Posts By PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor

If your heart longs to visit Israel, but time doesn’t allow, consider the opportunity to bring a vibrant piece of Israel to your home. The Shinshinim Young Ambassadors Program sends Israeli high school graduates to communities all over the world to work in Jewish educational and cultural institutions (see… Read more »

On the night of the second Passover seder 12 years ago, Amy Oestreicher’s parents had to ask their guests to leave their Connecticut home so they could take Oestreicher, then 18, to the hospital with a severe stomachache. She was rushed into surgery where her stomach exploded due to… Read more »

Hosting the annual Partnership2Gether leadership mission in Tucson this year was ambitious and quite successful, says Oshrat Barel, director of the Weintraub Israel Center. Six partnership delegates from Israel, Tucson delegates and local community stakeholders spent a week, from Feb. 26-March 5, discussing the program, its strengths and ways… Read more »

Rabbi Robert Eisen

My first apartment was decorated in “early attic.” My grandmother was moving into a skilled nursing facility and her house needed to be cleaned out and sold. I was granted first pick of the contents of the attic. There were a number of little things that I quickly scooped… Read more »

Jennifer Cassius, Anita Feder and Patty Vallance recently formed Family Friends, LLC, an estate sales company. Family Friends aims to help families with the distribution and disposition of personal property, whether due to downsizing, a transition to alternative living arrangements or the loss of a loved one, “with an… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — What kind of leadership style works best for a seder? During a period when we are experiencing a shake-up in national leadership, you may want to re-examine the relationship that exists between leader and participants at the Passover meal. Though seder leaders and participants are… Read more »

Arizona Onstage Productions will present “Stars of David: A New Musical,” based on Abigail Pogrebin’s 2005 bestseller, subtitled “Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish,” April 15 and 16 at the Berger Performing Arts Center. The musical revue presents little known stories about some of the most famous Jews of… Read more »

Passover is the time of freedom. We eat matzah, the bread of affliction, we eat bitter herbs and dip karpas (vegetables) in salt water to recall our suffering and tears. We eat charoset, made with ground almonds, cinnamon and wine to recall the mortar used by Jewish slaves to… Read more »

 Everything But The House, an online estate sale marketplace, is auctioning a variety of rare, Judaica items from the 19th–mid 20th centuries. Items include: The Torah Crown – an early 20th century Sefer Torah crown that was made during one of the first years of the Bezalel School of Arts… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Literally within seconds of the news of the arrest in Israel of an Israeli-American teenager for the bulk of the JCC bomb threats, Twitter lit up with Jewish anxiety. “ fear the inevitable backlash from haters who we whipped a frenzy for our own nefarious political… Read more »

  ATLANTA (JTA) — When Janice Rothschild Blumberg first heard that a bomb threat had hit an Atlanta Jewish center, she had only one thought: “It’s happening all over again.” Blumberg, 93, remembers her shock in 1958 when white supremacists bombed her synagogue, then called the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Israeli teenager who also has American citizenship was arrested on suspicion of carrying out more than 100 bomb threats on Jewish institutions in the United States. Israel’s anti-fraud squad arrested the 19-year-old suspect at his home in southern Israel and searched the premises on Thursday.… Read more »

David Gregory, political analyst for CNN and author, says reconnecting with Judaism centered his life in the right way. Gregory’s book, “How’s Your Faith? An Unlikely Spiritual Journey,” is an autobiographical tale about his return to faith in adulthood. Simon & Schuster published the book in September 2015. “The… Read more »

On the evening of Monday, Feb. 27, the Tucson Jewish Community Center received a bomb threat phone call, making Tucson part of the disturbing trend of more than 100 bomb threats targeting JCCs and other Jewish institutions across the country since mid-January. Last Friday, March 10, as the AJP… Read more »

Dick and Sherri Belkin, known for their dedicated energy and philanthropy in the Tucson Jewish community, recently donned new hats as Broadway producers. The couple attended the New York premiere of “Come From Away,” a musical about 9/11, at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre last week. A musical about 9/11? … Read more »

In December 1990, Dina Gold marched into a government building at Krausenstrasse 17/18 in the formerly Soviet-controlled East Berlin, and announced that she had come to claim her family’s property. She was bluffing. At that point in her quest for justice, she had no evidence. Gold showed an official,… Read more »

Leslie Schwartz

Holocaust survivor Leslie Schwartz will speak about his experiences as a teenager in Auschwitz, Dachau and Mühldorf and show a film titled “The Mühldorf Death Train” on Wednesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The event is sponsored by the German studies department at… Read more »

My wife, Sue, and I are new to Arizona, having moved here from West Chester, Pa., in August 2016. However, we are not new to Judaism or a love of Israel and Jewish culture. But this is not about us, it’s about our daughter, Alexandra Simone Penfil. When Alli… Read more »

Rabbi Israel Becker

At the recent annual dinner of my alma mater, the Rabbinical Seminary of America, I saw my lifelong friend, Rabbi Elchonon Zohn. He is a world renowned expert on Jewish end of life issues and burial who has been instrumental in guiding communities all over the United States. He… Read more »

The University of Arizona Hillel Foundation will hold its 26th annual Holocaust vigil later this month, a 24-hour program dedicated to the remembrance of the Holocaust as well as to promoting tolerance and understanding on campus and in Tucson.  A student committee designed and organized the vigil. This year’s… Read more »