Born and raised in Brook­lyn, New York, Ted moved to Naples, Flori­da, in 1999, where his cre­ativ­i­ty, lead­er­ship skills, enthu­si­asm and pas­sion for Jew­ish cul­ture has made a huge dif­fer­ence to the com­mu­ni­ty. From 2007 to 2020, he was the man­ag­ing edi­tor and design­er of the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion of Greater Naples’ month­ly news­pa­per. From 2009 to 2023, he did the same for the month­ly news­pa­pers of the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion of Lee & Char­lotte Coun­ties and the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion of Sara­so­ta-Man­a­tee. He also pro­duced 25 annu­al resource mag­a­zines for the three Fed­er­a­tions dur­ing that time.

Ted’s crown­ing achieve­ment for the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of South­west Flori­da was con­ceiv­ing and launch­ing the Greater Naples Jew­ish Book Fes­ti­val and coor­di­nat­ing all aspects of the fes­ti­val from 2016 – 2020. He helped to bring 100 authors (most were on the JBC net­work) to Naples for 62 events.

He also coor­di­nat­ed the Peo­ple of the Book author lec­ture series for the Fed­er­a­tion in Sara­so­ta from 2021 – 2023.

He was the go-to pho­tog­ra­ph­er for most of the Naples Federation’s major events as well as numer­ous oth­er Jew­ish-relat­ed com­mu­ni­ty events for 10+ years.

One of Ted’s pas­sions is improv com­e­dy, hav­ing per­formed in, pro­duced and/​or host­ed approx­i­mate­ly 30 shows in South­west Flori­da. His pas­sions include live theater/​dance/​music, trav­el, pho­tog­ra­phy, com­e­dy and sports. Go Chiefs! Go Mets! And he appeared on two game shows: ​“Scrab­ble” with Chuck Wool­ery in 1985, and ​“Who Wants to Be a Mil­lion­aire” as a phone-a-friend, help­ing my friend win $250,000 in 2001.