Yearly Archives 2019

Pinchas Zohav, community chaplain for the Ruth & Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life (Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Northwest Division); his wife, Rita Zohav; Northwest Director Phyllis Gold; and Northwest staff member Carol Nudelman celebrated Shabbat on Friday, Oct. 4, with residents at Sunrise Senior Living. Zohav celebrates… Read more »

Jonathan Mosher, the chief criminal deputy at the Pima County Attorney’s Office, will run for Pima County Attorney in 2020. Mosher has been a lawyer for 25 years and an Arizona prosecutor for 15 years, serving more than a decade under Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall. For more information,… Read more »

Andrew Gale

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has hired Andrew Gale as campaign manager. Gale grew up in Southern Arizona and attended Northern Arizona University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management.  Most recently, he was the donor relations manager at Habitat for Humanity Tucson, where… Read more »

This story originally appeared on Kveller. Taika Waititi’s satirical film “Jojo Rabbit” is finally out! It is set in Nazi Germany,  and the Jewish MaoLior Zaltzmanri director famously plays Adolf Hitler. “What better way to insult Hitler than having him played by a Polynesian Jew,” Waititi himself tweeted. When… Read more »

MEXICO CITY (JTA) —More than 10 years ago, Ilan Stavans scandalized language purists of the Spanish-speaking world by translating a chapter of “Don Quixote” — into Spanglish. Since then, the so-called czar of Latino culture has become one of the most important interlocutors for Hispanics in the United States. In… Read more »

Shir Tabac had always yearned for a dog, but it wasn’t until she completed her military service and went to college that she felt ready to make the commitment. “It was the first time I was living independently, and I wondered how I could have a dog and do… Read more »

PITTSBURGH (JTA) —As we approach the one year since the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history, I am grateful for the outpouring of support for the Pittsburgh Jewish community. Over the last year, people across the world have stood shoulder to shoulder with all of us in the 412.… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Carved into the rock on the side of a mountain directly under the Har HaMenuchot cemetery here lies the entrance to Jerusalem’s newest necropolis, a city of the dead that its designers hope will relieve a shortage of burial space in the capital. A local engineering… Read more »

(JTA) — Bernie Sanders was one of only two Democratic presidential candidates to address the Islamic Society of North America Convention in August, the largest annual gathering of Muslim Americans in the country. Organizers invited the 10 highest-polling contenders at the time to the Houston event, but the Vermont… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Typically, Jews gather after Rosh Hashanah services to recite a brief prayer and then symbolically cast away their sins by tossing breadcrumbs into a body of water. The ritual, called tashlich, isn’t mandated by Jewish law — it’s just… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — More than eight in 10 American Jews say that anti-Semitism has spiked in recent years and even more believe it is a problem in the United States, according to an American Jewish Committee survey. More than three-quarters of respondents see the extreme political right as more… Read more »

(JTA) — At least 12 white supremacists have been arrested for allegedly attacking, planning attacks against or threatening the Jewish community in the year since the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue building in Pittsburgh, the Anti-Defamation League said in a new report. Since Oct. 27, 2018, white… Read more »

This story originally appeared on Alma. Over the past decade, comic books and superheroes have become a staple for mainstream pop culture. But did you know that they are super Jewish? The industry was created by Jews who were prevented from working at American newspapers in the 1930s by… Read more »

Judith Millstone, 69, died Sept. 28, 2019.  Ms. Millstone had been a resident of Tucson since 1968 when her family moved here from Rochester, N.Y., and she decided to attend the University of Arizona, graduating in 1972. She taught fifth grade for about seven years in Safford.  While she… Read more »

Betty Lou Rosenthal Light, 97, died Oct. 6, 2019. Mrs. Light was a matriarch in Gunnison, Colorado, for over seven decades before moving to Tucson in 2013. In Tucson, she lived at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging. Mrs. Light was preceded in death by her husband of almost… Read more »

Rayna Leah Gellman, 83, died peacefully in her sleep on Sept. 19, 2019, after a brief period of illness. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 21, 1936, Rayna was the middle of Sol and Julia Nathan’s three daughters. Julia moved Rayna and her sisters Esther (Capin) and Roberta (Bracker)… Read more »

Robert Michael Hersch, 69, died Oct. 3, 2019. Mr. Hersch was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Abington High School and went on to receive a B.A. in political science from American University in Washington D.C., a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Arizona, and… Read more »

Our beloved mother, Roslyn Girard Miller, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on Feb. 25, 1929 and passed peacefully on Sept. 29, Erev Rosh Hashanah, 2019. Along with occasional excursions to Coney Island with her younger brothers George and Ira, Roz’s Brooklyn childhood and early teen years revolved around… Read more »

On Oct. 27, 2018, in was the most brutal anti-Semitic attack in the history of the United States, a gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life building in Pittsburgh, taking the lives of 11 innocent people from three congregations: Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life *… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli actress Gal Gadot will star as Polish heroine Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis, in a film produced by the actress and her husband. Gadot and her husband Yaron Varsano have formed the production company Pilot Wave. Gadot will star as… Read more »