News

Drowning is still a leading cause of death for children under 12 years of age. The authors of the Talmud recognized the importance of learning to swim when they specified it as one of the three things parents must teach their children (Kiddushin 29a), along with Torah and how… Read more »

Peter Hayes

The Holocaust History Center at the Jewish History Museum will explore “The Holocaust: What Do We Need to Know Now?” with a free lecture on Monday, March 13 at 10 a.m. Peter Hayes, chair of the academic committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will identify the central questions… Read more »

Doctors should be more like gardeners than mechanics, says physician, author and historian Victoria Sweet, M.D., Ph.D. An advocate of “slow medicine,” she believes patients’ well-being can become a casualty of today’s emphasis on high-tech, high-pressure medical care. Sweet will be the keynote speaker at the Eighth Annual Cindy… Read more »

The Jewish History Museum/Holocaust History Center hosted its first naturalization ceremony on Friday, Feb. 17. Barbara Brumer, board president of the Jewish History Museum/Holocaust History Center, was one of the 26 people who became a United States citizen that day.  The setting was perfect for this type of ceremony,… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump reportedly said that a wave of threats against Jewish communal institutions may be a false flag. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish and a Democrat, described a meeting of state attorney generals and Trump on Tuesday to BuzzFeed. Trump called the… Read more »

The kosher consumer is both blessed and inundated by the multitude of kosher certification labels and symbols available today, says Rabbi Israel Becker of Congregation Chofetz Chayim and the Southwest Torah Institute. Even more intriguing, there are hundreds of food products that are kosher even without a kosher label.… Read more »

Dina Gold grew up hearing her grandmother’s tales of the glamorous life in Berlin she led before the Nazis came to power, and her dreams of recovering a huge building she claimed belonged to the family, though she had no papers to prove ownership. Gold will speak about her… Read more »

The advisory council of the Women’s Philanthropy of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will present the 11th annual Bryna Zehngut Mitzvot Award, recognizing an outstanding Jewish teenage girl, to Zoe Holtzman on March 5 at the Women’s Philanthropy “Connections” brunch. The council, which includes past Women’s Philanthropy chairs… Read more »

Matza & More, a project of Jewish Family & Children’s Services, will again serve more than 200 families in need. On March 31, volunteers will pack Passover bags for Tucson-area families who otherwise could not afford food and other items for a seder. The bags will be filled with… Read more »

Jewish Family & Children’s Services will highlight its book, “To Tell Our Stories: Holocaust Survivors of Southern Arizona” at the Tucson Festival of Books on March 11 and 12. Visitors to the JFCS  booth (#244) also can create Passover greeting cards for Holocaust survivors and Matza & More recipients.… Read more »

Raised in a kosher household, vegan Sunny Anne Holliday enjoys all of the dishes served in her restaurant, Lovin’ Spoonfuls — including country fried chicken, spaghetti and meatballs and cheeseburgers. Huh? Everything on the menu is meat- and dairy-free, says Holliday, but her savory dishes and decadent bakery items,… Read more »

“Life has a way of pulling us from our essence, our center. Sometimes it is simply everyday routines and distractions that grind us down, taking us on a path we do not want to travel. When this happens, we may feel a bit lost, aimless, overwhelmed or even ‘burned… Read more »

Local businessman and community leader Bill Holmes, who died on June 18, 2016 at age 58 of a brain aneurysm,  often credited his success and his volunteer spirit to his early experience traveling with Up With People, a global nonprofit music and service education organization. Up With People has… Read more »

The joy of Purim commemorates the survival of the Jewish people from a plot to annihilate them in ancient Persia, as recorded in the Megillah, the Book of Esther. But the joy goes beyond the events of ancient times. Jews have survived over and over again, in a world… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish Community Center was on lockdown for about 90 minutes Monday evening after a caller claimed there were explosives set to go off in the parking lot. The call was part of the latest wave of bomb threats targeting JCCs and other Jewish institutions across the country… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for the community’s policy groups, and J Street, the liberal Middle East peace lobby, held conferences this weekend about seven blocks apart. Downtown D.C. is pleasantly people-free on weekends, and the weather, weirdly unseasonable, was mild, so… Read more »

LAS VEGAS (JTA) – Republican Jews have President Donald Trump to thank for their party’s renewed dominance of Washington politics. So what do they think of him? Marlyn Appelbaum paused to contemplate the question at the opening of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s confab at the Venetian resort hotel here Friday evening. Then she… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The race to lead the Democratic National Committee is nothing if not granular. Among the leading candidates Tom Perez, the former labor secretary, says “every ZIP code counts.” Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, touts his “50 plus” states strategy. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.,… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The group at the forefront of “resisting the Trump agenda” started in the middle of December with a single document circulated among friends. One that was “poorly formatted” and “full of typos,” in the words of one of its authors, Leah Greenberg. As of this week,… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Noah Roth likes to recall two moments  from Israeli marathons in which he’s raced: a competitor in Jerusalem breezing by him in 2010 wearing all-black, haredi Orthodox garb but for a white athletic shirt; and a Russian woman on this city’s Allenby Street who last… Read more »