns, by losing 4-0 to the Braves.

RIP Hank Aaron, one of baseball’s greatest, died at 86.

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Florida preserves college-level civics literacy requirements

Who’s second in the line of presidential succession? Speaker of the House, you say? Good job. You know your civics.

When President Reagan was shot in 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig said, “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state in that order…I am in control here.”

Haig later insisted he was talking about the executive branch, not the presidential line of succession. Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, was not amused.

Either way, Florida wants to make sure its citizens are civics literate. So if you didn’t know your civics in high school, you’re in luck, because civics literacy is a graduation requirement at all state colleges and universities. It has been since 2017.

Civics literacy means an understanding of history and how government works.

Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted to amend the 2017 law, introducing “The Florida Civic Literacy Test,” which basically was just a version of the U.S. Immigration Services Naturalization Test.

It was a 100 multiple-choice test and you only had to get 60 right to pass, the equivalent of a “D” letter grade.

To be clear, there are 100 questions would-be citizens have to study, but the examiner randomly selects ten from the 100 and the test taker isn’t given multiple choices. They have to know the answers to six questions, in addition to passing reading, writing, and speaking tests.

The Florida Department of Education (FDE) withdrew the amendment it had proposed after parties petitioned against it at the end of May. The amendment would have added the test as one of several options by which Florida College System students could demonstrate civic literacy competency.

But a representative from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), one of the petitioners against the proposed rule change, said that the citizenship test is problematic. “The problem with the proposed rule was that it created a test that could be passed by scoring 60 percent on a memorization test instead of completing a university-level course or an existing assessment specifically designed to measure collegiate level learning,” said Jonathan Pidluzny, ACTA’s vice president of academic affairs.

An ACTA press release states that the proposed rule would have “seriously weakened” the 2017 law, which says educators must “establish course competencies and identify outcomes that include, at minimum, an understanding of the basic principles of American democracy and how they are applied in our republican form of government, an understanding of the United States Constitution, knowledge of the founding documents, and how they have shaped the nature and functions of our institutions of self-governance, and an understanding of landmark Supreme Court cases and their impact on law and society.”

The Parklander requested a copy of the multiple-choice test from the Florida Department of Education, but officials did not supply one.

Civics test

A recent survey of 41,000 Americans, conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, indicates less than four in ten Americans could pass a civics test. Some other notable facts from the survey: Those in Vermont had the highest passing rate (53 percent); the next four highest scoring states were Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, and Virginia. Meanwhile, Louisiana had the lowest passing rate (27 percent), followed by Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Florida’s score was 29 percent. The questions below come from 100 used in the citizenship test.

Scroll below for correct answers

  1.  What is the supreme law of the land?
  2. When was the Constitution written?
  3. How many voting members are in the House of Representatives?
  4. What position is third in line of Presidential succession? (Hint, it’s still not Secretary of State.)
  5. Who is the current Chief Justice of the United States?
  6.  How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
  7. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
  8. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
  9. Name one right or freedom under the First Amendment.
  10.  Who was the president during World War I?

ANSWERS:

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Something about him was familiar

Best Christmas story or nightmare. You choose.

One day I had a new client come in with a 7-year-old Bernese mountain dog. Chewy presented with a lack of appetite, diarrhea, and vomiting. When the clients came in, I immediately recognized their dog. He had an unusual white stripe on the forehead. The puppy I remembered had the same color pattern and white stripe as Chewy. So, I asked my technician to leave the room and look up Bernese mountain dogs that I have seen over the past 7 years.

I asked another technician to come in to help me perform the physical examination on Chewy. Chewy was clinically dehydrated, his abdomen was tense, the fur on his face smelled like vomit, and his rear end had remnants of diarrhea still on the fur. I told the clients that we would need to start with some blood work and x-rays, and my technicians recruited some help to pick up this 135-pound beast onto the x-ray table. I went back into the exam room and started to talk about the other Bernese mountain dog with similar markings.

