News

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – One state. Flexibility. Two states. Hold back on settlements. Stop Iran. When President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What a press conference! But wait. In the Age of Trump, every post-event analysis requires a double take. Not so much “did he mean what… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – On June 27, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1oth Circuit, based in Denver, handed down a decision that would make history a year later when it was upheld by the Supreme Court: Closely held corporations have the same religious freedom rights as… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Reform Jewish leaders largely oppose President Donald Trump’s policies — and they haven’t been shy about saying so since his election. They’ve marched in the streets by the thousands. They’ve protested at airports. And last week, some were arrested in front of a Trump hotel… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Benjamin Netanyahu is going to stride in through the White House front door. Donald Trump is not going to grimace while Netanyahu lectures. The talk in Washington this week, at least in Israel-obsessive circles, is about how the Bibi-Donald bromance, taking center stage Feb. 15 at… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Over 100 years ago, Barnett Levine was greeted by the New York skyline and the Statue of Liberty as he arrived in the United States, having fled anti-Semitism and pogroms in his native Poland. On Sunday, his grandson saw those very same sights when he… Read more »

  TEL AVIV (JTA) – Defending his executive order directing the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, President Donald Trump pointed to Israel as a model, saying “a wall protects.” With another swipe of his pen two days later, on Jan. 27, Trump enacted a… Read more »

(JTA) — With old favorites knocked out of France’s presidential race and the far-right National Front party making worrisome gains, many Jews are joining fellow voters in supporting Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old independent politician and surprising front-runner. A banker who is 18 years younger than the average age of… Read more »

Updated 2.14: Proceeds from the bake sale will go to the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation’s efforts to help Syrian children.  Find out more about their work at https://foundation.sams-usa.net/?home=true. The students of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies modern Hebrew program will be hosting a bake sale to the benefit of… Read more »

(JTA) — The Israeli parliament passed a bill that would retroactively legalize some West Bank settlements built on private Palestinian land. Knesset lawmakers voted 60-52 in favor of the measure late Monday to legalize some 4,000 settler homes. The law, which prevents the government from demolishing the homes, comes less than a… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israeli settlements are no big problem. Wait — maybe they are, after all. The Iran deal is trash. No, the deal is here to stay, despite being “weak.” On Feb. 2, the White House pronounced on Israel’s announced settlement expansion that it “may not help”… Read more »

AMONA, West Bank (JTA) — In a dramatic clash with the settlement movement at this hilltop outpost, the state seemed to have won.  Over two sometimes violent days, Feb. 1 and 2, security forces evacuated the residents of Amona, along with hundreds of protesters, as ordered by Israel’s High Court of Justice. Yet… Read more »

Tucson’s Holocaust History Center is raising the consciousness of new law enforcement officers. The “What You Do Matters: Lessons from the Holocaust” program marks a new educational partnership between the Jewish History Museum/Holocaust History Center and law enforcement in Arizona. The classes focus on teaching new cadets about the… Read more »

More than 100 people packed the Holocaust History Center at the Jewish History Museum on Friday, Jan. 20 for a gallery chat, “States of Exile: Arizona’s place, and the place of Arizona, in the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans,” with Tucson poet Brandon Shimoda. After acknowledging the ancestors of… Read more »

As part of a campaign in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, members of the Tucson Holocaust Survivors group at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, teens from Tucson Hebrew High and staff at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona joined over 200,000 people worldwide posting photos holding “We Remember” signs… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish Community Center will hold a series of four “Celebration of Heritage” concerts beginning Feb. 15. Roza Simkhovich, a longtime community volunteer and former Tucson J board member, will host the series. All performances will be held at 6:30 p.m. and include: Wednesday, Feb. 15  — The… Read more »

Invisible Theatre will stage “Lebensraum” by award-winning playwright Israel Horovitz Feb. 7-19. The play is set at the dawn of the 21st century. The new German chancellor invites 6 million Jews from around the world to make Germany their home as a gesture of reconciliation. Three actors play more… Read more »

At least 17 Jewish community centers across the United States were targeted with bomb threats in the third wave of such mass disruption this month. Paul Goldenberg, the director of Secure Community Network — an affiliate of the Jewish federations of North America, which advises Jewish groups and institutions… Read more »

Rabbi Susan Silverman

Activism and family values are in Rabbi Susan Silverman’s DNA. Raised in a secular Jewish home in New Hampshire by parents committed to liberal politics, she is active on behalf of asylum seekers in Israel, advocates for liberal Judaism and is founding director of Second Nurture, which promotes adoption… Read more »

  (JTA) — Responding to a rising number of interfaith families, Conservative synagogues will be voting on a measure from their umbrella body that would allow congregations to admit non-Jews as members. Currently, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s Standards for Congregational Practice restrict synagogue membership to Jews. But the new language, which congregations… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — “Five million non-Jews died in the Holocaust.” It’s a statement that shows up regularly in declarations about the Nazi era. It was implied in a Facebook post by the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesperson’s unit last week marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it was asserted… Read more »