Tucsonan Alain Avigdor, right, visits with a Jewish woman at an assisted living facility in Casablanca, Morocco. (Larry Gellman) “Casablanca” brings to mind an almost mythical film in an exotic locale, conjuring up images of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman parting on a foggy airfield. But Casablanca is a real place where Jews have lived as far back as Roman times. Sixteen Tucsonans witnessed the vibrancy of Morocco’s… Read more »
The Iron Dome defense system firing missiles to intercept incoming rockets from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90/JTA) SDEROT, Israel (JTA) — Wage war to make peace. That’s the idea behind Israel’s strikes this week against Hamas targets in Gaza, including Wednesday’s attack that killed Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari. What’s not clear is how far Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense will go, what price Israeli civilians… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Hours after three Israelis in southern Israel were killed by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, a rocket struck the outskirts of Tel Aviv, bringing the conflict between Israel and Hamas to a new intensity. On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces reportedly sent ground trips to the… Read more »
Micah Halpern It doesn’t matter who the president is when it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel. When political pundit Micah D. Halpern made that statement in his talk, “Making Sense of the Middle East: A Post-Election Analysis,” at a Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona leadership campaign summit on Nov. 8,… Read more »
Israeli author Adina Bar-El, left, with Tucsonan Bill Kugelman (Phyllis Braun/AJP) Adina Bar-El, Ph.D., a children’s book author from Hof Ashkelon, Israel, came to Tucson last week to talk about the power of stories — and ended up discovering tales of her own family’s past. On Friday, Nov. 9, Tucsonan Bill Kugelman attended Bar-El’s Heartbeat of Israel breakfast talk at… Read more »
A new Arizona state tax credit allows taxpayers to double their donations to the Jewish Education Tax Credit Organization, JETCO — without costing them a penny. Earlier this year, the Arizona legislature passed SB1047 to give children enrolled in public schools the opportunity to switch to private schools by… Read more »
Ever since terrorists based in Gaza started firing missiles into Israel several years ago, the residents of Kiryat Malachi have been worried. Over the years, missiles have fallen around the town but have landed in open areas just outside of the municipal borders. All of that changed this morning… Read more »
In case you haven’t heard, Israel has launched an operation against the terrorists in Gaza who have been firing rockets on Southern Israel. Rockets that keep children from going to school. Rockets that force families to sleep in bomb shelters … if they can sleep at all with the… Read more »
Smoke rising following an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City, Nov. 14, 2012. (Edi Israel/Flash90/JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) – The Israeli army began moving infantry units to the south and calling up reservists in preparation for a further escalation of hostilities with Hamas after an Israeli airstrike killed Hamas’ military chief in the strip. Ahmed Jabari and a passenger were killed by an Israeli missile… Read more »
Phillipe Karsenty delivering a lecture on the al-Dura affair in France in 2011. (Courtesy Phillipe Karsenty) PARIS (JTA) — To his allies, he’s a bulldog. Enemies call him a conspiracist and a genocide denier. Both sides, however, agree on one thing: One could find a more pleasant adversary than French-Jewish politician and activist Philipe Karsenty. It’s an impression easily reached in even a short conversation with… Read more »
Billionaire Munib al-Masri, the richest Palestinian in the West Bank, standing outside his mansion near Nablus, a replica of a 16th century Italian villa. (Ben Sales) NABLUS, West Bank (JTA) — Dozens of photographs line the wall of a room on the first floor of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri’s West Bank villa, depicting a man of global influence but also of divergent impulses. Al-Masri is seen posing with the likes of Pope John Paul II… Read more »
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, left, and Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky, right, discuss the free Soviet Jewry movement, marking the 25th anniversary of its pinnacle event The March on Washington, Nov. 12, 2012. (David Karp) BALTIMORE (JTA) — A year since its creation, the grandly named Global Planning Table remains the great white hope of the Jewish Federations of North America, which held its annual General Assembly here this week. Introduced a year ago, the GPT aims to reshape the way federations spend money… Read more »
Suzi Hileman After 22 months, Suzi Hileman finally got to step into a courtroom and confront Jared Lee Loughner, the man who killed six people and wounded her and 12 others who’d come to meet with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a Tucson Safeway on Jan. 8, 2011. “I have wanted to… Read more »
Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to Republican candidates, attending a Republican Jewish Coalition event at the party's convention in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 27, 2012. Jewish republicans say the party should expect to hear from donors about how to do better in the next election. (Ron Kampeas) WASHINGTON (JTA) – Think immigration through — again. Forget about gay marriage. And for heaven’s sake, when it comes to rape, shut up! The Republican Party as a whole is having the morning-afters, reconsidering how it might have done better in an election that saw the party fail to… Read more »
Congregation Bet Shalom will present a lecture, “Genes, Jewish History, and Jewish Migration,” by Matthew Kaplan, facility manager of the Functional Genomics Core at the University of Arizona, on Thursday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. Kaplan previously served as a staff scientist in the Arizona Research Laboratories division of… Read more »
The 9th Annual Muslim-Jewish PeaceWalk will be held Sunday, Nov. 11. There will be a gathering outside the Islamic Center of Tucson, 901 1st Street (at Tyndall) at 1:15 p.m., with a welcoming ceremony at 1:45 p.m. The walk will begin at 2:15 p.m., with a stop at Catalina… Read more »
Congressional candidate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach talking to Tenafly High School football players outside a polling station in the northern New Jersey borough, Nov. 6, 2012. (Chanie Lieber) TENAFLY, N.J. (JTA) — “Hey, are you tweeting that?” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach asks. Boteach — the self-proclaimed “America’s rabbi,” author of “Kosher Sex,” father of nine and Republican candidate for U.S. Congress — is standing on the sidewalk next to Tenafly Middle School on the morning of Election Day.… Read more »
President Obama hugging his campaign manager, Jim Messina, during a stop at his campaign headquarters in Chicago, Nov. 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Obama’s Jewish numbers are down, but by how much and why? Expect four more years of tussling between Jewish Republicans and Democrats about the meaning of Obama’s dip from 78 percent Jewish support cited in 2008 exit polls to 69 percent this year in the… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is no closer to having a minyan. The majority leader will remain the sole Jewish member of his party’s caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a generally rough night for Republicans, the party’s top Jewish congressional prospects all went… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — A week after Sandy swept into the New York area with fierce winds, driving rain and a high tide for the history books, the nation’s largest Jewish community was still picking up the pieces. JTA gathered stories from around the storm zone about Sandy’s destruction,… Read more »
