Danny Danon (Courtesy of Danon)
(JTA) — The world comes together every Jan. 27 to remember the most devastating tragedy in history: the Shoah. We remember the victims of the Nazi regime. The loved ones lost and the shameful treatment of human life and human dignity. We also make sure to remember our history,… Read more »
Anat Hoffman being arrested after saying the Shema prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Oct. 16, 2012. (Women of the Wall)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — One year ago, we thought we had made history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government passed the Western Wall agreement, for the first time granting official recognition to non-Orthodox Jewish streams and women’s rights at Judaism’s holiest site. We were proud of achieving a historic compromise because… Read more »
Taylor Clearfield holding a sign, and her daughter, at a protest of the refugee ban at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Jan. 27, 2017. (Courtesy of Clearfield)
CHICAGO (JTA) — Taylor Clearfield went to the airport Friday to welcome a Syrian refugee family. The next day, she returned with a sign to protest the ban on refugees entering the United States. President Donald Trump had enacted the prohibition via executive order on Fridayafternoon, between Clearfield’s two… Read more »
The Boas-Pais family, who perished in the Holocaust, in front of their home in the Frisian city of Harlingen, the Netherlands, before World War II. (Courtesy of the Annehuis ter Harlingen)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The Jews of Friesland, a region in the northern Netherlands, are not known for stories with happy endings. During the Holocaust, Friesland’s vibrant Jewish community was forever obliterated, including its endemic customs and distinct Yiddish dialect. It is one of the starkest examples of how the Holocaust… Read more »
A Holocaust survivor shows her number tattoo. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Where’s Jared Kushner? Supporters of President Donald Trump have often defended his election campaign against charges of anti-Semitism by noting he has an Orthodox Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. Jews on the right are excited about Kushner’s role as a special adviser to the president, assuming… Read more »
Demonstrators at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York protest
President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from certain countries, Jan. 28, 2017. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — A year after they submitted their application for asylum in the United States, Shahi and his mother expected to be let in. As Iranian Jews who applied for asylum through a federally recognized agency for refugee status, their case was expected to be simple. Shahi (not… Read more »
Tal and Miri Zlotnitsky, with their son, Jacob, left, hold up a poster welcoming Muslim arrivals at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, Jan. 28, 2017. (Ron Kampeas)
DULLES, Va. (JTA) – The Israeli-born high-tech millionaire gathered his family after turning on CNN. The rabbi who leads an interfaith group got a text from a Muslim friend. The corporate lawyer was tracking a pro-bono email list she’s on. Within a few hours, all of them had descended on Dulles Airport,… Read more »
People protest President Donald Trump’s executive order in immigration at Los Angeles International Airport, Jan. 28, 2017.(Daniela Gerson)
(JTA) — The U.S. ban on refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries has affected several Jewish families, according to the refugee support and advocacy group HIAS. The ban, which came Friday in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, has plunged into further uncertainty the lives of a Jewish… Read more »
Marchers with the National Council of Jewish Women and other Jewish organizations assembled on the National Mall for the Women’s March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017. (Ron Sachs)
Photo credit: Ron Sachs
WASHINGTON (JTA) – “Cantor Kaufman!” Rabbi Jonah Pesner shouted across the intersection of 3rd and D in Washington’s Northwest quadrant, packed sidewalk to sidewalk with women in pink pussycat hats and their male friends. “A song!” Jason Kaufman, the cantor at Beth El in Alexandria, Virginia, draped in a… Read more »
Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold meeting with Tehran Children in Israel, February 1943. (Jewish Agency for Israel)
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (JTA) — After starving for months in Siberia, 5-year-old Natan Rom thought he was in paradise when he arrived in this colorful trading hub in Central Asia. It was 1940, and Rom, along with his parents and older sister Ziva, was one of countless Jewish refugees… Read more »
Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Jan. 1, 1971. (CBS via Getty Images)
(JTA) — There are plenty of paradigms in the history of humor for how Jews and non-Jews get along, or don’t: as persecutors and victims, as saviors and saved, as allies against a common oppressor. All these are fraught with the tensions between the powerful and the disempowered,… Read more »
Jared Kushner exits Trump Tower in New York City, Dec. 7, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(JTA) — American Jews are watching the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency with both fear and hope. Many have expressed worries about some of his supporters’ ties to the so-called “alt-right” movement, whose followers traffic variously in white nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-Semitism and a disdain for “political correctness.” Those fears… Read more »
President Donald Trump speaking at a luncheon at the Congress of Tomorrow Republican Member Retreat in Philadelphia, Jan. 26, 2017. In the background are Senate Majority Whip John Cronyn, left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have been talking each other up plenty since the latter’s election upset in November. But those expecting Trump to turn his kind words and pledges on Israel into fast action may have to be patient. The… Read more »
From left to right: Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women; Rabbi Tamara Cohen, chief of innovation at Moving Traditions, and Debbie Hoffmann, NCJW's board president, at the National Mall for the Women's March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017. (Ron Sachs)
(JTA) — One Jewish group that joined the Women’s March on Washington has seen its online donations double since the election of Donald Trump as president. Another has twice as many guests as usual attending its annual conference. A third has seen its social media engagement skyrocket. And after… Read more »
Journalists visit a renovated barrack at Auschwitz, Dec. 1, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — I did a shameful thing on my first visit 20 years ago to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In a guestbook outside an Auschwitz museum exhibit featuring information on 70,000 Polish non-Jews who were murdered here, I downplayed the significance of their deaths… Read more »
The ARIZONA JEWISH POST has hired JAMES ALEWINE as graphic designer. Alewine, a Tucson native, spent most of his adult life in the restaurant industry before returning to college in 2014 to follow his passion for digital arts. He will receive his associate’s degree in graphic design from Pima… Read more »
A son, MENACHEM MENDEL CEITLIN, was born Dec. 25, 2016 to Rabbi Yehuda and Feigie Ceitlin of Tucson. Mendel, named after the Lubavitcher Rebbe, joins his sisters Goldie and Sarah. Grandparents are Rabbi Aaron Eliezer and Adina Ceitlin of Montreal, Canada, and Rabbi Yossie and Chanie Shemtov of Tucson… Read more »
ESTHER STERNBERG, M.D., will be the keynote speaker at the University of Arizona Arthritis Center’s 15th Annual Living Healthy With Arthritis Conference on Jan. 28. She will speak on “Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Wellbeing,” based on her book and PBS series of the same title. Sternberg… Read more »
Sophia Violet Silverman, daughter of Kris and Ben Silverman, will celebrate becoming a bat mitzvah on Saturday, Jan. 21 at Congregation Or Chadash. She is the granddaughter of Rosalyn Silverman of Lake Worth, Fla., and Linda Robertson of Tucson. Sophie attends BASIS Tucson North and attended Tucson Hebrew Academy… Read more »
Long Realty helps Federation make a difference at Homer Davis Elementary School Long Realty Cares Foundation recently gave the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona a grant to acquire school spirit shirts for “Making A Difference Every Day: The Homer Davis Project,” a program of the JFSA Jewish Community Relations… Read more »
