News

In handling of Holocaust survivor’s slaying, French Jews see a ‘lesson learned’

Jews participating in a memorial march in Paris for Mireille Knoll, March 28, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

(JTA) — Last April, Traore Kobili threw his Jewish neighbor to her death from her third-story home in Paris while calling her a demon and shouting about Allah. French authorities waited 170 days before they declared the killing of Sarah Halimi an anti-Semitic hate crime — and that was… Read more »

Mega-donors are taking over Jewish philanthropy, new study says

Jack Wertheimer (Courtesy of Wertheimer)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Large donors and foundations are responsible for an increasing share of American Jewish giving, and are exercising greater influence on Jewish communal priorities than they were in previous generations, according to a new study. The mega-donor trend was quantified in the study of American Jewish… Read more »

Israeli doctors perform lifesaving spinal surgeries in Ethiopia

Medical personnel from Hadassah Medical Center in Israel and the Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Mekelle, Ethiopia, confer during a Hadassah team's mission in Ethiopia to perform spinal surgeries on young patients, March 2018. (Courtesy of Hadassah)

(JTA) — Israeli doctors performed surgeries to fix severe spinal deformities as part of a weeklong medical mission to Ethiopia. Eight doctors, two nurses and one physical therapist from the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem traveled on the mission last week to the city of Mekelle, in the African… Read more »

Spending bill includes big boost for Jewish groups seeking security money

A view of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., March 13, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — An omnibus spending bill approved by Congress more than doubles spending for security grants that have been overwhelmingly tapped by Jewish institutions. The $1.3 trillion bill approved Thursday includes $60 million for the security grants, up from $25 million last year. More than 90 percent of… Read more »

‘We march today because it’s what we have to do to sleep tonight’: Jewish students on the March for Our Lives

Jewish students leading the Reform movement to the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., March 24, 2018. (Hector Emanuel for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The organizers of the March for Our Lives, almost all of them under 20, had a gun control agenda packed with specifics. They were able to get 800,000 people on and off of this city’s Pennsylvania Avenue in three hours. They attracted A-list celebrities. They turned… Read more »

Café at the J will be kosher for Passover

The Café at the J will be open Monday, April 2 through Thursday, April 5, during the chol hamoed (intermediate days) of Passover, with a special menu of kosher-for-Passover meals. This the first time the café at the Tucson Jewish Community Center will be open during Passover. The café… Read more »

Historian Lipstadt to keynote JFCS gala

Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D.

Eminent Holocaust historian, scholar and author Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D., will be the keynote speaker at Jewish Family & Children’s Services 9th annual Celebration of Caring, Sunday, April 8. Lipstadt gained international recognition for defending the historical truth of the Holocaust in a precedent-setting lawsuit, tried in a British court.… Read more »

‘Flying Chai’ festival will honor COC education director

Rina Liebeskind

A decade as the director of education at Congregation Or Chadash has flown by for Rina Liebeskind. The congregation will honor her for her years of dedicated service with a “Flying Chai” tribute festival at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on April 15. “As the oldest of six children,… Read more »

Fort Huachuca will commemorate Holocaust

An annual Holocaust Days of Remembrance Observance, hosted by the U.S. Army at Fort Huachuca, will be held Monday, April 9 at 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Gil Ribak, Ph.D., assistant professor of Judaic studies at University of Arizona, will give the keynote address. He will speak about the… Read more »

Israel @ 70 Festival to highlight Israel’s cutting edge tech

MyEye 2.0 by OrCam makes it possible for the blind or visually impaired to read texts and recognize objects and faces.

At Tucson’s Israel @ 70 Festival next month, Tucsonans can try out a pair of smart glasses created by an Israeli company that enable blind or visually impaired people to read written words and recognize objects and faces. “Basically they point with their figure to a street sign or… Read more »

‘Community’ sets Jewish football pro on spiritual journey

Alan Veingrad speaks at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Men’s Night Out event at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, March 6.

The journey from Pop Warner to the National Football League is a dream for many youngsters. It seemed an impossible dream for a lanky Jewish boy from Brooklyn in the ’70s. Alan Veingrad shared how mentors helped him make that dream come true — and how “community” ultimately intercepted… Read more »

Talk to link Jewish ethics, biotechnology

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson of Arizona State University will present “The Imperative to Heal: Judaism, Ethics & Biotechnology,” the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies’ 2018 Rabbi Marcus Breger Memorial Lecture, on Tuesday, March 27 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Today, diverse biomedical procedures constitute what we call… Read more »

Father of Polish PM says Jews gladly moved to ghettos

(JTA) — A former Polish politician who is the father of the country’s prime minister said that Jews during the Holocaust moved to ghettos of their own accord to get away from non-Jewish Poles. Kornel Morawiecki, a former senator whose son, Mateusz, became prime minister last year, made the… Read more »

JHM exhibit focuses on early Tucson photos

A self-portrait by photographer Leo Goldschmidt

On Friday, March 16, the Jewish History Museum opened a new, original, temporary exhibition, “Subtle Apertures: Leo Goldschmidt’s Early Photographic Record of the Sonoran Borderlands.” Images and information for the exhibition are drawn from the collections of the Jewish History Museum and the Bloom Jewish Southwest Archives at the… Read more »

These North American baby boomers teach Israeli kids English

IsraelConnect, which pairs Israeli students with senior citizen English tutors in North America, works mostly with schools on Israel's periphery. (Courtesy of Israel Connect)

(JTA) — There’s no reason Hodaya Koskas and Barrett Brickell would know each other. Koskas, 14, is a high school student from a small city in central Israel who takes ballet classes and hopes to be a dancer. Brickell, 71, is a retired schoolteacher from Ottawa, Canada. But they’ve… Read more »

National Geographic’s first Jewish editor in chief opens up about racism in the magazine’s past

Susan Goldberg is National Geographic Magazine’s first female and Jewish editor-in-chief. (Courtesy of National Geographic)

(JTA) —The editor in chief of National Geographic Magazine made waves when she admitted that the magazine’s past coverage was tinged with racism. “For decades, our coverage was racist. To rise above our past, we must acknowledge it,” Susan Goldberg wrote in a letter for the magazine’s April issue, which marks the… Read more »

Malcolm Hoenlein says his role with Israeli gas giant is ‘completely transparent’

Malcolm Hoenlein, center, with Ronald Lauder, left, at the Apollo Theater in New York, March 16, 2011. (Shahar Azran/WireImage/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Malcolm Hoenlein, the professional head of one of American Jewry’s most influential organizations and a board member of a large Israeli energy company, told JTA that he sees no conflict between those roles. Hoenlein is executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major… Read more »

A Palestinian-born legislator dreams of rebuilding a synagogue in Berlin

Raed Saleh, left, a Berlin senator, and the Berlin Jewish Community's president, Gideon Joffe, hold an architect's rendering of a planned reconstruction of the Frankeluefer Synagogue. (Toby Axelrod)

BERLIN (JTA) — Raed Saleh, a Palestinian born in the West Bank, wants to rebuild a synagogue in the German capital. Now the dream of this Berlin politician is a bit closer to reality. Standing in front of the Fraenkelufer Synagogue on a chilly March morning, the senator and… Read more »

Israel is the star at a national security conference in Mississippi

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant at a press conference with Israeli officials at the Homeland Defense and Security Summit in Biloxi, March 13, 2018. (Ben Sales)

BILOXI, Miss. (JTA) – A homeland security conference took place in a southern Mississippi town with an Air Force base and a shipbuilding yard. Among those in attendance were the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard; a general from India, the world’s second-largest country; and representatives from Taiwan and… Read more »