Alice Mayoral, with Jordan the lizard, won most unusual pet. Photos: Debe Campbell/AJP) Pets of all description were on parade at Congregation Or Chadash May 5 for the annual pet blessing. About 50 gathered with their beloved dogs, a rabbit, and a gecko to share the Prayer for Animals, led by Rabbi Thomas Louchheim. The blessing also culminated a monthlong b’not mitzvah… Read more »
Holocaust survivor Walter Feiger, right, lights a candle with his partner, Nancy Alexander, and Rabbi Thomas Louchheim of Congregation Or Chadash.
The community-wide 2019 Yom HaShoah commemoration on Sunday, May 5 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center focused on highlighting Jewish life and culture before the Holocaust. Rather than rehearse the political miscalculations and complicity of European nations or the mechanics of Nazi genocidal violence, says Bryan Davis, executive director… Read more »
From left, Rabbi Billy Lewkowicz, Ken Light, Fred Steiniger and Emily Ellentuck helped lead the Yom HaShoah program at the Ruth and Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life on May 2.
On Thursday, May 2, the Ruth and Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life held a Yom HaShoah Remembrance event. More than 40 attendees heard guest speakers Ken Light and Fred Steiniger talk about the Holocaust memorial at the entrance to the Tucson Jewish Community Center and watched a video… Read more »
Front row (L-R): Erika Spivack, Natalie Feldman, Jillian Cassius, Michael Gross; second row: Geva Ozeri, Mallory Hulsey, Rachel Davenport, Rebecca Dubin, Maya Levy; Back: Yuval Barel, Aaron Green, Téa Weiner, Brandon Esbit, Rafael Herreras-Zinman. Not pictured: Isaac Hammer
“Live, from Tucson, it’s Tuesday night!” The class of 2019 kicked off the 41st Tucson High School for Jewish Studies (Hebrew High) Commencement on April 30 in the rousing spirit of “Saturday Night Live.” The program, driven and written by the students, featured all the hallmarks of SNL, includin… Read more »
Nancy and Stuart Mellan and their blended family at their 1992 wedding. (Photo courtesy Nancy Mellan)
The Father’s Day Council Tucson is holding its 25th Annual Fathers of Year Awards Gala next month, and the Jewish Federation’s Stuart Mellan is among the honorees. Mellan, JFSA president and CEO, is one of seven men who will be celebrated on June 1 for their success in combining… Read more »
Filmmaker Judy Ben-Asher and her Truthseeker alter-ego, Jude. (Photo courtesy Judy Ben-Asher)
Documentaries, feature films, and animation in production by native Tucsonan Judy Ben-Asher’s Starry Sky Films focus on her discoveries about health and wellness. “These are all passion projects with the cohesive thread to uplift and educate, resolve misinformation, and find answers,” she says. The “Truthseeker®” documentary film follows Ben-Asher’s… Read more »
Ester Leutenberg with her latest mental health facilitator workbooks
Mitchell A. Leutenberg had a mental illness. The first time he tried to die by suicide, he asked his parents not to tell anyone. He died at his fourth attempt eight years later in 1986. He was 30 years old. In the years since, Mitchell’s mother, Ester Leutenberg, has… Read more »
Ellen Melamed instructs University of Arizona College of Medicine students on tools to build empathetic relationships with future patients. (Photo: Michelle Doggett/ UA College of Humanities)
Ellen Melamed’s medical humanities courses at the University of Arizona are encouraging medical students to develop empathetic relationships with their future patients. Melamed, the child of Holocaust survivors, draws on her family’s history of trauma and illness, as well as her own experiences in the arts, to inform her… Read more »
Every day during the month of Iyar, we observe the mitzvah of Sefirat HaOmer, or counting the Omer. This mitzvah begins on the second day of Passover and continues until the eve of Shavuot. The counting is practiced daily after nightfall with some counting from a Siddur (prayer book),… Read more »
Kate Stewart, the lead archivist at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, profiles the life of librarian Ruth Rappaport in her first biography, “A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport,” released this spring by Little A Publishing. Rappaport grew up in Nazi Germany, reading banned… Read more »
Ari Slater, left, and Sean Cronin after a Reveille Men’s Chorus outreach performance in November. (Photo courtesy Ari Slater)
Ari Slater will be lifting his voice as part of the Reveille Men’s Chorus when they present “Bless Our Show(tunes)” this weekend. Slater, office assistant at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, says he started out singing for fun at the Thursday night piano bar at the Dusty Monk,… Read more »
