News

Weintraubs fund new healthcare scholarships for staff at Handmaker

Maria Martinez, LPN, is one of the first Handmaker staff members enrolled in the Diane and Ronald Weintraub Scholarship Fund.
April 19, 2018 / Debe Campbell, AJP Editorial Assistant

Staff at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging are being offered opportunities to improve their careers in healthcare through the generosity of community philanthropists Diane and Ron Weintraub. The couple recently collaborated with Handmaker President and CEO Arthur Martin to establish parameters for the grant. It offers individuals up… Read more »

Nazi SS veterans hold an annual march on this square in Latvia. This woman is fighting back.

A Holocaust commemoration ceremony at Riga's Freedom Monument, Nov. 30, 2017. (Courtesy of Lolita Tomsone)
April 17, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

RIGA, Latvia (JTA) — Each year on March 16, a macabre event unfolds on the square around this capital city’s most famous monument. Known as the Memorial for Latvian Legionnaires, it is the world’s only march by veterans of Nazi Germany’s elite SS unit. A handful of them, including… Read more »

Pro-Israel stalwart Ben Cardin aims fire at Trump and Netanyahu in J Street talk

An attendee at the J Street conference in Washington, D.C., Aprll 16, 2018. (J Street)
April 17, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Ben Cardin, a pro-Israel stalwart in the Democratic Party, lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a J Street conference, breaking with a party tradition of avoiding confrontations with Israel’s leaders. Cardin, D-Md., in his speech Monday stood by his bill that would… Read more »

Does Judaism allow torture? These college students think so.

Freshman Abraham Waserstein, right, who organized the Collegiate Moot Beit Din competition, shakes hands with the winning team at Princeton University, Sunday, April 15. (Courtesy of the Princeton Center for Jewish Life)
April 16, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

PRINCETON, New Jersey (JTA) — Does Jewish law allow — or even require — torture? That’s the question six teams of college students from across the country set out to answer at a moot Jewish court competition at Princeton University Sunday. And they came back with a unanimous response:… Read more »

An employee at the Anne Frank House asked to wear a kippah. He waited 6 months for an answer.

Tourists lining up outside the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, June 15, 2015. (Lex Van Lieshout/AFP/Getty Images)
April 16, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — When Barry Vingerling asked his employers at the Anne Frank House whether it was okay for him to start coming to work wearing a kippah, he did it mostly as a courtesy. “I hadn’t expected this to be an issue,” Vingerling, 25, told the Dutch-Jewish NIW… Read more »

How Washington, D.C. got a bunch of new kosher restaurants

Maharat Ruth Friedman with the manager of Khepra's Raw Food Juice Bar, a vegan restaurant she and Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld recently certified kosher. (Courtesy of Friedman)
April 16, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — For years, the nation’s capital had only one full-fledged kosher restaurant. But as of this week, that changed. The clergy at Ohev Shalom-The National Synagogue, a Washington D.C. Modern Orthodox congregation, have given kosher certification to three vegan restaurants in the District (along with two others in the suburbs).… Read more »

51 NYU student groups pledge to boycott Israel and its pro-Israel backers

The New York University campus in downtown Manhattan (Jonathan71/Wikimedia Commons)
April 13, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — A pledge by 51 student groups at New York University to boycott Israel and two pro-Israel campus organizations is a sign of “animosity” at the private campus, a Jewish student leader said. In the resolution, which was released Monday, the student organizations express their support… Read more »

Separated by the Holocaust, old friends find each other 76 years later

Simon Gronowski and Alice Weit, who had a reunion 76 years after being separated by the Holocaust, were honored at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, April 12, 2018. (Bart Bartholomew/Simon Wiesenthal Center)
April 13, 2018 / Gabrielle Birkner, JTA

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — When Alice (Gerstel) Weit last saw Simon Gronowski, she was 13 and he was 10 and, by Alice’s recollection, “the most adorable boy ever.” When they reunited this week, 76 years later, “I opened the door and there he was, a frail, little old man,” she… Read more »

After its latest strike on Syria, Israel’s cozy relationship with Russia could be over

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint news conference at the Israeli leader's Jerusalem residence, June 25, 2012. (Kobi Gideon / GPO via Getty Images)
April 10, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — Israel attacked Syria on Monday, just like it (reportedly) has countless times before. The difference now is that Russia is angry about the strike — and showing it. Russia has called out Israel publicly, condemned the attack and summoned the Israeli ambassador to “discuss developments.” The alleged strike, which the Israeli government has not… Read more »

Harvard’s first-ever summit on Israel brings Amar’e Stoudemire and good news to campus

