Lois Lederman and Noga Panai rehearse ‘Handle With Care’ at Invisible Theatre. (Tim Fuller) Tucson’s Invisible Theater will celebrate its 44th anniversary season with the Southwestern premiere of Jason Odell Williams’ comedy, “Handle With Care.” Described as the “Jewish ‘Christmas Carol’ play for all audiences” by the playwright, “Handle With Care” is the story of a young Israeli woman, with little command of… Read more »
Promoting global awareness — as well as culinary coexistence — played a part in the choice of Cholla High Magnet School’s 2014 fall presentation of “The Arab-Israeli Cookbook” by Robin Soans, directed by Julian Martinez, the play is produced in partnership with the Qatar Foundation International. Assembled from first-person… Read more »
Maria Jutasi Coleman began sculpting five years ago. Her work is “made of the dust of the earth, as my beloveds have since become,” she says. (Pat Wick, Sierra Vista Herald) Psychologist Maria Jutasi Coleman didn’t mean to revive her Holocaust images from childhood. When she and her partner moved from Phoenix to retire in Bisbee five years ago, she began taking ceramics classes at Cochise College. Creating sculptures depicting the Holocaust “just happened,” Coleman told the AJP. “I was… Read more »
On Wednesday, Border Guard policemen on routine patrol in the Hebron casbah identified a Palestinian boy lying unconscious on the floor. A police officer and a paramedic team quickly ran to the boy, while reporting the incident and calling for additional medical help. Early examination of the boy showed… Read more »
Muslims seen at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem's Old City, on their way to pray on the second day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Jun 30 2014. (Sliman Khader/FLASH90) TEL AVIV (JTA) – Tensions in Jerusalem have run high since last summer, but have recently crossed over into lethal violence. In the past two weeks, there have been three attacks, in which motorists have plowed into crowds of people — killing, among others, a 3-month-old baby and and… Read more »
Anna Varsanyi is considered Jewush by Israel's Chief Rabbinate but not by the country's Interior Ministry. (Courtesy Anna Varsanyi) TEL AVIV (JTA) — In 2012, Anna Varsanyi was married in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony conducted through Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Two years later, the Hungarian immigrant has made a life in Israel, settling with her husband in the central city of Modiin and working a desk job in a… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A lawyer for a boy born in Jerusalem whose parents want Israel listed as the birthplace on his U.S. passport tried mightily this week to make a Supreme Court hearing mainly about their wish, but the justices kept upping the ante. That might mean bad news… Read more »
Participants taking in a session at the 2013 General Assembly in Jerusalem. (Courtesy Jewish Federations of North America) (JTA) — Reinventing. Rethinking. Rebranding. Innovating. They’re all buzzwords we hear today whether talking about education, health care, product marketing or Jewish communal work. We’re living in a time in which endless access to information and 24-hour communication is challenging us to question just about everything. As a result,… Read more »
TEL AVIV (JTA) – The Israeli government has adopted a major reform expected to ease the path to conversion for hundreds of thousands of Israelis now prohibited from marrying in the Jewish state. In the most significant response in decades to the estimated 400,000 Israelis who are not considered… Read more »
Emily Kessler strums the mandolin in her Upper West side apartment. (Raffi Wineburg/JTA) For Emily Kessler, a Holocaust survivor, the prospect of performing at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall is less worrying than figuring out what to wear for the occasion. “I came to the conclusion,” she said, in an interview at her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, “that what is… Read more »
“A cold man who is developing a grudge against Israel is now sitting in the White House,” a leading Israeli journalist wrote some years back. Today, many in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, might share this view. At the same time, there is no love in the White… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset during the opening of the winter session, Oct. 27, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) JERUSALEM (JTA) – An anonymous White House staffer apparently isn’t the only one who thinks Benjamin Netanyahu is shy about taking chances. A piece this week in The Atlantic magazine by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg ignited a firestorm with its revelation that an Obama administration official had called the Israeli… Read more »
A view of the reconstructed painted ceiling of the wooden synagogue of Gwozdiec, a key installation in the core exhibit of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Oct. 28, 2014. WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — In a Europe wracked by fears of rising anti-Semitism, and in a country whose Jews were all but annihilated in the Holocaust, a dazzling new “museum of life” celebrates the Jewish past and looks forward to a vital future. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and Israeli… Read more »
Donna Moser, left, and her sister, Audrey Brooks, are co-chairs of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona 2015 Community Campaign. Visiting Greece, Israel, Russia and Ukraine on Federation missions, sisters Audrey Brooks and Donna Moser recognized that while the landscapes and languages may vary, the problems people face are similar all over the world. That led them to create a new theme, “Their Lives are in Our Hands,” for… Read more »
Wendy Sherman, the top U.S. negotiator in the world powers' nuclear talks with Iran, says the two sides have "made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable. (Eric Bridliers/U.S. Mission Geneva) WASHINGTON (JTA) – Is the Obama administration preparing the ground for an Iran nuclear deal — one in which both sides can claim victory? Wendy Sherman, the top U.S. negotiator, in an unusually detailed and optimistic speech on Oct. 23, for the first time suggested that the pieces of… Read more »
BRUSSELS (JTA) — A little over a year after a French court forced Twitter to remove some anti-Semitic content, experts say the ruling has had a ripple effect, leading other Internet companies to act more aggressively against hate speech in an effort to avoid lawsuits. The 2013 ruling by… Read more »
A protester at a vigil for 18-year-old Michael Brown across the street from the police station in Ferguson, Mo., Oct. 20, 2014. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) MINNEAPOLIS (JTA) — Early last week, national faith leaders called rabbis, pastors, priests and imams to Ferguson, Mo., a city rife with racial violence and pain. Along with my rabbinic colleagues from Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Justice, I responded to the call to the people of Ferguson that… Read more »
President Reuven Rivlin, shown speaking on Oct. 23, 2014 at the dedication of a Jerusalem road names for Yitzchak Shamir, says the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Israel "has reached a new low." (Hadas Parush/Flash90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s president fills a largely ceremonial role — meeting with foreign dignitaries, representing the government at state funerals and other official gatherings. But the office’s new occupant has embraced a challenge not inherent to the job: curbing what he sees as an epidemic of anti-Arab… Read more »
JILLIAN HANNAH CASSIUS, daughter of Jennifer and Mark Cassius, will celebrate becoming a Bat Mitzvah on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 at Congregation Anshei Israel. She is the granddaughter of Beverly and Sam Cassius of Phoenix and Paul and the late Elaine Smelkinson of Tucson. Jillian attends The Gregory School,… Read more »
Cameron Patrick Busby, son of Cynthia Busby, will celebrate becoming a Bar Mitzvah on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 at Congregation Chaverim. He is the grandson of Herman Busby and Carolyn Ashworth, both of Atlanta. Cameron attends Tucson Magnet High School, where he plays in the steel drum band “Jovert.”… Read more »