Looking back, it was about 7 years ago when a young couple bought a puppy from a breeder. It was in December and the young couple went away for Christmas and left the puppy with their friend and my client. They didn’t leave a cage or toys and the young woman who took care of the puppy left him in a spare bedroom where the puppy did tremendous damage.

One day the puppy got out of the bedroom and destroyed their Christmas tree. He knocked it over, ripped open presents, chewed up ornaments, and ate the stockings. I remember informing the young woman when she brought him in that I was going to have to perform surgery to retrieve all the things that he ate. It ended up being a problem because we couldn’t communicate with the owners based on their travel, but the surgery was an emergency. I ended up performing the surgery which went without complications. The friend ended up paying for the surgery and I found out later that the whole ordeal ended their friendship.

My technician who was doing the deep dive into the research came in and told me that my instincts were correct and it was the same dog. His name was John. When the new owners found out that his name was John they asked if the original owner’s name was Hortensia. It was.

Same dog, similar situation. I ended up telling the new owner my history with John. They adopted John about a year ago, hated the name and call him Chewy because he always has something in this mouth.

My technicians came back in with Chewy and we put the radiographs on the examination computer and we could see the problem right away. Chewy had  about 9 pacifiers in his stomach. I asked the owners if they have a child and they did. Each parent thought it was the other one that got rid of the pacifiers, but it was Chewy. I told them that Chewy needed surgery. The fact that there are 9 pacifiers means that they are not passing. I thought it was fortunate for them that when they adopted John the previous owners transferred the insurance to them, and they never canceled it. And I told them that they never will. Best holiday news ever. Love, Chewy.

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From dirt supply line to six lanes of bustle and business

Drivers regularly travel roadways like “telegraph road” or “post road” without giving the names a second thought. Yet, road names often have historical roots with interesting stories behind them. South Florida’s Military Trail is one with a history older than Florida’s statehood.

Today’s Military Trail is a 46-mile, north and south, commuter route running from Jupiter to Pompano Beach, teeming with modern development and prone to congestion. It’s a far cry from its origins as a trail blazed by Tennessee and Missouri military volunteers during the Second Seminole War (1835- 1842).

Well before Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, the Seminole people were being driven out by settlers moving into their homeland. Conflicts naturally ensued, eventually leading to the three Seminole Wars between 1817 and 1858.

The second war erupted after the U.S. government tried to forcefully remove all Seminoles from Florida.

Seminoles were adept at guerrilla warfare and used their knowledge of the Everglades to their advantage. Outnumbered and outgunned, however, by 1842, according to britannica.com, “some 3,000 to 4,000 Seminoles had been resettled, and only a few hundred remained. The Armed Occupation Act of 1842 promoted white settlement in Florida and the Second Seminole War was declared over on August 14, 1842.”

Toward the beginning of the second conflict, President Andrew Jackson dispatched General Thomas Jesup to assume control of the Florida troops. The military began building a string of posts in South Florida, starting with Fort Dallas (today’s Miami) in 1836, then Fort Jupiter in 1838.

Jesup ordered 233 Tennessee volunteers to cut a supply trail from Fort Jupiter to the New River in what is now Broward County.

The group was led by Major William Lauderdale, a longtime colleague of Andrew Jackson and fellow Tennessean. Volunteers followed the dryer ground of a coastal pine ridge, cutting a 63-mile path through the hammocks to the river in just four days. There, they established the garrison eventually named Fort Lauderdale. That path, originally known as “Lauderdale’s Route,” was used for military transport during the next two decades of the Seminole conflict and eventually dubbed “Military Trail.”

After the Seminole wars ended, the trail continued to see foot traffic and passenger and freight movement via covered wagons. Eventually, the trail slipped into relative disuse, until Henry Flagler put his mark on Florida in the late 19th century.

