Datura is a night-blooming summer wildflower that can live on rainfall alone. (Jacqueline A. Soule)
Right now, in March, we can enjoy our gardens in the daytime, but by June — not so much! The problem with this is that you need to water and care for your garden all year long, so it’s a real shame you can’t enjoy it all year long.… Read more »
Weintraub Israel Center trip participants at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. Kneeling (L-R): Jane Rodda, Fernanda Quintanilla, Oshrat Barel, Steve Weintraub, Jeff Artzi (standing, wth wreath) and Nicky Anspach. Standing, first row: Carlos Hernandez, Nora Navarro-Hernandez, Deborah Yoklic, James Whitehill, Sally Trattner, Iris Posin, Conrad Plimpton, Stephen Caine, Barbara Yamada, Linda Behr, Stan Behr, Marcia Wiener, Irene Watkins, Linda Horowitz, Martin Horowitz, Phyllis Mack, Ray Carroll and Muki Jankelowitz (guide). Second row: Carol Weinstein, Judith Brown, Richard Fertal, Ken Miller, Karen Paulsen-Balch, Marisa Balch and Riann Balch. Third row: Morris Riback, Paula Riback, Rebecca Crow, Rick Edwards, Neal Savage, Marilyn Medwied, Heather Caine, Myles Beck and Richard Spears. Not pictured: John Crow, Sherry Hoffman-Blum, Tracy Salkowitz, John Winchester and Denise Wolf. (Courtesy Weintraub Israel Center)
When Tucsonan Nora Navarro-Hernandez, who is not Jewish, visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for the first time, she had a real awakening. She was there for Shabbat. “I thought it was going to be quiet and really solemn,” she says. “I didn’t think there was going to be… Read more »
Shay Yossef and his wife, Efrat, with their children at their West Bank home in Har Bracha. (Beit Hatfutsot)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Orli Malassa doesn’t remember ever feeling anything but Israeli. To her parents, who came to Israel from Ethiopia in 1983 when she was 5 years old, Malassa’s accent-free Hebrew, fluent use of Israeli slang and effortless assimilation into the Jewish state has felt nothing short… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Pew Research Center poll released last week surveying attitudes among Israeli citizens confirms what many of us who work on Israeli issues already knew: Israel is a deeply divided society, first and foremost between its Jewish and Arab citizens, but also among its Jewish sectors. Ethnicity,… Read more »
PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — The recent Pew Research Center study finding that about half of Israeli Jews favor transferring Arabs from Israel reveals the fear, frustration and misery that Israeli Jews feel after being subjected to decades of Arab terrorist attacks that have killed and maimed thousands of innocents.… Read more »
Rabbi Moshe Azman, founder of the Anatevka community near Kiev, Feb. 29, 2016. (R. Litevsky/Courtesy of the Office of Rabbi Moshe Azman)
ANATEVKA, Ukraine (JTA) — At the age of 53, Sergey and Elena Yarelchenko fled their native city of Lugansk with three suitcases and moved into a wooden room in a muddy refugee camp outside Kiev. Like hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine’s war-torn east, life for this Jewish… Read more »
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaking at a news conference at Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach, Fla., March 11, 2016. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israel has prominently emerged as a presidential campaign issue ahead of critical primary contests in five states on Tuesday, three of which – Ohio, Illinois and Florida – have substantial Jewish communities. Israel was the subject of a heated exchange in the Republican debate last… Read more »
Groggers and beer, two important elements of a Purim celebration (Edmon J. Rodman)
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Purim parties are just around the corner — as is the presidential election. This got me thinking: What does the holiday’s operative phrase, “ad lo yada,” “until one no longer knows,” really mean? Traditionally, this rabbinic license to party, derived from the Talmud, has been taken… Read more »
Editor and translator Ann Goldstein seated in the Conde Nast cafeteria at One World Trade Center in New York City. (Erica Brody) NEW YORK (JTA) — It was back in the fall, at an event at BookCourt in Brooklyn, when translator Ann Goldstein was first asked for her autograph by an eager reader. Goldstein was caught by surprise. After all, this was before her work appeared on The New York Times list of “100 Notable… Read more »
