Posts By PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor

(Kveller via JTA) — Last week, I found myself taking 45 middle schoolers on a four-hour bus ride to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. While they were certainly struck as they walked through the train car on display that shuttled millions to their deaths and moved… Read more »

  (JTA) — Late last month, on the eve of Black History Month, a delegation of African-American journalists landed in Ghana to cover international development projects and the impact those projects are making in that West African country. This in itself is nothing out of the ordinary. Africa in… Read more »

Alma Kane Vactor, 91, died Feb. 5, 2017. Mrs. Vactor grew up in Cleveland’s Shaker Heights neighborhood. She and her family moved in 1960 to Tucson, where she joined the family business, Rancho Del Rio Guest Ranch, managing the food service and often serving as chef. In 1965, the… Read more »

George L. Nadler, 78, died Feb. 4, 2017. Mr. Nadler graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, attended Brooklyn College, received his DDS from New York University, and was a Diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics. Survivors include his wife, Essie; children, Rudolph M. (Aimee Baker)… Read more »

Florabelle (Peggy) Simon, 86, died Jan. 31, 2017. Born to immigrant parents, Mrs. Simon grew up in Clairton, Pa. She married and raised four children in Pittsburgh, where she later worked for the local Board of Education. Survivors include her children, Paul (Marcia) Simon of Tucson, Linda Price of… Read more »

Miriam L. Brown, 97, died Feb. 1, 2017. Born in Newark, N.J., Mrs. Brown grew up in Maplewood, N.J. She graduated at age 15 from Columbia High School, where she would later teach French and Spanish. In 1939, she graduated from New Jersey College for Women of Rutgers University.… Read more »

Multigenerational mitzvah Fifth grade students from the Congregation Or Chadash religious school joined residents of Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging on Sunday, Jan. 29 to pack 70 snack bags with handmade note cards for the Sister Jose Women’s Center. Nanci Levy, community outreach coordinator at Handmaker, delivered the… Read more »

LAURIE WETTERSCHNEIDER has been nominated for a Women of Influence Award in the Public Service Champion category. The awards ceremony, hosted by Inside Tucson Business and Tucson Local Media, will be held March 1 at Casino del Sol Resort. Wetterschneider has raised millions of dollars to support a variety… Read more »

ZACHARY DEUTSCH, son of Jill and Michael Deutsch of Chandler, will celebrate becoming a bar mitzvah on Saturday, March 4 at Temple Emanuel of Tempe. He is the grandson of Judy and Larry Deutsch of St. Louis, Mo., and Susan and Michael Cohen of Sun Lakes, formerly of Tucson,… Read more »

THE TUCSON JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER has hired SHIRA BRANDENBURG as director of the Tucson International Jewish Film Festival. Brandenburg holds a B.S. in education from Eastern Michigan University and has taught in both America and Israel. She spent eight years with the Hillel Foundation on the campuses of Metro… Read more »

Jeffrey Cornish wants to dispel the myth that refugees in the United States are a threat and a burden to society. “We need … to change the conversation about refugees,” says Cornish, the director of the International Rescue Committee in Tucson. “These people have fled oppression and the terror… Read more »

As a young attorney, Linda Hirshman, realized that fighting for the disenfranchised was her calling. “I wanted to do something that was hard, so if you accomplished it, it would be an honor,” says Hirshman, now a political pundit and author. “And there was no honor in making powerful… Read more »

The Tucson Festival of Books returns to the University of Arizona campus March 11 and 12. Now in its ninth year, the festival is the third largest in the country, with more than 300 authors and millions of visitors attending each year. While Jewish authors have always been among… Read more »

Randall Balmer

The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies will present a free President’s Day lecture, “Religion and the 2016 Election: Historical Context and Unusual Alliances,” with professor and author Randall Balmer on Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Religion played an unusual and unexpected role in… Read more »

Elliot Glicksman

The Steven M. Gootter Foundation will present its annual Philanthropic Award to Elliot Glicksman at the 12th annual Gootter Gala on Friday, March 3 at the Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa. Glicksman, a lawyer in Tucson, “has supported the Gootter Foundation since its inception 12 years ago. As… Read more »

Hadassah Southern Arizona women and men will once again perform the mitzvah of tikkun olam, repairing the world, by cleaning the roadways around the Tucson Jewish Community Center, on Sunday, March 5, from 8-10 am. This event will mark the 20th year that chapter members have participated in the… Read more »

The Fox Tucson Theatre will present a concert by Michael Feinstein, the two-time Emmy and five-time Grammy Award-nominated entertainer dubbed “The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7:30 p.m. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, where he started playing piano by ear as a… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish Community Center will present a book signing by local artist and author Lisa Kotz Mishler of her new book, “Zalman Ber’s Story: The True Story of the Man the Nazis Could Not Kill,” as told to her by her father, Sol Kotz, on Sunday, Feb. 26… Read more »

Until I saw “Lebensraum” on Feb. 9 at the Invisible Theatre, I thought I knew a great deal about the Holocaust; how wrong I was. I had never heard about lebensraum (“living space”), Hitler’s belief that Germany needed more living space to survive, a premise based on the denial… Read more »

I want to express appreciation to the Secular Humanist Jewish Circle and member Joel Unowsky, for his thought-provoking lecture on Feb.11, “Jews and the Civil War.” It was “altogether fitting and proper” (to quote a phrase from the Gettysburg Address) that this lecture should take place one day before… Read more »