Flagler’s East Coast Railway and the resort hotels he built along the coast put South Florida on the map. Soon, rampant land speculation took hold across South Florida, which included the area along Military Trail. By the early 20th century, moneyed Northerners were lured by sales-literature rife with praise for what was otherwise wilderness and swampland. They arrived first by train and eventually by automobile, all wanting their piece of Florida.

By the 1920s, coastal towns like Palm Beach and Lake Worth were blossoming. To handle the influx of people and their automobiles, better roads were needed. Along with new roads, improvements were made to existing routes like Military Trail. Some sections along Military Trail were paved as early as 1923. Other stretches were improved, often by hand, under Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA in the 1930s.

Yet, up to WWII, much of South Florida remained undeveloped and lengths of Military Trail still unimproved, mainly serving area farms and ranches. Rather than residents and vacationers, herds of roaming cattle filled the landscape.

Post-WWII, another real estate boom brought an even greater influx of arrivals than in the 1920s. Palm Beach became one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, with its population doubling in the 1950s. Military Trail grew into a transportation artery as Palm Beach and other coastal cities spread westward.

Amazingly, even into the 1960s, there were sections of Military Trail that were still two-lanes and even dirt roadway. Delray Beach, not much more than a sleepy retirement village in the 1960s, contained a dirt length of the road flanked by farmland.

In Boca Raton, Lynn University began life in 1962, astride a dirt stretch. As late as 1979, Military Trail in Boynton Beach remained a single-lane dirt path mainly used by area farms and ranches. Most everything west was still agricultural. In 1980, a shopping center with a Kmart being built west of Military Trail was hailed as a big deal. A small stretch of single-lane pavement designated as “Old Military Trail” still exists in Boynton Beach.

Military Trail experienced its own growing pains alongside South Florida’s exponential growth in the 1980s. Now often at six lanes, it’s hard to even envision the wilderness trail troops carved by hand nearly two centuries earlier. And, while shorter, today’s 46 miles still follow the path soldiers marched from Fort Jupiter to Fort Dallas and serves as a reminder of a somber chapter in Florida’s history.

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Whiskey primer for budding aficionados

For many, the different styles of whiskey often confuse and scare off newcomers. The wide variety of taste profiles and the almost snobbish vocabulary aficionados use turn away many who want to learn more about whiskeys.

First, some history. Whiskey is a distilled alcoholic beverage that likely originated in the monasteries of the British Isles. The word Whiskey is believed to be derived from the Gaelic word for water. Though if you tasted one of the original whiskeys James IV of Scotland greatly admired, you would find it very raw.  Renaissance era whiskeys are not aged or diluted.

Over the years, the process was refined, and the drink became more refined, as we now know today. Along the way, different styles started to take shape, often based on where the whiskey is produced.

The first main difference is what is used for fermentation. The monasteries in Scotland and Ireland used barley, which grows well in the area’s cold, wet climate. Barley is allowed to malt, which is the process of soaking the barley in water, but is halted from germination by drying with hot air. This process causes the carbohydrates in the grain to be broken down into sugars, then fermented and distilled.  When you see terms like single malt, it means the whiskey is made fro malted barley from a single distillery.

The fermented grain mixture is called mash. Mash traditionally uses a portion of a previous fermentation as the “starter,” similar to the sourdough process. It helps to ensure a proper pH level for the yeast to convert sugars into alcohol.

Starter mash whiskey, rather than that made with only yeast, is called a sour mash and the process creates acidity. Once distilled, you will not taste the acidity. You will find the Irish differ from the Scottish in distillation, where the Irish distill the mash three times, the Scottish only do it twice. Some like the cleaner taste of the Irish whiskey, while others enjoy the flavor of Scottish, especially those of the Islay style, where the peat moss is used to dry the malt, which gives it the unique smokey flavor many enjoy.

As European settlers came to the Americas, they brought their love of Aqua Vitae, meaning Vital Water, from their homeland. They adapted the recipes to the abundance of corn in the Americans to make their mash, which results in a sweeter product versus barley. Bourbon was likely started by Scots and Irish settlers in present-day Kentucky. It’s believed Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, was first to age the distilled alcohol in charred oak barrels, giving it the unique, bold flavor profile. To this day, by law, all bourbon must be aged in new charred oak barrels and made with a 51% corn-based mash.

