Shelly Silverman (left) and Stuart Shatken are the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona's Woman and Man of the Year
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will launch a year of 70th anniversary celebrations at its annual meeting and awards celebration on Wednesday, May 11. The “Feddys Platinum Edition” event will be held at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Heading the list of those who will… Read more »
(L-R) Chefs Yael Shamir, Maya Klein, Orli Varon Shushan and Sahar Refael from the Weintraub Israel Center’s Partnership2Gether region in Israel will spend a week in Tucson. (Courtesy Weintraub Israel Center)
Four celebrity chefs from Israel will arrive in Tucson next month for the third annual Tucson Celebrates Israel Week, May 9-15. “Food is known to be a great bridge between people and cultures,” says Oshrat Barel, director of the Weintraub Israel Center, which organizes the festivities. Chefs Orli Varon… Read more »
Shelly Silverman As we finish up the week of Passover, I feel especially aware of what freedom means. Freedom is a word that encompasses so much. But for me, the freedom to have choices in so many arenas in my life is almost overwhelming. I can CHOOSE to do almost anything.… Read more »
(L-R) Gregory School students Daniel Leighou, Elaine Wright, Jaiveer Katariya, Moritz Gloesslein and Tianyi Zhu, with teacher Dennis Conner, took fourth place in the International Shalhevet Freier Physics Tournament at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
Earlier this month, a team of talented physics students from Tucson’s Gregory School placed fourth in the world in the April 5-6 International Shalhevet Freier Physics Tournament at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, where they displayed their outstanding skills in high-tech safecracking. Israel is an international leader in… Read more »
The endorsements of Chiune Sugihara and Jan Zwartendijk, the Japanese and Dutch consuls, respectively, in Kovno, Lithuania, appear on the Leidimas, or travel document, that allowed Isaac Lewin and his family to escape Lithuania in 1940. Nathan Lewin, now a prominent attorney, is the 4-year-old boy in the arms of his mother, Peppy Sternheim Lewin. (Photo courtesy Alyza D. Lewin)
Editor’s note: In honor of Yom HaShoah, which will be commemorated in Tucson on Sunday, May 1 at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, the AJP offers this commentary. See also “In Remembrance.” In May 1998, the AJP published an interview with Jan Zwartendijk, the son of… Read more »
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon (front) and the Armon Bizman band at a Late Night Downtown Shabbat at the Jewish History Museum on March 25. (Karen Schaffner/AJP)
Tucson, a.k.a. the Old Pueblo, is known for its laid back attitude, not for bucking a trend. Enter Temple Emanu-El’s Late Night Downtown Shabbat, which is roping in the millennials coming of age in the 21st century, statistically a hard group to round up for synagogue participation. According to… Read more »
FIRST PERSON
Amid 'exodus' from Brussels, my family sings a sad 'ma nishtana'
BRUSSELS (JTA) — I was feeling nervous about coming to Brussels for seder with my family. Making the 130-mile trip there from my home in Amsterdam meant taking my 5-month-old son on a train that last year saw an attempted jihadist attack, and into a city that is… Read more »
Imre Kertesz
In June of 1944, an anonymous diarist in the Lodz Ghetto wrote, “The human language is too poor to describe the suffering of Jews in the ghettos of 1944. Where would the expressions come from, the descriptions, adjectives, that could only superficially describe our pain?” This diarist kept his… Read more »
Members of Tucson’s Next Generation Men’s Group atop the Teotihuacan Pyramid in Mexico City. Top row (L-R): Rob Glazer, David Goldstein, Hillel Baldwin, Stuart Gross and Bobby Present. Center: Jeff Kay, Marty Waldbaum, Peter Marcus, Jeffrey Katz, James Wezelman and Steve Silverman. Bottom: Terry Perl, Danny Gasch, Tom Warne, Larry Gellman and Barry Weisband. Not pictured: Stuart Mellan, Gary Kippur, Dan Asia, David Hameroff and Jeff Katz. (Courtesy Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona)
Jeffrey Katz of Tucson, a retired physician, just came back from Mexico City and what he saw made quite an impression. “The most unique part (of the trip) was seeing how closely knit a Jewish community exists,” he says. “We were at what is described as a secular Jewish… Read more »
(Kveller via JTA) — Every year it happens in just about the same way: I pledge to stick to it. I create reminders and support systems. I beg my husband to join me in the daily routine. And then at some point, I fail. No, I’m not talking about… Read more »
