Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein Temple Emanu-El will host the 2016 Cohon Memorial Foundation Awards at Shabbat evening services on Friday, Jan. 13, at 7:30 p.m. Rabbi Baruch J. Cohon and Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon will present the awards to this year’s winners, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of… Read more »
The art gallery at the Beth Shalom Temple Center in Green Valley is presenting “Visiting Your Roots,” featuring photographs and pamphlets from recent trips to Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Poland, through Feb. 15. Photographs from BSTC members, family and friends highlight memorials, camps, synagogues and museums.… Read more »
Joe Pasternack (University of Arizona) The University of Arizona Hillel Foundation will host its annual alumni and friends event on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 5:15 p.m. The evening will feature Joe Pasternack, UA associate head basketball coach under Coach Sean Miller, who will brief attendees on this year’s Wildcat team. His talk will be… Read more »
The University of Arizona Cancer Center is partnering with the Tucson Jewish Community Center to deliver a free, four-part educational series on cancer starting in February. Classes will focus on trends in research and clinical care, from precision medicine to novel drug development to the new frontiers of immunology.… Read more »
Keith Wick in “Buyer & Cellar”
Live Theatre Workshop will stage “Buyer & Cellar” by Jonathan Tolins, a one-man show that begins with the premise of an underemployed actor going to work as a shopkeeper in the basement of Barbra Streisand’s Malibu home, Thursdays-Sundays through Feb. 11. “This seriously funny slice of absurdist whimsy creates… Read more »
Renee Taylor with her husband, Joe Bologna
Invisible Theatre will present Renée Taylor in “My Life on a Diet” at the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway Blvd., on Saturday, Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 8 at 3 p.m. Taylor, best known for her Emmy-nominated role as Fran Drescher’s Jewish mother on… Read more »
On Sunday, Jan. 8, the Weintraub Israel Center will hold an event to thank the Greater Tucson Fire Foundation and the Tucson area firefighters who traveled to Israel in November to help control the hundreds of fires there. The event will be held at 5 p.m. at the Tucson… Read more »
Rep. Ed Royce participates in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – There’s a striking difference between competing bids in Congress addressing last month’s U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. It’s not that they differ on the United Nations – the two nonbinding congressional resolutions under consideration condemn the Security Council, as well as the outgoing Obama… Read more »
A view of a portion of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) –There was little new in the dueling speeches of John Kerry and Benjamin Netanyahu. In remarks from the State Department on Wednesday, the secretary of state reiterated the vehement opposition of the United States to Israeli settlement construction and its belief that the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace are dying.… Read more »
There has been an uptick in hate crimes since the election, which has inspired a journalist to wear a kippah daily. (Ullstein Bild via Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — I do not like wearing a kippah. I grew up in a Reform synagogue where few people wore them, including the rabbi. The gendered nature of it bothers me. (Why, in some “egalitarian” synagogues, are men forced to wear them but not women?) And, quite… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, arrivies at his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Dec. 25, 2016. (Dan Balilty/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Emotions are running high following the Obama administration’s decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Here are seven questions aimed at making sense of what went down and what it could mean moving forward. 1. Did Obama… Read more »
Samantha Power, center, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at the Security Council meeting in New York, Dec. 23, 2016. (Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Ahead of the unknowns a Trump administration will bring to American Middle East policy, the Obama administration allowed a bracing reminderon Friday that the international community does not recognize the validity of Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. The U.S. abstention on the U.N. Security Council… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second from right, chairs the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Dec. 25, 2016. (Dan Balilty/AFP/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expects a “new era” when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. He said as much at a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony Saturday, where he addressed the United Nations Security Council resolution passed a day earlier against Israeli settlements in the… Read more »
Fireworks explodE over the Rhine River during a New Year's party in Cologne, Germany, Jan. 1, 2014. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — While the rest of the world is busy exchanging Happy New Year wishes, Germans are greeting each other with a peculiar expression: “guten Rutsch,” which means “good slip.” Some believe the greeting, which is especially unusual in a formal society such as Germany’s, is a lighthearted reference… Read more »
Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in a photo from Aug. 23, 1978. (CBS via Getty Images)
(JTA) — Carrie Fisher, the actress best known for playing Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” films, died days after suffering a heart attack on an airplane. She was 60. Fisher’s family spokesman Simon Halls confirmed to multiple publications that she passed away Tuesday morning. Fisher had been… Read more »
Daniel S. Mariaschin (Courtesy of B'nai B'rith International)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The feeling in this country following the adoption of the anti-settlements resolution in the U.N. Security Council on Friday is more than palpable. For those who observe Shabbat, there was the knowledge on Friday afternoon that a vote in New York would occur after… Read more »
The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, June 14, 2016. (Flash90)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign he wants to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. His nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has said he hopes he will work from an embassy in the city. Trump’s transition team has affirmed the intention to move… Read more »
Blue crinkle cookies are soft and chewy. (Rachel Kor)
(The Nosher via JTA) — In many homes, there is a tradition to bake Hanukkah cookies this time of year. Whether it’s the sugar and butter mixing in the mixer, the blue and white sprinkles, or the festive menorah cookie cutters, there is something about cookie baking that propels us into the… Read more »
UN passes anti-settlement resolution, US abstains (JTA) — The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, with the United States abstaining. The resolution was adopted Friday afternoon with 14 votes in favor and only the U.S. abstention. It called Israeli settlements “a flagrant violation of international law”… Read more »
Album cover for "Dreidel I Shall Play" by composer Samuel E. Goldfarb. (Courtesy of Myron Gordon)
(JTA) — Within the Jewish musical canon are several songs that seem to have always existed — tunes we all know and pass down from one generation to the next. One example is the Hanukkah favorite “I Have a Little Dreidel” — chances are most everyone reading this can… Read more »
