Posts By PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor

JFSA and JCF statement on shooting in Poway, California

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona are heartbroken and horrified by the senseless act of violence on Saturday at Congregation Chabad in Poway, California. This act came on the exact six-month anniversary after the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, on… Read more »

1 dead, 3 injured in San Diego-area synagogue shooting

(JTA) — A shooting at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, near San Diego, California, has left one person dead and three injured, including a child. Police in Poway detained a white 19-year old San Diego man in connection with the shooting on the last day of Passover, and hospitals said… Read more »

Ukraine’s next president is a Jewish comedian

(JTA) — If official exit polls from Ukraine’s presidential elections are to be believed, that country is set to become the only one in the world besides Israel whose president and prime minister are both Jewish. Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky’s dramatic lead in exit polls Sunday — in many of… Read more »

Jewish community to honor top volunteers

Phil Bregman, Leslie Glaze

The second annual combined Jewish Community Awards Celebration and Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Annual Meeting will be held Thursday, May 9 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The event will include special recognition awards honoring lay or professional leaders from each of the Federation’s beneficiary and affiliated agencies.… Read more »

NW Division expansion warrants facility growth

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and its Northwest Division recently announced the expansion of its Oro Valley facility to larger premises. Due to increased participation in the many programs at the Northwest’s Ruth & Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life, this summer the center will move to 180… Read more »

Jewish groups prepare for the next Pittsburgh

Police respond to the site of a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Oct. 27, 2018. (Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Editor’s note: The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona convenes a community-wide security meeting yearly with members of local law enforcement and representatives of synagogues and Jewish community organizations. JFSA, in conjunction with the Jewish Community Roundtable and the Tucson Jewish Community Center, recently hired a part-time Jewish community security… Read more »

Notre-Dame will be rebuilt – but most European Jewish sites never will be

A Star of David stands in the Nozyk Synagogue, Warsaw's only surviving synagogue from before World War II and located in the city's former ghetto, April 12, 2018 (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

BUDAPEST (JTA) – Architecture and built heritage can be powerful symbols. Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the most famous and familiar buildings in the world, visited by an astonishing 30,000 people a day, or 13 million people a year. It is embedded in global collective consciousness and immortalized around the… Read more »

Netanyahu officially tasked with forming Israel’s next government

JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Reuven Rivlin has officially tasked Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, with forming Israel’s next government. Rivlin met Wednesday evening with Netanyahu at the president’s residence in Jerusalem hours after receiving the official results of last week’s national elections. Party leaders representing 65 of the 120… Read more »

Jennifer Lopez to perform in Israel for the first time

(JTA) — This time, don’t be fooled by the rocks that she’s got — Jennifer Lopez is set to perform in Israel for the first time. Concert promoters confirmed the rumor Wednesday. Lopez, 49, will play at Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park on Aug. 1. The pop star and actress… Read more »

Pete Buttigieg will no longer use the word ‘Pharisee’

(JTA) — Pete Buttigieg will no longer use the word “Pharisee” to refer to those he deems religious hypocrites, a campaign official said. Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, had called Vice President Mike Pence a Pharisee on multiple occasions because he claimed Pence… Read more »

More than a dozen right-wing groups want Trump to recognize an Israeli annexation of the West Bank

A Palestinian woman walks past a concrete barricade on the road that seperates an Israeli settlement and a Palestinian neighborhood inside the city of Hebron in the West Bank, Jan. 18, 2017. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

(JTA) — A coalition of more than a dozen conservative groups, most of them Jewish, sent a letter to President Donald Trump tacitly asking him to respect a potential Israeli annexation of West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is almost certainly headed to a fifth term after… Read more »

Meet the Korean-American woman who leads the Jewish Renewal movement

SooJi Min-Maranda is among the few people of color in visible leadership roles in the Jewish community. (J.D. Scott)

(JTA) — SooJi Min-Maranda rarely sees other Jewish people who look like her. “I often feel very isolated as a Jew of color living in the Midwest,” she said. Min-Maranda, who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and two children, was born in Korea but moved with… Read more »