Six Flags Great Adventure, an amusement park in New Jersey, on Passover becomes the site of an annual Orthodox Jewish pilgrimage. (Uriel Heilman)
JACKSON, N.J. (JTA) – Pinchas Cohen spent most of Monday wandering around Six Flags Great Adventure under a blazing sun, wearing a knee-length black coat and carrying a big box of shmura matzah under his arm. An imposing, Russian-born Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid who now lives in Brooklyn, Cohen came to… Read more »
Jesse Sbaih in his law office, April 8, 2016. (Ron Kampeas)
HENDERSON, Nev. (JTA) – Come November, Nevadans in this suburban Las Vegas district may well elect to Congress Jacky Rosen, a software developer and president of her synagogue. A Jordanian-American lawyer says her win would be at his expense, and it’s because of his Muslim faith. But Jesse Sbaih isn’t blaming… Read more »
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders greet each other at the CNN Presidential Debate in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 14, 2016. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – The combative tone in Bernie Sanders’ campaign statements faded on Tuesday evening to a softer pitch of suasion. “I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her victories tonight, and I look forward to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come,” Sanders’ statement began after his rival for… Read more »
House Speaker Paul Ryan speaking with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., April 13, 2016. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Paul Ryan wants you to know he’s not running for president, he’s no fan of the Obama doctrine and he’s not a neoconservative. What the Wisconsin congressman wants to be, he suggested at an April 14 breakfast in his Capitol Hill offices with foreign policy reporters, is the leader of… Read more »
Rabbi Robert Eisen speaks at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging on April 10, as panelists Rabbi Yossie Shemtov (center) and Rabbi Thomas Louchheim look on. (Nanci Levy/Handmaker)
Three Tucson rabbis representing the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism presented their basic beliefs at a panel discussion at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging on April 10. About 100 people, including Handmaker residents and members of the Tucson community, discovered more about the similarities rather than… Read more »
Demonstrators protesting against the arrival of Muslim immigrants to Europe in The Hague, Netherlands, April 10, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Donald Trump’s xenophobic views are neither new nor particularly shocking in Europe, where fears of jihadism and the challenges of illegal immigration are blowing winds into the sails of a rising far right. Although the Republican presidential hopeful’s statements on immigrants, Mexicans and Muslims are often… Read more »
Merav Michaeli, shown in the Knesset, came to the United States with the message that Israel is still improving. (Michal Fattal)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When a pro-Israel U.S. lawmaker greeted a member of Israel’s Knesset here last week, the former may not have anticipated the candor of the latter. “Give me good news,” Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., told Merav Michaeli on April 13, a typical request when the ranking Democrat on the… Read more »
Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn, March 22, 2015. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — For a people obsessed with numbers, the Jews have relatively scant concrete data about how, exactly, the Jews voted in Tuesday’s presidential primaries in New York. But we do know enough to make some educated guesses. Here’s what we know: Approximately 12 percent of… Read more »
MK Isaac Herzog (Hillel Maeir/TPS)
Israeli Opposition and Zionist Union Chairman MK Isaac Herzog has been at the center of political outrage in Israel after being filmed saying at a meeting with Zionist Union party activists in Ashkelon on Tuesday about his own party that “we need to stop giving the impression that we… Read more »
The European Union released a statement earlier today in which it condemned the military courts in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip for sentencing to death five convicts accused of collaborating with Israel. “The EU Missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah condemn the five death sentences issued by military courts in the… Read more »
