Yearly Archives 2011

Stuart and Nancy Mellan with Murray Greenfield (center), an American seaman who smuggled Jews out of Europe into Palestine in 1947, at Atlit, the British detention camp where Greenfield was held with Jewish refugees.

My first trip to Israel was in 1982 (it still seems a bit surreal when I think of it) when I went with the federation national leadership into Lebanon to witness the Israeli military action that resulted in Lebanon’s liberation from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. On that remarkable journey… Read more »

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer

I want to challenge one of the mainstay assumptions of organized Jewish life: Jewish continuity is the end goal, and everything is in service of that goal. It’s been 20 years since the release of the 1990 National Jewish Population Study, which found an unprecedented rate of intermarriage. It… Read more »

My first assignment when I entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1976 was as a “rotational officer” in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. I served for six months backstopping our delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council, then another six months… Read more »

Tamir Hendelman

World-renowned Israeli jazz pianist Tamir Hendelman and Detroit jazz singer Kathy Kosins will present a concert sponsored by The Heartbeat of Israel and the Tucson Jazz Society on Saturday, Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort. Hendelman has performed with Barbra Streisand, Natalie Cole… Read more »

Tucson Masterworks Chorale will feature Jewish works during its fall concert, which will be held Sunday, Nov. 20 at 3 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El. “Sacred Service,” by the Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch, will be the showcase piece of the concert, with Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon as baritone soloist. Bloch… Read more »

Sam Caron with Elwood

The benefits of being a ventriloquist have come full circle for Sam Caron. “At age 6 I was a very sick child” with rheumatic fever, says the Sierra Vista therapist, who has a Ph.D. in guidance and counseling from the University of New Mexico. “When I came home from… Read more »

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is determined to return to Congress. “I will get stronger. I will return,” Giffords writes in a memoir she co-authored with her husband, Mark Kelly, and Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, according to the Associated Press, which got an advance copy. “Gabby: A Story of… Read more »

The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan’s peaceful Battery Park is an unlikely place to explore some of the 20th century’s most horrific evils. “Deadly Medicine” — an exhibit on Nazi racial science, originally presented at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum — is a sobering examination of the intertwined… Read more »

(New York) — American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and human rights organization, unveiled its new Reverse Hunger campaign last month. The campaign seeks to rally the American Jewish community to challenge and change a critical factor contributing to global hunger — U.S. food aid policy. Developing… Read more »

Southern Arizona congregations and organizations will offer a Global Week of Jewish Learning Nov. 11-17, again expanding on the Global Day of Jewish Learning inaugurated last year in celebration of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s completion of his multi-volume Talmud translation. This year’s theme is the unity of the Jewish people… Read more »

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

Every now and then there are some times when being a congregational rabbi is just, well, hard. Some of this is seasonal: of course there are the High Holy Days, with the increased expectations and attendance, plethora of services to officiate and sermons to deliver, complex and demanding music… Read more »

Former Duke University basketball star Jon Scheyer, who will be playing pro ball for Maccabi Tel Aviv, at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel following his group aliyah flight, Aug. 30, 2011. (Sasson Tiram)

The night after the National Basketball Association season was scheduled to begin, Jon Scheyer, perhaps the best Jewish basketball player of his generation, was in his Tel Aviv apartment talking about Israeli cuisine and hoops in the United States and the Holy Land. “It’s nuts,” he said last week… Read more »

Israel is right,” “Israel is wrong,” Israel should do this or that … wherever I go, whatever I do, it seems many American Jews try to keep their engagement with Israel on a political basis. Sometimes it feels as if the only connection to Israel is through the Israeli-Arab… Read more »

Brenda Landau, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, signs up for the Food Stamp Challenge at the JCRC annual meeting Oct. 27. Waiting their turn are Dani Bregman and Carlos Araujo. (Rebecca Goodman/JFSA)

Jose Miranda, 23, was one of 90 people attending the Jewish Community Relations Council Annual Meeting and Food Stamp Challenge Kick-Off on Oct. 27 at Temple Emanu-El. While listening to stories and statistics on hunger in the United States, “I decided to put myself in the shoes of young… Read more »

A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency found that there is "credible" information suggesting that Iran's nuclear program has military dimensions. Pictured here is a heavy water nuclear reactor near Arak, Iran. (Wikipedia Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The international nuclear watchdog has spoken on Iran, and although its report does not have the smoking gun some had anticipated, it makes a cumulative case damning enough for the Obama administration to ask for increased sanctions. JTA canvassed Washington Iran-watchers on Tuesday afternoon in the… Read more »

The Maccabeats, Yeshiva University's a capella group, with their 2010 YouTube sensation "Candlelight" freshens up the Chanukah story. (Courtesy Jewish Community Center of Paramus, N.J.)

NEW YORK (JTA) -- My 3-year-old son is obsessed with showing people his room, sidling sheepishly over to guests and asking, “Can I show you my room?” My son reminds me how important our "place" is -- "A Room of One's Own," in Virginia Wolff’s words. Our rooms make us… Read more »

A woman on King George Street in Jerusalem appears perplexed picking from the array of sufganiyot choices for Chanukah. (Nati Shohat/Flash 90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — They’re making sufganiyot on the streets of Israel; Chanukah must be near. Actually it started feeling like Chanukah here about two days after Sukkot, when the first vendors started frying the delicious and caloric doughnuts in vats of oil in front of bakeries and on the… Read more »

Palestinian Authority President Mahmou Abbas welcomes hundreds of Palestinians released as part of the prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Oct. 18. (Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ statehood push at the United Nations may be fizzling, but his supporters insist that he can find a way out of the impasse. “Abu Mazen is a powerful leader and is very persuasive,” said Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset,… Read more »

Chanukah mini-doughnuts are called ponchiki in Russian and ponchik in Yiddish. (Barry Kaplan/Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Latkes and sufganiyot, the jelly-filled doughnuts especially popular in Israel, are well-known Chanukah fare made with oil to signify the holiday tale. Lesser known is the tradition of cheese and the story of Judith. Like the Chanukah story, which is part of the Apocrypha — books not… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — Judah Maccabee, meet the Golem of Prague. And Rebecca Rubin, Engineer Ari, and Nathan and Jacob, two brothers who are part of a modern American Jewish family. They are among the characters who take center stage in this year’s crop of new children’s books for Chanukah,… Read more »