Yearly Archives 2013

In an effort to combat the national obesity epidemic that also afflicts children and families locally, the Tucson Jewish Community Center is implementing Discover: CATCH® Early Childhood — a new wellness initiative. The program has already been instituted in 19 JCCs across the country. Starting this month, children enrolled… Read more »

Todd Rockoff

Todd Rockoff, the new president and CEO of the Tucson Jewish Community Center, has worked for JCCs from Akron, Ohio, to Calgary, Alberta. He started out at age 16 as a camp counselor in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. “I’m honored to never have received a paycheck from anyone… Read more »

Left to right, Juice co-organizers Inna Yampolskaya and Igor Kozlovskiy, Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich and the American Joint Distribution Committee's Lilya Vendrova at a Juice event in Kiev, November 2012. (Courtesy Juice)

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Hours after assailants shot Rabbi Artur Ovadia Isakov on a street in the Russian republic of Dagestan last month, mainstream Russian media were still scrambling to ascertain his identity. But Isakov’s name and condition  already were known to the readers of Jewishnet.ru, a growing social… Read more »

From left, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer and Bob Filner, three Jewish politicians seeking to move on after misdeeds. (U.S. Congress/Getty Images/City of San Diego)

 WASHINGTON (JTA) — The guy with the socks up. The guy with the pants down. The guy with the headlocks. The guy who tweets and deletes. What is it with these male politicos? And why are they all Jewish? The cloistered community that is Washington’s Jewish elite collectively choked… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Each year, when Frank Halper is faced with the state tax bill for his accounting business in Providence, R.I., he has a choice. He can write a check for the amount owed by his company or, as part of a state tax credit program, he… Read more »

Chicken Rolls with Orange Sauce, which adds some sweetness to the poultry -- perfect for Rosh Hashanah. ("Helen Nash's New Kosher Cuisine," Overlook Press)

  NEW YORK (JTA) — Nearly 30 years ago, when my first cookbook was published, I wrote that kosher cooking wasn’t just about traditional recipes like gefilte fish and chopped liver, that you could make gourmet meals and international dishes using kosher ingredients.  Since then, many new kosher ingredients… Read more »

Jewish communal attitudes toward interfaith marriages, like the wedding between Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan in 2012, have shifted considerably since 1990. (Allyson Magda/ Facebook)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When the nation’s largest Jewish federation convened its first-ever conference recently on engaging interfaith families, perhaps the most notable thing about it was the utter lack of controversy that greeted the event. There was a time when the stereotypical Jewish approach to intermarriage was to… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The election for Massachusetts governor is still 16 months away — too soon to know what the issues are or who the viable candidates will be. But apparently it’s never too soon for tikkun olam. Four of the declared candidates are Jewish, and all are grounding… Read more »

An illustration from "Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook," which offers recipes along with its collection of Jewish folk tales. (Courtesy Interlink Publishing Group)

(JTA) — Shofars, apples and honey, make room for pomegranates, couscous and pumpkins. The new crop of children’s books for the High Holidays opens a world beyond the beloved traditional symbols of the New Year (Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on Sept. 4). From ancient times to today, the savory,… Read more »

    Reform leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs, shown speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Baltimore, November 2012. (Robert A. Cumins/JFNANEW YORK (JTA) Try telling agunot, women who are chained to their husbands unable to obtain a get, a religious divorce, that they are equal… Read more »

Reflecting its new motto, "Protect the Refugee," HIAS is helping refugees in Chad. (Courtesy HIAS)

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA) — The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration — first in leading the resettlement of Jews… Read more »

Hadassa Margolese walking her daughter Naama to school in Beit Shemesh a few days after Naama was harassed by haredi Orthodox men, December 2011. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Two years ago, Hadassa Margolese became a symbol of resistance to haredi Orthodox domination after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter to tell an Israeli reporter how religious men had spit on her as she walked to school. The report made headlines around the world and… Read more »

Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, seen in a January 2011 photo, are among top-ranking House Democrats inclined to engage Iran's new president in talks on his country's nuclear program. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In increasingly strident tones, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling his American friends that the purported moderation of Iran’s new president is a ploy aimed at relieving international pressure and buying the Islamic Republic more time to cross the nuclear threshold. But in ways… Read more »

Jewish participants of an interfaith conference in Sarajevo saying the Kaddish over the graves of 1985 Srebrenica massacre victims, July 2013. (Courtesy CMJ)

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (JTA) — Sarajevo is a city with a rich multicultural past, but it also bears the scars of war. Take a short walk through the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and you will see the many cemeteries and bullet-riddled walls, which are undergoing restoration. These lay side by side… Read more »

Hoogvliet was among four Dutch supermarket chains that distanced themselves from a boycott on Israeli settlements goods they were said to be enacting. (Creative Commons)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Two weeks ago, the Dutch public learned of what appeared to be an unprecedented victory for European advocates of boycotting Israeli products. Four major supermarket chains reportedly declared a boycott of products from the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But the… Read more »

The world’s first lab-grown burger could be parve and thus paired with dairy products. (David Parry / PA Wire)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When the world’s first lab-grown burger was introduced and taste-tested on Monday, the event seemed full of promise for environmentalists, animal lovers and vegetarians. Another group that had good reason to be excited? Kosher consumers. The burger was created by harvesting stem cells from a portion… Read more »

Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, left, and Rabbi Menachem Margolin of the Chabad-affiliated Rabbinical Centre of Europe have been at odds publicly over Schudrich's handling of the kosher slaughter case in Poland. (Creative Commons/Facebook)

(JTA) — A few weeks before Poland’s parliament voted last month on whether to overturn a ban on ritual slaughter, Rabbi Menachem Margolin was scheduled to meet the Polish president in an effort to find a solution to the problem. The ban had been imposed in January, when a Polish… Read more »

FC Barcelona at the Western Wall (Tazpit News Agency)

At the Washington press conference held on July 30, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the Israelis and Palestinians will aim to reach a final status agreement to end their conflict in the time frame of nine months. He also had some words to say about the… Read more »

Dr. Mehmet Oz, right, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Aug. 2, 2013. (The Jewish Values Network)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Dr. Mehmet Oz sat down to talk with JTA on the Tel Aviv coast last week, but what he really wanted to do was go to the beach. Oz, the surgeon and well-known TV personality, was in Israel for the first time and had a… Read more »

Arizona freshman Rep. Matt Salmon, shown with wife Nancy at a June 2013 meeting with conservative television host Glenn Beck, drafted a letter asking the U.S. attorney general to hinder the release of Palestinian prisoners -- a move that Israel approved to help kick-start negotiations with the Palestinians. (Matt Salmon Facebook)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli settler leader Dani Dayan has made it his mission over the years to warn members of Congress, particularly Republicans, of the perils of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Dayan has been a regular visitor to Washington, his trips often coinciding with developments in the peace process. During… Read more »