Judge John Peck with his “St. Notorious” at Art Under the Arches Gallery, January 2018. A long, winding and unexpected road took Tucson native John Peck from the Old Pueblo to Ajo, a small Arizona community of 3,300 people, just 40 miles from the Mexican border. From editor, to economic developer, community activist and nonprofit leader, he now finds himself sitting on the justice court… Read more »
Enthusiastic participation in celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays helps residents of senior living communities stay connected to Judaism. Sometimes, they even teach the non-Jewish staff about Jewish traditions and food. Atria Campana del Rio “I have been with Atria for 14 years, and when I started I knew nothing… Read more »
Super Sunday outreach Ronnie Sebold, chair of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s 2018 Community Campaign, makes a call at the Federation’s Super Sunday phone-a-thon on Jan. 28. At the annual event, 130 phone and clerical volunteers reached out to community members, garnering more than 350 pledges and donations… Read more »
(JTA) — In 2015, Ukraine’s president signed a law whose critics say stifles debate on the historical record of World War II and whitewashes local perpetrators of the Holocaust. Law 2538-1 criminalized any rhetoric insulting to the memory of anti-communist partisans. And it celebrates the legacy of such combatants – ostensibly including… Read more »
A view of the border between Lebanon, left, and Israel near the village of Kfar Kila, Feb. 7, 2018. (Ali Dia/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a simple, straightforward message this week when he toured Israel’s border with Syria and Lebanon with top security officials. “Our face is turned toward peace, we are ready for any eventuality, and I don’t suggest anyone test us,” he said… Read more »
Elaine Luria, running for Congress, speaking at a Democratic committee meeting in Norfolk, Va., Feb. 3, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
NORFOLK, Va. (JTA) — The Norfolk Democratic Party Committee is meeting on a Saturday and Picadilly, a breakfast joint propped along a highway in this scrubbed-clean hardscrabble town perched on the Chesapeake Bay, is loud with the clatter of dishes, cutlery and politics. Until, that is, Elaine Luria is… Read more »
Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking with the Forward's editor-in-chief, Jane Eisner, at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., Feb. 1, 2018. (Ron Sachs/CNP)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a Jewish audience that she would serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as long as she felt up to it. Ginsburg, appearing Thursday at a Forward event at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C., appeared to confirm recent reports that she… Read more »
Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer, left, and Nancy Pelosi at the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jan. 30, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel made it into his State of the Union speech. “Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the Senate just months before: I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” he said to applause, mostly from… Read more »
A view of the main prayer hall of the Great Synagogue of Tomsk. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
TOMSK, Russia (JTA) — When two strange men approached 8-year-old Herzl Tsam in an alley of his hometown in what is now Ukraine, he knew that he had to run as fast as his legs could carry him. In 1851, as a Jewish boy from a poor family in… Read more »
TVP, the state-owned television station in Poland, apologized to an Israeli ambassador for a tweet accusing Israel of ulterior motives in objecting to a new law regulating how Poles may discuss the Holocaust. (Flickr Commons/Piotr Drabik)
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Debate over a Polish law that proposes to outlaw rhetoric blaming Poland for Nazi crimes has prompted a wave of anti-Semitic comments in the Polish media. RMF, one of the largest Polish commercial radio stations, suspended a journalist who wrote about the “war with the Jews.”… Read more »
Brittan Heller
Brittan Heller will bring personal experience as a victim along with extensive professional international law and cybercrime experience to her Tucson presentation, “Pulling the Plug on Online Anti-Semitism & Bigotry,” on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. at the Harvey & Deanna Evenchik Center for Jewish Philanthropy, 3718 E.… Read more »
Kenneth Marcus (Screenshot from YouTube)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — If there’s overlap between Hillel and the National Council of Jewish Women, it’s in two areas: defending Israel and combating violence against women on campus. Leaders of the campus Jewish organization took a look at the record of Kenneth Marcus, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run… Read more »
The Orthodox Union is allowing Maharat Ruth Friedman, left, shown at her graduation from Yeshivat Maharat in 2013, and three other Orthodox women clergy to remain in their positions without their synagogues facing a penalty. (Joe Winkler)
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Orthodox Union will not penalize its member synagogues that already employ women as clergy, but it has reaffirmed a policy that prohibits other synagogues from hiring women in rabbinic positions. A statement adopted at the umbrella Orthodox synagogue association’s board meeting last night and… Read more »
Short track speed skater Vladislav Bykanov, lower left, leading the Israeli Olympic team at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Feb. 7, 2014. (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
(JTA) — The world is about to revolve around Pyeongchang, a mountainous county in the northern half of South Korea, for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Jewish fans won’t have quite as many standout athletes to cheer for this year as they did in 2016, when multiple American members of the… Read more »
President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner in the Oval Office of the White House, July 25, 2017.(Zach Gibson/Pool/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Donald Trump is just the man to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal done. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was gushing last week about Trump’s negotiating team, which is led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “The thing the people don’t realize is that these people… Read more »
Former President Barack Obama speaking at a Newark rally for then-gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy, Oct. 19, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(JTA) — “Nothing matters.” You hear that a lot these days. You hear it when The Wall Street Journal reports that the president’s personal lawyer paid a porn actress $130,000, at the height of the presidential campaign, so she would stay silent about an alleged affair she’d had with Donald Trump. Or… Read more »
South Korea is hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Though the Jewish community in South Korea is small, Jews visiting the country to compete in or watch the Winter Olympic Games won’t have to skimp on kosher food or Shabbat programming. The country’s Chabad emissary is setting up a pop-up restaurant in Pyeongchang County, the site of… Read more »
Couples who married in Abidjan after having undergone conversions to Judaism, Dec. 10, 2017. (Bonita Sussman)
(JTA) — Avraham Yago, a married father of five who works as a linguistics professor at the University of Abidjan in the West African nation of Cote d’Ivoire, has visited Israel four times to learn about Judaism and practice his Hebrew. Yago, 64, grew up without any religious affiliation.… Read more »
The main gate of the former Auschwitz extermination camp in Oswiecim, Poland. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — The Polish parliament’s bill to criminalize the use of the term “Polish death camps” prompted an avalanche of criticism in Israel by officials and individuals who warned that it is excessive and risks stifling research on the Holocaust. Following the bill’s passing Friday in the Sejm, or the lower… Read more »
Rexhep Hoxha, left, and Fatos Qoqja in a bar in Tirania, Albania, Nov. 8, 2017. Qoqja is pictured with a medal that his father received for saving Jews during the Holocaust. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
TIRANA, Albania (JTA) — Most anywhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe, an encounter with police would have likely sealed the fate of Jewish refugees like Nissim and Sarah Aladjem and their 10-year-old son, Aron. Instead, when the family was detained by police in the Muslim nation of Albania 75… Read more »
