Posts By PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor

In the movie that is my life, this period in time will be filled with perfect material for the end of film outtakes. The bloopers and practical jokes that roll after the credits; that end up on disc 2 of the DVD set. Hopefully, by the time such a… Read more »

Bernadette Donfeld (left) and Esther Becker on a hill overlooking Shilo, where the Tabernacle was located for 369 years until destroyed by the Philistines. The photo was taken on a 2011 Southwest Torah Institute Israel trip. (Bob Donfeld).

      Rabbi Israel Becker and his wife, Esther, who have led Congregation Chofetz Chayim since 1979, have visited Israel dozens of times and lived there for extended periods in the ’60s and ’70s. But until last month, the Beckers had never led a group of their fellow… Read more »

We have received a few calls and e-mails inquiring as to the nonprofit status of the Jewish History Museum based on an article in the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday, June 19, 2011. The article directed the reader to a list of Arizona nonprofits that were being declassified by… Read more »

I was a participant in the Steadfast Hope series that Guy Gelbart refers to in his “Shaliach’s View” column in the June 17 issue of the Arizona Jewish Post. I really cannot disagree with him more on his characterization of the series as a “hate pill.” The series was… Read more »

Thank you to Guy Gelbart for informing the wider Jewish community about our series: Steadfast Hope, the Palestinian Quest for Just Peace. For people interested in the topic of Israel/Palestine, we will offer other, similar programs in the future. As one of the organizers and presenters of the series,… Read more »

I am not part of the organizing team that presented the Steadfast Hope series, but I was a member of the audience, so I know that most of what the shaliach said after the event is pure obfuscation and distraction and in many instances simply fabrication. According to the… Read more »

New Square Grand Rebbe David Twersky strongly encourages residents of the heavily Chasidic suburban New York village he leads to worship at his synagogue, pictured here. (Alex Weisler/JTA Photo Service)

For years, this leafy Chasidic village about an hour north of New York City has been a shtetl-like haven where residents could live their strictly Orthodox lifestyle far from the temptations and bustle of the nation’s largest city. Out of view of all but very few, life in this… Read more »

Reform movement leader Maurice Eisendrath, with Torah scroll, meets President John F. Kennedy, left, in the White House Rose Garden, along with several other leaders in 1961. (Photo courtesy Washington Jewish Week)

While driving through Miami in the early 1950s, Kivie Kaplan spotted a sign that would change his life and eventually alter America’s political landscape. It read:”No dogs, no niggers, no kikes.” That jarring discovery caused Kaplan, a wealthy Jewish American businessman, to declare, “I’m going to spend the rest… Read more »

Rabbi Sergio Bergman (with microphone) speaks as he stands with Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri (left) and two other politicians at a May 23 event introducing the PRO party’s candidates for municipal elections. (Eliana Krumecadyk/JTA Photo Service)

Rabbi Sergio Bergman, already one of Buenos Aires’ most prominent spiritual leaders, has become one of the Argentine capital’s most highly visible political candidates. Bergman was tapped by the city’s incumbent mayor, Mauricio Macri, to lead his PRO party’s list for the municipal legislature. As the top candidate on… Read more »

Laura Kafif, the house mother at Sava A Child’s Heart, visits with one of her charges, Zeresenay Gebru, as he recovers from heart surgery at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, May 31, 2011. (Sheila Shalhevet/JTA Photo Service)

Just two days earlier, 8-year-old Salha Farjalla Khamis said goodbye to her parents and four siblings in her village on the African island of Zanzibar. Now, in a hospital in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon, tears roll silently down her cheeks as she watches an Israeli nurse attach… Read more »

Billie Kozolchyk

My husband, Boris, and I always anticipate with excitement the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but we could not imagine the magnitude of this year’s event. For the first time, there were more than 10,000 delegates including 1,500 students. Among the students were 215… Read more »

President Obama is a stalwart friend of Israel. That’s the message some top Democratic Jewish figures are promoting to push back against the notion that Obama is out of step with the pro- Israel and Jewish communities. This month, two figures associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee… Read more »

It was a sign that ties between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations remain strong despite the apparent tensions last month when the two leaders met at the White House. On June 6, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton shot down a French proposal for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks… Read more »

The sexual scandal in which Dominique Strauss-Kahn now finds himself embroiled greatly distresses me on several levels. First and foremost, any assault, sexual or otherwise, perpetrated by one human being against another is an outrage. On a Jewish level, many of us Jews living in the 2lst century can… Read more »

This letter comes in response to the article in the May 20 issue, “A growing number of Jewish atheists look for their place in Jewish life.” There is already a group in Southern Arizona, based in Tucson, that offers a place for committed Jewish atheists as well as those… Read more »

Guy Gelbart

In the last few weeks I attended, along with several members of the Jewish community, a series of talks that was supposed to focus on a just peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The series, “Steadfast Hope: Perspectives on Peace and Justice for Palestine and Israel,” organized in… Read more »

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, pictured here addressing a Republican Jewish Coalition event in June 2011, has become a star in Republican circles after exposing Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's lewd tweets. (RJC)

(Los Angeles) The TV cameras at the Beverly Hilton Hotel’s ballroom were there to cover a foreign policy speech by Newt Gingrich, but during the cocktail hour, all eyes at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Summer Bash were on Andrew Breitbart. While Gingrich was mingling privately at the June 12… Read more »

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (P.K.Weis/southwest photobank.com)

Photos of a smiling Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head in January, were released on her Facebook page. The photos show Giffords with close-cropped hair. According to a statement on the Facebook page, they were taken May 17, the day after her husband, Mark… Read more »

The Tzofim (Israel Scouts) Friendship Caravan national tour will stop in Tucson with a free concert of song and dance on Thursday, June 30, at 6 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The Weintraub Israel Center is seeking host families to house the Israeli teens for one night.… Read more »

Retired pediatrician Marilyn Heins serves on the board of the University of Arizona Humanities Seminar Program. (Sheila Wilensky/AJP)

Lifelong learning is often touted as an essential ingredient for aging gracefully, but for some Jewish Tucsonans the appeal goes far beyond that notion. The University of Arizona Humanities Seminars Program has filled a need “for something that gets into my brain and grabs me,” says Marilyn Heins, 80,… Read more »