Amar'e Stoudemire, left, speaking with Jon Frankel at the Israel Summit at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 8, 2018. (Collin Howell/Israel Summit at Harvard)
April 10, 2018 / Penny Schwartz, JTA

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (JTA) — During his freshman year at Harvard University, Max August thought twice about expressing his support for Israel among his classmates. He was uncomfortable with the vitriolic language and tactics of anti-Israel protests he encountered. “I was worried about putting myself out there and being the… Read more »

Iceland welcomes its first rabbi while considering a ban on circumcision
April 9, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA
Rabbi Avi and Mushky Feldman with their daughters in Reykjavik, March 26, 2018. (Courtesy of Avi Feldman)

REYKJAVIK, Iceland  (JTA) — At a windswept harbor of this Nordic capital, a bearded man wearing a black hat dips eating utensils into the icy water while hissing from pain induced by the bitter cold. Perplexed by the spectacle, a caretaker helpfully offers to let the man and his… Read more »

Jewish-American soldiers didn’t just fight Nazis in WWII — they endured anti-Semitism

Rabbi Chaplain Robert Marcus, far left, with Jewish soldiers in 1944. (Tamara Green and Roberta Marcus Leiner)
April 9, 2018 / Curt Schleier, JTA

(JTA) — “GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II” begins as many Holocaust documentaries do, with a history of the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany mixed with what is now standard archival footage of Brownshirts and Kristallnacht. Throw in interviews with some Jewish celebrities — in this… Read more »

Israelis want a solution to the African migrants crisis, though few want them to stay

African migrants protesting in Tel Aviv, June 10, 2017. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
April 9, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

(JTA) — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked back an agreement with the United Nations last week to resettle abroad at least half of the African migrants seeking asylum in his country, it did not play well with the majority of Israelis. But don’t assume that means the… Read more »

‘Diary of Anne Frank,’ coming to ATC, never more relevant

Naama Potok as Edith Frank and Anna Lentz as Anne Frank in Arizona Theatre Company’s upcoming production of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ (Goat Factory Media Entertainment)
April 5, 2018 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor

David Ira Goldstein spent a week in Amsterdam this October as he prepared to direct “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which opens at Arizona Theatre Company later this month. Along with the Anne Frank House, the former ATC artistic director visited the National Holocaust Museum, The Resistance Museum, synagogues… Read more »

Passion for social justice inspires COC scholar
April 5, 2018 / Kaye Patchett, Special to the AJP
Avram Mandell

Doing the right thing and making your life count is the focus of Tzedek America Director and Founder Avram Mandell’s message during his April 13-15 visit to Congregation Or Chadash as the second Mitch Dorson Scholar-in-Residence. “Mitch was director of education at Temple Emanu-El and a history teacher at… Read more »

Art created at UA Hillel Holocaust vigil will be reminder for public schools

Attendees at the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation Holocaust vigil decorated frames bearing lines from a poem by Pavel Friedman, who died in Auschwitz. (Sara Harelson)
April 5, 2018 / Sara Harelson, AJP Intern

Flags and museum pods lined a section of the University of Arizona Mall this week, as volunteers took turns reading the names of lives lost in the Holocaust. The University of Arizona Hillel Foundation hosts a 24-hour Holocaust vigil every year in memory of the six million Jews whose… Read more »

Yom HaShoah rites to mark ghetto resistance

‘Freedom Fighter’ by Robert Russin, in the Tucson Jewish Community Center Sculpture Garden (Courtesy Jewish History Museum)
April 5, 2018 / Debe Campbell, AJP Editorial Assistant

“Resistance and Resilience: Facing Hatred with Courage Yesterday and Today,” marking the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, will be the theme of this year’s commemorative observance of Yom HaShoah at Congregation Anshei Israel on Sunday, April 15 at 2 p.m. The uprising lasted from April 19 to… Read more »

Camp builds character, resilience says new Camp J director
April 5, 2018 /

The Tucson Jewish Community Center’s Camp J — the only day camp in town accredited by the American Camping Association — is gearing up for summer with a new director, Josh Shenker; 11 specialty camps, including a new junior robotics camp; traditional camps that cater to four age groups;… Read more »

Annual forum will address sexual violence
April 5, 2018 /

The annual local leaders’ forum breakfast will be held on Friday, April 20, addressing “How does our community respond to sexual violence?” The discussion with local leaders is grounded in the #MeToo movement in Tucson, says Jewish History Museum program coordinator Jamie Luria. Panelists will include April Ignacio, Indivisible… Read more »