Collaborating to strengthen security in Tucson’s Jewish community are, (L-R) Graham Hoffman, president and CEO, Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona; Paul Patterson, Jewish community security director; and Stuart Mellan, president and CEO, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. (Photo courtesy Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona)
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona took a proactive stance to harden local vigilance, bringing on 23-year law enforcement and security veteran Paul Patterson in March as the Jewish community security director. Patterson is assisting all area synagogues and agencies with facility security assessments, ensuring best practices and up-to-date… Read more »
Ariella Lee, a University of Arizona student who is member of Chabad of Poway, speaks at Chabad Tucson May 1. (Photo by Martha Lochert)
People forget what you said, people forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” With these famous words from poet Maya Angelou, University of Arizona student and Chabad of Poway member Ariella Lee summed up the philosophy of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, a close family… Read more »
Whether it’s a white supremacist targeting praying Jews, blacks, or Muslims, or an Islamic radical committed to killing Christians on Easter Sunday, it has become very trendy to attack houses of worship. In Europe, synagogues, unfortunately, have been targeted by terrorists for quite some time, including deadly attacks at… Read more »
A photograph from June 30, 1948 shows Great Britain handing the port of Haifa to the Israel Defense Forces, with a formation of naval officers raising the flags of Israel and the Israeli navy for the first time in the port. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion is seen at left, with his wife Paula. (Kedem Auction House)
(JTA) — May 9 was Israel’s Independence Day, which commemorates the country’s official Declaration of Independence in 1948. The country celebrated with rallies, fireworks displays, flyovers by the Israeli Air Force and family barbecues. It was a hard-fought independence — the day after the declaration, a coalition of Arab… Read more »
Orthodox Jewish men walk through the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, Feb. 25, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) – Anti-Jewish incidents made up more than half the hate crimes reported in New York City in 2018 and so far this year. The 71st Precinct, which includes the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, reported nine incidents, the most of any precinct in the five boroughs.… Read more »
Nobuki Sugihara, second from left with Limmud FSU founder Chaim Chesler and villagers from Mir, Belarus on May 2, 2019. (Boris Brumin)
(JTA) — After decades of relative obscurity, the tale of the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara has become one of the best-known Holocaust rescue stories, rivaling those of Oskar Schindler and Irena Sendler. The late Sugihara, who issued thousands of life-saving visas to Jewish refugees in Lithuania in defiance of… Read more »
Tech whiz Asher Dale, second from right, hikes with friends in the Negev Desert during his gap year in Israel. (Courtesy of Dale)
Within months of graduating from a Jewish high school near Boston in 2017, Asher Dale had an internship that he “absolutely loved” at Forter, an Israeli technology startup that sells online fraud protection services. The company, which processes more than $50 billion in transactions annually for a global network… Read more »
Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the first clinician to suggest a link between autism in children and the triple vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella, in London, Jan. 28, 2010. He spoke at a rally in Monsey, N.Y., May 13, 2019. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Jews are being persecuted as disease carriers amid the outbreak of measles, a New York haredi Orthodox rabbi said at a symposium with leaders of the anti-vaccination movement attended by hundreds of haredim. “We Hasidim have been chosen as the target,” said Rabbi Hillel Handler, a Holocaust… Read more »
CLEVELAND (Cleveland Jewish News via JTA) — Eric Fingerhut is leaving his position as president and CEO of Hillel International to take the same posts at the Jewish Federations of North America. Fingerhut, who served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Ohio in 1993 and 1994,… Read more »