Mordechai Genut, founder of Frum Karate, with some beginners' students. (Courtesy of Mordechai Genut)
NEW YORK (JTA) — On a recent Sunday evening at a Jewish center in Brooklyn’s Midwood section, dozens of boys and men — ages 5 to 40-something — practice their kicks, strikes and jabs. They are clad in the usual all-white uniform, tied at their middles with cloth belts… Read more »
Samir Patel, left, with an associate and his father, right, says he gets about five requests each Saturday to act as a Shabbos goy for Orthodox Jews. (Uriel Heilman)
NEW YORK (JTA) – For Samir Patel, the term “goy” is no slur. It’s a point of pride. Patel is a manager of Suhag Wine & Liquors, a family-owned business in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills, in Queens. He’s a Hindu immigrant from India, but the vast majority… Read more »
Yonatan Azriaev recovering from his wounds at a Petach Tikvah hospital, March 10, 2016. (Ben Sales)
PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA) — Only after Yonatan Azriaev grabbed the terrorist’s arms and threw him against a wall of soft drinks did he think he was about to die. Azriaev, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect, had been handing out religious pamphlets in the open-air market… Read more »
Israeli Arabs protesting in Tel Aviv against home demolitions, April 28, 2015. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash 90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — In a survey that spanned politics, religion and interfaith relations, one statistic stood out: nearly half of Israel’s Jews support expelling the country’s Arabs. The Pew Research Center’s study of Israelis’ attitudes, which had its findings released Tuesday, had asked respondents whether they agreed that… Read more »
Palestinian women pass an Israeli police checkpoint in Jerusalem, Oct. 8, 2015. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Nearly half of Jewish-Israelis want to expel Arabs from the country. That’s one of several findings from a new survey of Israeli attitudes on religion, politics and Jewish identity conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center. Coming just three years after Pew‘s much-discussed study of… Read more »
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, March 9, 2016. (Hillel Maeir/TPS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a much-anticipated press conference with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday afternoon, March 9, in which the two criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his failure to denounce the wave of terror. Following Netanyahu’s statement, Biden stated his disapproval of Abbas’ failure… Read more »
(JTA) — A 29-year-old American business school student was killed in a stabbing attack in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv. Taylor Force, a student at the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management, was on a school trip to Israel when he was killed Tuesday evening, the university said. As… Read more »
BERTÍ S. BRODSKY has joined the Arizona Jewish Post as account executive. She has 10 years of sales experience for various media including the Tucson Weekly, Cloud 95 radio, TCI/Tucson Cable Advertising and the Savvy Shopper. A graduate of Catalina High School, she earned her associate’s degree from Pima… Read more »
“Then … and Now,” an artist’s book/chapbook featuring original poems and calligraphy by WENDY GRAHM has been acquired by the University of Arizona Poetry Center for the L.R. Benes Rare Book Room collection. The handmade book is available for public perusal in the library.… Read more »
Joshua Aaron Quigley, son of Karen and Thomas Quigley, will celebrate becoming a bar mitzvah on Saturday, March 26, at Foothills Shul at Beis Yael. He is the grandson of Susan and Alan Marvin Levinson of Greenbrae, Calif., Gerrard and Ellen Quigley of Placitas N.M., Artur Berliner of San… Read more »
Crowds line up for admission to the Holocaust History Center and the Jewish History Museum. (Liam Frederick)
History, Holocaust museums reopen Hundreds of people turned out Sunday, Feb. 21 for the reopening of the Rose and Maurice Silverman Jewish History Museum Campus. The Friedman Family Jewish History Museum and the newly expanded Gould Family Holocaust History Center opened to the public after remarks by Tucson Mayor… Read more »