Back in the British Isles, whiskey distilleries traditionally used old wine and port barrels to age their whiskeys. As Bourbon became more popular in recent years, many whiskey makers switched to use old Bourbon barrels. Thus, you will find many Scottish labels stating the type of barrels used for aging,  impacting their taste profile.

Lastly, the longer you age a whiskey, the more of the barrel’s flavors are imparted into the drink. You will find the Scottish and Irish whiskeys to be aged longer than those in warmer climates. Part of that is, the evaporation process is slower in colder temperatures, resulting in a slower aging process. This is often referred to as the “Angel’s share.” You will find some fine Whiskeys like Kavalan, aged in Taiwan, or Bourbons in Kentucky, to have a shorter age duration, as the angel’s share is collected faster than in Scotland.

Hopefully, this gives you a basic understanding so that you can pick out a great gift this holiday. Or be dangerous in chatting with your local aficionado.

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A century of women’s suffrage

The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1920. It declared that: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

It was a long struggle for women to gain those voting rights.

History Highlights
In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and other women’s rights advocates helped organize the First Women’s Rights Convention, also known as the Seneca Falls Convention, in Seneca Falls, NY. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, they wrote a Declaration of Sentiments that began:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and
women are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these
rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed… The history of mankind
is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of
man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be
submitted to a candid world…”

And from there, the Declaration of Sentiments enumerated a list of critical ways in which women lacked equality with men, including owning property, access to education and career opportunities, family rights, and political representation.

Susan B. Anthony, the woman that most of us associate with women gaining the right to vote, met Stanton in 1851. They worked together in both the abolition and suffrage movements. When the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchised African-American men, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony abandoned the AERA, which supported universal suffrage, to found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869, saying black men should not receive the vote before white women. In response, African-American suffragist.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and others joined the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported suffrage for women and for black men. Tensions between African-American and white suffragists persisted, even after the NWSA and AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890.

Both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony died in the
early 1900s, well before the 19th amendment was ratifi ed. It was
largely due to Carrie Chapman Catt, who became involved with
the suffragette movement in the 1880s, and served as president of
NAWSA from 1900-1904, and 1915-1920, that the 19th amendment
became law.

Suffrage was a key national issue soon after the turn of the century,
and while the 1916 Republican and Democratic conventions
supported women gaining the right to vote, they advocated that each
state should decide what that would encompass, not the federal
government. This meant that the scope of women’s right to vote
could vary depending on where you lived. NAWSA then put increased
effort behind adopting a national amendment, and it is Catt, the
president of the organization at the time, who was a driving force in
getting the amendment passed.

World War I also helped the women’s suffrage movement. With men drafted into service, women were called on to work in traditionally male jobs. In September 1918, President Woodrow Wilson addressed the Senate, advocating for women’s right to vote saying, “We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?”

The proposed 19th amendment received the necessary two-thirds majority vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in May 1919 and the Senate in June 1919. It then went to the states for ratification. While some states had already granted partial or complete voting rights to women, at least three-fourths of the states (at that time there were 48 states, so at least 36) had to ratify the amendment for it to be added to the Constitution. Tennessee became the 36th state, and the amendment granting women the right to vote became part of the Constitution in August of 1920.

