Tucsonan Charlotte Low with "the Boss" who oversaw her volunteer job on an Israel Defense Forces base. This is not your worried bubbe’s idea of a tourist tour of the Holy Land. For that you get one picture on a camel (careful!) and stay in four-star hotels. If you crave an insider’s view, being a Volunteer For Israel is adventurous and transformational. Serious fun. My own… Read more »
Jennifer Selco On the day of the first seder, the smell of onions from my childhood home was noticeable from halfway down the block. Inside, you could hear the songs of Cindy Paley’s “Singing Seder” cassette, the pounding of walnuts, and laughter from a funny story just shared. My parents, grandparents,… Read more »
(Pixabay)
(Kveller via JTA) — The phone rang at midnight, jolting me awake. I smacked my husband in his sleep, annoyed that it was probably his office again, calling with some major network outage. Only it wasn’t his company; it was the local township’s police department, informing me, as a… Read more »
It started the day of the Oakland Women’s March with the same sense of hope and anticipation as loved ones who were marching across the country. As fate would have it, I was putting the finishing touches on a 1,000-piece Wonder Woman puzzle our family had been toiling on… Read more »
Metal silhouettes of soldiers positioned as if they were protecting an abandoned Israeli outpost overlooking the border with Syria.
Driving up the mountainous road to Mt. Bental, I feel the temperature drop and the wind pick up as we reach the 3,800-foot peak where an abandoned Israeli army outpost, complete with bombed-out bunkers, sits. Anyone willing to ascend this mountain will be treated to a better understanding of… Read more »
(Kveller via JTA) — After experiencing a yearlong medical crisis due to complications with ulcerative colitis, my daughter, Nava, made a complete recovery. Miraculously, after a tremendous amount of hard work, she resumed her life and was able to live it exactly as she had in the past. Now… Read more »
Tucson’s Men’s Next Gen Group and Chai Life Men’s Group on a San Diego fishing boat. Back row (L-R): Rob Glaser, Alex Chaffin, David Goldstein, Gary Kippur, Nolan Shifren, Barry Baker, Christian Yoder, Jeff Katz, Matt Landau, Daniel Ash, Mike Ash, Doron Sears, Lex Sears, Paul Baker, Michael Shiner; front row: Tom Warne, Steve Silverman, Larry Selig, Josh Hurand, Jeff Wortzel, Bobby Present, Adam Goldstein, Stuart Mellan, Mitch Pozez, Ben Pozez, Josh Silverman, Ben Silverman, Damion Alexander, Todd Sadow
The Tucson Jewish community’s Men’s Next Gen group and the Chai Life Men’s Group took a weekend in San Diego Nov. 3-5 to build intergenerational relationships. While the trip included a fishing excursion (perhaps with a small wager on who would haul in the largest fish), great food, and… Read more »
An heirloom Havdalah spice box is displayed with photographs of Esther Blumenfeld’s late father, Rabbi Karl Richter. (Courtesy Esther Blumenfeld)
After the death of his youngest sister in Stuttgart, Germany, my father thought deeply about the meaning of life and death, and the idea of becoming a rabbi became a calling. The 17-year-old Karl Richter, with youthful enthusiasm, decided to do his university as well as rabbinical studies at… Read more »
Sharon Megdal, center, with fellow Central Arizona Project board members Jennifer Brown and Mark Taylor at the ‘Cutting-Edge Solutions to Wicked Water Problems’ conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, September 2017. (Courtesy Jennifer Brown)
I recently had the great honor and pleasure of co-chairing the international water conference “Cutting-Edge Solutions to Wicked Water Problems.” Held Sept. 10-11 at Tel Aviv University’s beautiful Porter School of Environmental Studies building, the conference was jointly convened by the American Water Resources Association and the Water Research… Read more »
I know something about most Jewish holidays. I can tell you that Hanukkah is about miracles, Passover is about slavery and freedom, and Shavuot is about cheesecake. (I have no idea why, but when it comes to matters of cheesecake, it is not mine to question.) The one holiday… Read more »
Tracy Salkowitz at a hotel in Dublin, Ireland, adorned with mysterious Jewish stars
Remember “Where’s Waldo?” It’s a fun time looking at maps and pictures and finding funny looking Waldo. Well, I do my own version whenever I travel and I call it “Seeking Seymour.” My default is to always look out for links to Jewish history, culture and people. When we… Read more »
Carolin Haase Atchison For more than three years, I have been researching my family’s history — and I’m still at it. When I received the results of my DNA test a couple of years ago, I was surprised, like the actors in the Ancestry TV ads. Instead of being of mainly German… Read more »
Binyamin Wood-Isenberg
The train was packed. It was rush hour on a Thursday evening traveling back from work in Manhattan. Most people had in their ear phones, some had out books, and a few people stared blankly into space. As I sat there with the Hebrew text of Toras Menachem on… Read more »
Incoming Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Campaign Chair Ronnie Sebold with Sonia, a teenage Ethiopian immigrant, at the Ben Shemen Youth Village in Israel on July 13 (Courtesy Ronnie Sebold)
A few months ago, I accepted the daunting responsibility to chair the 2018 campaign for the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. I have been a staunch supporter of the Federation since I moved to Tucson 37 years ago, and having recently retired from Tucson Hebrew Academy as their director… Read more »
During a 2006 visit to the Jordanian capital of Amman, JTA's Uriel Heilman underwent some invasive security checks when he visited the Israeli Embassy there. (Uriel Heilman)
(JTA) — “Drop your pants.” The order came curt and clipped, and it caught me by surprise. What?! “Drop your pants,” he repeated sternly. I had been subject to the indignities of Israeli security before, but never this. I was in a holding area of the Israeli… Read more »
(Kveller via JTA) — I took a poll of my friends when I was pregnant. We run in an observant crowd in Manhattan, and most of our friends have the kinds of names you’d find multiple times over at your Jewish summer camp: Adams and Davids, Elianas and Yaels.… Read more »
(Kveller via JTA) — My baby is 14 months now, talking like a maniac and taking very halting first steps (his development pattern echoes his highly verbal and unathletic parents). And in many ways so far, the past few months have been more challenging than anything I… Read more »
(Kveller via JTA) — It is one of those days. I wake up on the wrong side of the bed. To every question posed to me in the morning, I immediately answer, “NO! No I can’t help you!” Even when it makes no sense, even when my children aren’t… Read more »
Cnaan Liphshiz, his wife and eldest son in a tulip field near Amsterdam, April 3, 2016. (Courtesy of Liphshiz)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Considering Marine Le Pen’s historical gains in the French presidential elections, the Dutch far-right’s rise and the assault on ritual slaughter in Belgium, this spring is shaping up to be a life-changing time for Europe — its religious minorities in particular. In other words,… Read more »
I recently completed the reading of all 15 volumes of “The Cambridge History of English Literature” by A.W. Ward and A.R. Waller. It took me several years. When it came to the history of religious writing having to do with Christianity and its various forms and manifestations, the… Read more »
