Yearly Archives 2013

ARIZONA PUBLIC MEDIA reporters Mark Duggan and Fernanda Echavarri have won 2013 Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association, along with former AZPM employees Steve Shadley and Robert Rappaport. Two feature stories are in the running for the national Murrows. AZPM’s interim news director,… Read more »

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS will be honored as Woman of the Year by Emerge Arizona: Women Leaders for a Democratic Future at its annual event on Thursday, May 23 in Phoenix. The former Arizona congresswoman also received a Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation on May… Read more »

(L-R) Guy, Carmel, Arbel, Clil, Hadar and Inbal Gelbart

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and Tucson Jewish Community Center will host a farewell party for community shaliach (Israeli emissary) and Israel Center Director Guy Gelbart and family on Wednesday, May 22, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the JCC. The family friendly event will include a light… Read more »

EMILY SERENE JONES, daughter of Elena and Bob Jones, will celebrate becoming a Bat Mitzvah on Saturday, May 18 at Temple Emanu-El. She is the granddaughter of Dr. Judith Shepard Gomez and Temple Emanu-El’s cantorial soloist Marjorie Hochberg of Tucson, Patti and Darrell Jones of Myrtle Creek, Ore., Leslie… Read more »

Jeffrey McIntyre and Miriam Hawley

The Temple Emanu-El adult education committee will present a book talk by Miriam Hawley and her husband, Jeffrey McIntyre, authors of “Living with Intention in Life, Love and Business,” on Tuesday, May 21, from 7 to 9 p.m. Hawley and McIntyre, business coaches who have worked with executive management… Read more »

Orlando real estate developer and Jewish philanthropist Hank Katzen is aiming to create a perpetual funding source for the new Hillel at the University of Central Florida. (Uriel Heilman)

ORLANDO, Fla. (JTA) – Real estate developer Hank Katzen has a conviction: If you build it, they will come. Except this is no baseball field in an Iowa cornfield. It’s a $60 million, 600,000-square-foot luxury dormitory at the nation’s second-largest college campus, the University of Central Florida in this… Read more »

A reward for information leading to an arrest has been offered in the murder of Aliza Sherman, left, seen here in an undated photograph. (Facebook)

CLEVELAND (JTA) — The voice of the 911 caller is frantic, pleading for help. In the background, the victim is heard moaning, her words unclear. “There’s blood everywhere,” the caller says. “I’ve never seen so much blood.” Paramedics arrive on the scene in downtown Cleveland moments later and rush… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — What happens when the rabbi who delivered the invocation at your nomination inveighs against you? Three controversies in quick succession have earned President Obama opprobrium from some of his most steadfast liberal supporters, including Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. The… Read more »

A memorial statue for Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg stands in Detroit's Comerica Park. (JMR_photography via Flickr)

(Washington Jewish Week) — “I think Hank Greenberg was the great American hero,” Washington filmmaker Aviva Kempner says. “What he did on Yom Kippur. What he faced. He was our Jackie Robinson.” Thirteen years after the debut of “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” her documentary about the… Read more »

Abdellah Boutadghart, right, of the Moroccan embassy in Senegal, and Rabbi Eliezer Di Martino of Lisbon at the main cemetery in Praia for the burial of a Cape Verde resident, May 2, 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

PRAIA, Cape Verde (JTA) — A Portuguese rabbi and a Moroccan diplomat stood shoulder to shoulder in a Catholic cemetery here while 200 mourners howled in grief as they buried a resident of this island off the western coast of Africa. The foreigners had come to Cape Verde’s main… Read more »

"Hava Nagila (The Movie)" portrays the classic Jewish tune as a porthole into 200 years of Judaism's culture and spirituality. (Courtesy "Hava Nagila The Movie")

NEW YORK (JTA) — May is Jewish American Heritage Month, a commemoration first recognized by President George W. Bush in 2006. Since then, hundreds of programs have taken place nationwide annually to honor the rich contributions of Jews to American culture and society. President Obama added to the annual… Read more »

Scouts standing at attention during a Boy Scouts of America Memorial Day ceremony. (ShutterStock/Sandi Mako)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Jewish Scouting leaders are taking a vocal role in efforts to pass a historic resolution that would partially lift a ban on gays in the Boy Scouts of America. In a meeting of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting in February, members voted overwhelmingly in… Read more »

Pascale Bercovitch, an Israeli handcyclist who competed in the 2012 London Paralympics, has overcome the loss of her legs to become a world-class athlete. (Courtesy Pascale Bercovitch)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Pascale Bercovitch has a firm handshake and a ready smile. She’s hard to keep up with as she takes an elevator to a cafe on the ground floor of her gym in northern Tel Aviv and talks about her hopes to compete in 2016 in… Read more »

Young Israeli Orthodox women turn out by the hundreds to protest Women of the Wall's monthly prayer service at the Western Wall, May 10, 2013. (Ben Sales)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Haredi Orthodox youths mobbed the Western Wall plaza by the thousands to protest Women of the Wall as they held their monthly prayer service. The youths, many of them students from haredi Orthodox yeshivas, filled the Western Wall Plaza by 6:40 a.m. on Friday, 20 minutes… Read more »

Members of the Jewish community in Canton, Ohio, celebrate the dedication of a new building housing the local federation and two synagogues, July 12, 2012. (Karen Phillippi)

(JTA) — The Jews of Corpus Christi knew a decade ago they had to act fast to save their two synagogues.With at most 1,000 Jews left in the Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the 60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in… Read more »

Peter Likins moderates a panel discussion on higher education in Arizona sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council and Hadassah Southern Arizona, at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on April 26. (Simon Rosenblatt)

Our system of higher education hasn’t changed in the last 60 years, University of Arizona President Emeritus Peter Likins said at a breakfast and panel discussion April 26 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. As the moderator of the discussion on “The Future of Higher Education in Arizona,” when… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Until recently, I thought of Ruth, the heroine of Shavuot, as a positive role model, a woman who made good choices, was strong and fulfilled. But lately I’ve been rethinking this and focusing on the strange dynamics of what appears to be an unhealthy, possibly abusive,… Read more »

Secretary of State John Kerry, right, delivering a Joint Statement with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani in Washington, April 29, 2013. (U.S. State Department)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When it comes to the latest Arab peace initiative, two questions are circulating in Washington: Why Qatar? And why now? The three answers: Because Qatar is rich; it is scared; and why not? Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister and… Read more »

Yosef Tiefenbrun, an apprentice tailor at Maurice Sedwell's and an ordained Orthodox rabbi, modeling an outfit he put together. (David Nyanzi)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Yosel Tiefenbrun looked in the mirror and he liked what he saw. The 23-year-old Chabad rabbi and apprentice at Maurice Sedwell, a bespoke tailor’s shop on London’s Savile Row, was wearing a vintage double-breasted jacket with gold buttons, tasseled Barker shoes, a claret bow tie… Read more »

An Iron Dome anti-missile battery was moved near the Israeli border town of Haifa in the hours following a second airstrike on Syrian targets, May 5, 2013. (Avishag Yashuv/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Twice in three days, Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace and fired on suspected weapons caches bound for Hezbollah — and nothing has happened in response. Some experts are predicting that will continue to be the case following airstrikes near Damascus on Friday and Sunday that are… Read more »