Mary Church Terrel

Three million African-American women south of the Mason-Dixon line remained disfranchised after the passage of the amendment. Election officials regularly obstructed access to the ballot box. In 1926, a group of women attempting to register in Birmingham, Alabama were beaten by officials. Incidents such as this, threats of violence and job losses, and legalized.
prejudicial practices blocked women of color from voting. Not until the Twenty-fourth Amendment was adopted in 1962, were Congress and the states prohibited from making voting conditional on poll or other taxes, paving the way to more reforms with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Harriet Purvis

 

Native Americans were granted citizenship by an Act of Congress in 1924, but state policies prohibited them from voting. In 1948, a suit brought by World War II veteran Miguel Trujillo resulted in Native Americans gaining the right to vote in New Mexico and Arizona, but some states continued to bar them from voting until 1957. Poll taxes and literacy tests kept Latina women from voting. In Puerto Rico, for example, women did not receive the right to vote until 1929, but was limited to literate women until 1935. Further, the 1975 extensions of the Voting Rights Act included requiring bilingual ballots and voting materials in certain regions, making it easier for Latina women to vote. National immigration laws prevented Asians from gaining citizenship until 1952.

Once they gained the right to vote, women did not immediately go out and vote in large numbers. In the 1920 election, women voted at two-thirds the rate of men, and turnout varied greatly state-by-state. Only starting in 1960 did women vote at the same percentage as men; in every presidential election after that, women have had greater voter turnout than men.

Catt’s Other Legacy
In addition to women’s suffrage, Catt was instrumental in founding the League of Women Voters in 1920. As their website states, “For 100 years we have been a nonpartisan, activist, grassroots organization that believes voters should play a critical role in democracy.” A national organization open to all, the League got its official start in Florida in 1939 and today has 29 chapters in the state, including in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.

The League offers much in the way of voter information and advocacy. As Monica Elliott, President of the League of Women Voters of Broward County says, “When people realize that just about everything in their life is controlled by a government official and that they have the opportunity to elect (or not) these offi cials, people start to think about voting differently.For the shock factor, once people see how close the elections were in Florida and how
many registered voters did not vote in 2016 and 2018, they perk up and vow to either vote themselves or make sure that all their friends, family, and colleagues get out and vote.” For more information on the League of Women Voters of Broward County, go to https://lwvbroward.org/

Remembering the 2000 Election
While those are recent examples of how much voting counts, you may recall the Bush versus Gore presidential election of 2000. The nation’s focus was on Florida. Whichever candidate won Florida’s 25 electoral (The state has gained 4 electoral votes for the 2020 election for a total of 29.) votes would go over the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the election. Florida’s vote was so close, it had to be counted and recounted. Ultimately, it was decided that Bush won by 537 votes out of approximately six million cast in Florida. Five hundred and thirty-seven votes!

Of course, it’s your right to vote or not, but it is no exaggeration to say that your vote matters.

By Ellen Marsden

Of course Florida ratified the 19th amendment – in 1969

I love newspapers.com. Searchable stories from over 18,000 newspapers, from the 1700s to the present day. And it’s not like history books, written decades or centuries after an event. It’s like looking at yesterday. It was where I discovered my paternal grandfather was indicted for attempted
murder, pleaded out, and paid a $465 fine. But that’s another story. Trust me.

So anyway, I was researching women’s suffrage for Ellen Marsden’s suffrage article, and came across an August 19th, 1920 front page of The Miami News. The 19th amendment had been ratified the day before with Tennessee becoming the necessary 36th state to make it law.

Next to the article on the amendment’s passage was a chart listing states that had ratified the amendment and states that had rejected it. The requisite 36 states were in the ratification column. Eight states, reminiscent of the Confederacy, had rejected the amendment: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Louisiana.

All of these states eventually, perhaps begrudgingly, ratified the amendment, Mississippi being the last in 1984.

At first glance, I thought Florida was absent from the chart. But I had overlooked a section listing states that had not voted either way yet: Connecticut, North Carolina, Vermont, and — you guessed it — Florida. Connecticut jumped on the bandwagon a month after the amendment passed, ratifying it in September 1920. Vermont yielded a few months later in February 1921.

But good old Florida held out until May 13, 1969, just a couple of months before man walked on the moon. These are two sides of a very strange coin.

In its defense, however, Florida wasn’t the last to yield to women’s suffrage. That honor goes to North Carolina, which dug in its heels and didn’t ratify the amendment until 1971.

