Posts By Sara Harelson

PARIS (JTA) – French Jews mourning a Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment welcomed the presence of France’s interior minister, Gérard Collomb, at a vigil in her memory. “We appreciate authorities’ swift action for justice and continued support,” Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistoire Jewish group, said… Read more »

(Kveller via JTA) — The car is our place. Many of our most poignant family memories are set in my blue, messy, high-mileage Toyota Highlander — it is where the magic happens. While in transit, we’ve had seated dance parties, lots of laughs and our fair share of conflicts.… Read more »

(The Nosher via JTA) — I must have been about 6 or 7 years old, and I remember being eye level to my grandmother’s stove. I saw these white, round things frying up in oil. What I vividly remember was the distinct hole on the edge of these round… Read more »

(JTA) — Last April, Traore Kobili threw his Jewish neighbor to her death from her third-story home in Paris while calling her a demon and shouting about Allah. French authorities waited 170 days before they declared the killing of Sarah Halimi an anti-Semitic hate crime — and that was… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Engaging young people in their 20s and 30s, the so-called millennial generation, is a high priority for Jewish philanthropists. Some funders have banded together to create new initiatives, including free trips to Israel, with the express purpose of drawing members of this generation into Jewish life.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Pomegranate, a gourmet kosher supermarket in Brooklyn, spends $75,000 every year getting its kitchen ready for Passover. Hungarian Kosher Foods, a supermarket in Chicago, starts clearing its aisles for Passover eight weeks ahead of the holiday. The week before Passover, at Zabar’s, a Jewish favorite… Read more »

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (JTA) – Sitting on a couch near his locker at the Houston Astros’ spring training facility here in mid-March, Alex Bregman is reflecting about an encounter his father had at the World Series last fall. It was in Los Angeles, between innings of the opening… Read more »

(JTA) — Lightning struck Zach Braff in 2001. The up-and-coming Jewish actor, who had appeared in a few films — perhaps most notably a small role in Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” — landed the lead role of John “J.D.” Dorian in the hospital-based sitcom “Scrubs.” Along the way… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The organizers of the March for Our Lives, almost all of them under 20, had a gun control agenda packed with specifics. They were able to get 800,000 people on and off of this city’s Pennsylvania Avenue in three hours. They attracted A-list celebrities. They turned… Read more »

Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D.

Eminent Holocaust historian, scholar and author Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D., will be the keynote speaker at Jewish Family & Children’s Services 9th annual Celebration of Caring, Sunday, April 8. Lipstadt gained international recognition for defending the historical truth of the Holocaust in a precedent-setting lawsuit, tried in a British court.… Read more »

Tzuza Dance Company, which delighted the crowd at Tucson’s Israel festival in 2010, will return to perform at the Israel @ 70 Festival next month. The community-wide festival will be held Sunday, April 22, from 1-6 p.m. on the Jewish community campus at River and Dodge Roads. It is… Read more »

Rina Liebeskind

A decade as the director of education at Congregation Or Chadash has flown by for Rina Liebeskind. The congregation will honor her for her years of dedicated service with a “Flying Chai” tribute festival at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on April 15. “As the oldest of six children,… Read more »

An annual Holocaust Days of Remembrance Observance, hosted by the U.S. Army at Fort Huachuca, will be held Monday, April 9 at 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Gil Ribak, Ph.D., assistant professor of Judaic studies at University of Arizona, will give the keynote address. He will speak about the… Read more »

Visualize a typical action-packed day in the life of a hypothetical Jewish family in Tucson: drop off the toddlers at the synagogue pre-school, stop in at the Israel Center to see the latest on the upcoming festival, catch the performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Jewish day… Read more »

Set during the Spanish Civil War years before World War II, Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” tells the story of a valiant, but ultimately doomed, attempt by a group of republican rebels to launch an attack against the Fascist powers in Spain. Their heroism is often magnificent,… Read more »

At Tucson’s Israel @ 70 Festival next month, Tucsonans can try out a pair of smart glasses created by an Israeli company that enable blind or visually impaired people to read written words and recognize objects and faces. “Basically they point with their figure to a street sign or… Read more »

Alan Veingrad speaks at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Men’s Night Out event at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, March 6.

The journey from Pop Warner to the National Football League is a dream for many youngsters. It seemed an impossible dream for a lanky Jewish boy from Brooklyn in the ’70s. Alan Veingrad shared how mentors helped him make that dream come true — and how “community” ultimately intercepted… Read more »

Zikaron V’Tikvah.  Remembrance and hope. These are the words that best reflect the meaning of the The Butterfly Project. The Butterfly Project aims to remember the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust and the hope that through education, nothing this hateful will ever occur again. The Butterfly… Read more »

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson of Arizona State University will present “The Imperative to Heal: Judaism, Ethics & Biotechnology,” the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies’ 2018 Rabbi Marcus Breger Memorial Lecture, on Tuesday, March 27 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Today, diverse biomedical procedures constitute what we call… Read more »

Most of us need few excuses to make a batch of chocolate truffles, especially when coffee is involved. My take on chocolate espresso truffles combines a velvety chocolate base with just enough espresso flavor to give you your caffeine fix. The fact that this version is vegan, kosher for… Read more »