News

The Secular Humanist Jewish Circle will co-sponsor, with Freethought Arizona, two free talks by Herb Silverman, founder of The Secular Coalition for America.  Silverman will speak on Sunday, April 15, at 10 a.m. and at 1 p.m. at Banner Medical Center’s Duval Auditorium, 1501 N. Campbell Ave. The morning… Read more »

Joel Alpert with the English translation of a Yizkor book memorializing a lost Jewish community in Ukraine

Local publisher and genealogist Joel Alpert has expanded his credentials to include sleuth. On Friday, April 13, in a Jewish History Museum gallery chat at 11:30 a.m., he will reveal how he unraveled family mysteries, reconnecting people and events, through research. Focusing on a 70-year-old black and white film… Read more »

Temple Emanu-El continues its concert series with two notable performances later this month, “Music of the Shoah” and the “King David” oratorio. On Wednesday, April 11 at 7 p.m., the eve of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Temple Emanu-El will present a concert of Jewish music either composed during… Read more »

Author Paul Boorstin will discuss his novel, “David and the Philistine Woman,” at a brunch on Sunday, April 29 at 10 a.m. at Congregation Bet Shalom. Critics compare the novel, which reimagines the Biblical story of David and Goliath, to Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent.” The program is co-sponsored… Read more »

On Sunday, April 22, Tucson will celebrate Yom Ha’atzmut, Israel’s 70th Independence Day, with the Israel@70: A Living Bridge festival, featuring live music, food, and activities for all ages. Admission is free for the festival, which will take place on a field between the Tucson Jewish Community Center and… Read more »

Tucson’s latest import from Tiberias, Israel, is Talya Zandberg, the University of Arizona’s new tennis star. Zandberg began playing tennis at age 5, inspired by watching her older brother play. After serving two years in the Israeli Defense Forces, she committed to continuing her tennis career and furthering her… Read more »

Tucson’s Partnership2Gether program, part of the Weintraub Israel Center, builds a bridge between Tucson and its partner communities in Israel, the city of Kiryat Malachi and the Hof Ashkelon region. “And there is no doubt, over the past few years, we have built the program to a point that… Read more »

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 »

The World Economic Forum calls Israel a “tech titan.” Israeli tech companies raised $4.8 billion in venture capital last year. Things many of us use daily — the Intel PC processor, the USB flash drive and Google’s Suggestion function — all were invented in Israel. The Arizona Israel Technology… Read more »

The Israel Center has surpassed all our expectations, in terms of creating a connection between Tucsonans and Israel,” says Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona President and CEO Stuart Mellan. The Israel Center began as a way to bring the cultural richness of Israel to Arizona and engage the local… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Meeting last month with Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came away satisfied that he and the American president were in agreement on a wide range of issues, including Syria, where Israel wants to limit Iranian influence as the Syrian civil war wraps up. “We don’t have… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s been a busy, confounding week for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the question of the African migrants. On Monday afternoon, after months of threats to deport the lot of them, Netanyahu said he reached an agreement with the United Nations that would have resettled half… Read more »

 (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is freezing an agreement made with the United Nations that would have relocated thousands of African asylum seekers to Western countries. His decision leaves in limbo the fate of up to 40,000 African asylum seekers in Israel; an Israeli government plan to deport them… Read more »

(JTA) — With Passover here, leaders of the Conservative movement are engaged in their own exodus. The CEOs of the movement’s rabbinic and congregational umbrella groups are both stepping down. Next month, for the first time in years, there will be a contested election for one of the top… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — When the smoke from the rifles of Israeli sharpshooters and the firebombs thrown by Gaza Palestinians cleared in the wake of the Palestinian March of Return, there were at least 15 Palestinians dead and hundreds of protesters injured. Israel, meanwhile, had a huge PR mess. Israeli… Read more »

(JTA) — One year after Israel’s establishment, in the dead of night, three students ascended a tower at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and raised the Israeli flag. The next morning, the Conservative rabbinical school’s administration took it down. That act of surreptitious Zionist protest was one… Read more »

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 »

(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 »

Jack Wertheimer (Courtesy of Wertheimer)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Large donors and foundations are responsible for an increasing share of American Jewish giving, and are exercising greater influence on Jewish communal priorities than they were in previous generations, according to a new study. The mega-donor trend was quantified in the study of American Jewish… Read more »

(JTA) — Israeli doctors performed surgeries to fix severe spinal deformities as part of a weeklong medical mission to Ethiopia. Eight doctors, two nurses and one physical therapist from the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem traveled on the mission last week to the city of Mekelle, in the African… Read more »