By Richard Battin
editor@theparklander.com

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Halloween 2020: Trick or treat or …?

It’s hard to imagine what Halloween celebrations will be like this year. Will there be clusters of costumed kids at the doorstep calling out “trick or treat” from under their masks? Instead of the usual masks of princesses, animals, and superheroes, will this year’s masks be nose and mouth coverings to contain germs from possible coronavirus superspreaders? Will parents regard every package of candy as being a possible COVID carrier, the wrapper on each piece needing to be washed or wiped down?

If you are looking for a socially- distanced haunted Halloween activity, you might want to check out The Horrorland, a nighttime drive-thru haunted Halloween experience being held October 1 – 31 in Miramar. We haven’t tested the fear factor, but according to their website, it is not recommended for children under 13. For more information, go to https://thehorrorland.com.

While we can’t quite predict what Halloween will be like in the present or the future, we can tell you something about its past…

Halloween history highlights

The origin of Halloween is often credited to the Celts, who lived in what is now the general area of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France about 2,000 years ago. On October 31st, they celebrated the festival of Samhain, (pronounced sow-win) which marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter and a new year. Celts believed that the worlds of the living and the dead came close together at this time and that they could connect with spirits and ghosts of their ancestors.

While some spirits were thought to cause mayhem, others were thought to help see into the future. On Samhain, Celts feasted, made lanterns from hollowed-out gourds, told fortunes, built bonfires, and chose which animals would need to be slaughtered for the winter.

When Christianity reached the Celtic areas, the pagan rituals were strongly discouraged. The church recognized November 2nd as All Souls’ Day — a day to honor the dead — and November 1st as All Saints’ Day, also called All-Hallows (hallows meaning saints or holy people). Thus, October 31st was All-Hallows Eve (now known as Halloween), but the light-hearted celebrations with trick or treating, decorations, and parties we know today only evolved in the United States and Canada over time.

Colonists in New England, with their strict religious practices, did not embrace Halloween celebrations; southern colonies were more likely to celebrate by telling fortunes, sharing tales of the dead, dancing, and singing.

When Irish and Scottish immigrants came to the United States in great numbers during the second half of the 1800s, they brought their Halloween traditions with them, including community parties with games and costumes. One of the traditions that was popular around the turn of the 19th century and now long gone, was Halloween being a time for a young, unmarried woman, to foretell her future spouse. She would throw an apple peel over her shoulder, believing it would land in the shape of the first initial of her future husband, or that by looking in the mirror Halloween night, she would see an image of the man she would wed.

Halloween is big business today

  • Guess who?

According to estimates from the National Retail Federation last fall, the greatest share of the nearly $9 billion that was expected to be spent
on Halloween in 2019, was for costumes, at $3.2 billion. The newest trend? Pet costumes. Pet costumes have surged in popularity; nearly twenty percent of pet owners planned to put their pets

in costumes last year—pumpkins, hot dogs, and superheroes being among the most popular—at a cost of nearly $500 million.

  • It’s beginning to look a lot like…Halloween.

Decorating for Halloween inside and especially outside has become more elaborate with high-tech holograms, decorative lights, and giant blow-ups gaining popularity in recent years, resulting in consumers spending $2.7 billion on Halloween decorations. (2019 estimate)

  • Trick or treat, give me something good to eat.

While there was trick or treating in the 1930s and 40s, with kids going house to house to get cookies, cakes, fruit, nuts, and coins, it wasn’t until the 1950s that candy became the common hand-out. Last year’s estimate was there would be $2.6 billion spent on Halloween candy.

In 2019, candystore.com reported that between 2007-2018, the top candies sold for Halloween were: Skittles, Reese’s Cups, M&M’s, Snickers, and Starburst, followed by the candy most associated with Halloween: candy corn.

Those sweet yellow, orange, and white kernels were invented in the 1880s in Philadelphia and gained widespread popularity at the turn of the 20th century. Candy corn is made from sugar, fondant, corn syrup, vanilla flavor, and marshmallow crème melted into a liquid, colored, and molded to create the kernel shape. The vast majority of candy corn is made for Halloween, with approximately 35 million pounds of candy corn produced each year, a whopping 9 billion pieces.

And if the spirit moves you, and you want to celebrate Halloween a little early, October 30th is National Candy Corn Day.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

By Ellen Marsden

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Judge says principal fired over Holocaust email should be rehired

In our August edition, freelance journalist Jan Engoren wrote about new state legislation mandating the school curriculum about both the Holocaust and the little-known 1920 race riot in Ocoee, Florida. The law, H.B.1213, co-sponsored by state Senator Lauren Book (D-Plantation), was spawned in part by an April 2018 incident in which a Boca Raton high school principal emailed a parent: “Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened.”

William Latson, then principal at Spanish River Community High School, was fired from the post he had held since 2011. Shortly after the Parklander began circulating through Broward and Palm Beach counties, however, on August 13, Florida Administrative Law Judge Robert S. Cohen ruled Latson should be reinstated. So, while it may be old news by the time you read this, in the interest of fairness, we felt it necessary to follow up with the judge’s ruling.

Judge Cohen ruled that Latson should be rehired and reassigned to a post in the district “commensurate with his qualifications.” The judge’s written ruling also recommended that Latson receive back wages.

The Palm Beach County school district “failed to prove that Latson engaged in misconduct in office, incompetence, or gross insubordination by a preponderance of the evidence. No just cause for his suspension or termination exists, but a reprimand and reassignment are warranted,” the judge wrote.

 

By Richard Battin

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Holocaust education bill signed into law

Learning about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism is the new norm for school-age kids in Florida public schools.

A new bill, H.B.1213, was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 27, which directs public schools to teach about anti-Semitism during Holocaust instruction and requires the Florida Department of Education to give schools curriculum standards for teaching the subject in grades K-12.

The department would be required to create a process for schools to annually certify and provide evidence of compliance with the Holocaust instructional requirements.

This bill, introduced by Rep. Randy Fine, (R-Brevard County) and Sen. Lauren Book (D-Plantation), is the result of an incident in April 2018, when then-principal of the Spanish River Community High School in Boca Raton, William Latson, wrote in an email to a parent, “Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened.”

In a community with many Jewish residents and an estimated 12,000 actual Holocaust survivors residing in Palm Beach County, this statement caused an uproar and a call to action. One-third of Americans do not believe that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and two-thirds of Millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is.

“I couldn’t be happier that this bill was signed,” said Book from home where she is quarantining due to COVID-19. “It’s about ensuring there is consistency in Holocaust education.”

The legislation took effect on July 1. According to multiple sources, including a spokesperson from Senator Book’s office and a spokesperson for the Palm Beach County School District, the curriculum is mandatory and not elective. No one will be permitted to “opt-out.”

In Broward County, Daniel Gohl, Chief Academic Officer, says: “Instruction is embedded in our core curriculum and, therefore, all students receive the instruction.”

Book brought Czechoslovakian-born Magdalen Bader, an Auschwitz survivor who was nine when the war broke out, to testify in front of the committee in Tallahassee for 45 minutes about her travails under Nazi rule and says, “Her testimony was so powerful. You could hear a pin drop; there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

“One of the lessons is: Don’t be a bystander,” says Book. “Use your voice. Don’t sit quietly by; this is something we need to ingrain early in our students’ education.”

Fine, the only Jewish member of the Florida House of Representatives said the bill is critical to not only teach about the Holocaust but to teach the definition of anti-Semitism. “This will take the law to the next level,” he said.

 

The history of the Holocaust (1933-1945), will be taught in a manner that leads to an investigation of human behavior, an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping, and an examination of what it means to be a responsible and respectful person, for the purposes of encouraging tolerance of diversity
in a pluralistic society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and institutions, including the policy, definition, and historical
and current examples of anti-Semitism and the prevention of anti-Semitism.

H.B.1213

 

Each school district must annually certify and provide evidence to the department, in a manner prescribed by the department, that the requirements of this paragraph are met.

Also included in the bill is an amendment introduced by Sen. Randolph Bracy (D-Ocoee) to include the teaching of the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Riots, which annihilated the black population near Orlando due to outrage over a black man – Julius “July” Perry, attempting to exercise his legal right to vote in a presidential election. Ku Klux Klan members rioted and burned black-owned businesses and residences to the ground. An estimated 30 to 50 black citizens died in the massacre.

“The signing of this legislation will spread the story of the Ocoee Massacre into museum exhibits and classrooms, and will inscribe victims’ names into school buildings and state parks,” Bracy said.

“Now more than ever it is paramount we educate our citizenry about the origins of racial conflict and its manifestations in policies that are anti-black, anti-democratic, and anti-human,” said Bracy. “I am proud to have sponsored this historic piece of legislation and am grateful for Senator Book’s partnership in getting this bill across the finish line.”

Sen. Lauren Book

“Many people, including myself, were unfamiliar with this historical event,” says Book.

 

Local residents herald new bill

Parkland residents of twenty years, Alan and Felice Rosenthal have three sons–Josh, Matt, and Daniel – who have attended Parkland schools, including Park Trails, West Glades, and MSD. They are pleased that the governor has signed this bill into law.

“As the survivors die off, we need to remember their stories,” says Felice Rosenthal, a mom, and former educator. “It’s important to keep their stories alive, even when they won’t be.”

Members of Congregation Kol-Tikvah, their three sons attended religious school and were bar-mitzvahed there. While not overly observant, the Rosenthals say they value being part of a Jewish community.

In 1990, Felice Rosenthal took part in the March of the Living, an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust.

Her son, Josh, who just graduated from MSD was scheduled to participate last April, but the event was cancelled due to COVID-19.

Felice Rosenthal remembers meeting many actual survivors and hearing the late Elie Wiesel, himself a survivor of Auschwitz, speak at the concentration camp in Poland and said it has left a lasting impression in her memory.

“Every time I hear a survivor speak about their experiences and how horrendous it was, it gives me chills,” says Felice Rosenthal. “Our kids need to be taught this history and how it happened. It’s not something we can forget.”

“This bill makes it standard for all kids across the state,” says Alan Rosenthal, an estate planning attorney. “With anti-Semitism on the rise, having this mandated in the public schools will be beneficial. As the number of survivors decline, and we lose their first-hand accounts of the Holocaust, this ensures that educators take over and every student will understand what happened and how to prevent it.”

“Having the history of the Holocaust and the definition of anti-Semitism taught together makes this bill more impactful,” says Alan Rosenthal. “We hope the legacy of this bill is a kinder and gentler society.”

Evan Goldman, VP, Community Planning and Government Relations at the Jewish Federation of Broward County, said the Federation has advocated for increased education around anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

“More than ever, there is a need for high standards in Holocaust education,” says Goldman. “Education is the touchstone to long-lasting community change.”

He’s appreciative of the efforts of The Holocaust Documentation & Education Center (HDEC), which spent time lobbying for the initiative in Tallahassee. The HDEC is devoted to documenting the memory of the Holocaust and educating today’s generation about the dangers of bigotry, hatred and intolerance.

“It was a masterstroke to wrap Holocaust education and anti-Semitism into one bill along with the teaching of the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Riots,” says Goldman. “Rep. Randy Fine, Sen. Lauren Book and Sen. Randolph Bracy should be commended for bringing it all together.”

“The bill is important so the next generation understands that anti- Semitism and racism are insidious and simply cannot be tolerated,” Goldman stated. “It’s important that we stand up against hate and intolerance.”

“It’s gratifying to see both the Jewish and black communities united in their response to hatred, in whatever form,” says Goldman. “We are stronger together.”

By Jan Engoren

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