President Donald Trump before boarding Marine One and departing the White House, Feb. 3, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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 »
An Israeli settler argues with police officers evacuating the West Bank outpost of Amona, Feb. 1, 2107. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
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 »
Bryan Davis, executive director of the Jewish History Museum, leads cadets from the Southern Arizona Law Enforcement Training Center on a tour of the Holocaust History Center, Jan. 11, 2017. (Courtesy Jewish History Museum)
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 »
Local poet Brandon Shimoda speaks at the Holocaust History Center on Jan. 20. (Samuel Ace)
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 »
Tucson Hebrew High students Rachel Davenport
(left) and Ann Tumarkin
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 »
David Alexander Johnston, who plays two Holocaust survivors, takes Germany up on its offer of return, as citizens (Lucille Petty and Steve Wood) bear witness in ‘Lebensraum.’ (Tim Fuller)
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 »
Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said the current standards don't make sense in today's world of intermarried couples actively participating in synagogue life. (Mike Diamond Photography)
(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 »
Anat Hoffman being arrested after saying the Shema prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Oct. 16, 2012. (Women of the Wall)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — One year ago, we thought we had made history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government passed the Western Wall agreement, for the first time granting official recognition to non-Orthodox Jewish streams and women’s rights at Judaism’s holiest site. We were proud of achieving a historic compromise because… Read more »
Taylor Clearfield holding a sign, and her daughter, at a protest of the refugee ban at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Jan. 27, 2017. (Courtesy of Clearfield)
CHICAGO (JTA) — Taylor Clearfield went to the airport Friday to welcome a Syrian refugee family. The next day, she returned with a sign to protest the ban on refugees entering the United States. President Donald Trump had enacted the prohibition via executive order on Fridayafternoon, between Clearfield’s two… Read more »
The Boas-Pais family, who perished in the Holocaust, in front of their home in the Frisian city of Harlingen, the Netherlands, before World War II. (Courtesy of the Annehuis ter Harlingen)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The Jews of Friesland, a region in the northern Netherlands, are not known for stories with happy endings. During the Holocaust, Friesland’s vibrant Jewish community was forever obliterated, including its endemic customs and distinct Yiddish dialect. It is one of the starkest examples of how the Holocaust… Read more »
A Holocaust survivor shows her number tattoo. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Where’s Jared Kushner? Supporters of President Donald Trump have often defended his election campaign against charges of anti-Semitism by noting he has an Orthodox Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. Jews on the right are excited about Kushner’s role as a special adviser to the president, assuming… Read more »
Demonstrators at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York protest
President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from certain countries, Jan. 28, 2017. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — A year after they submitted their application for asylum in the United States, Shahi and his mother expected to be let in. As Iranian Jews who applied for asylum through a federally recognized agency for refugee status, their case was expected to be simple. Shahi (not… Read more »
Tal and Miri Zlotnitsky, with their son, Jacob, left, hold up a poster welcoming Muslim arrivals at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, Jan. 28, 2017. (Ron Kampeas)
DULLES, Va. (JTA) – The Israeli-born high-tech millionaire gathered his family after turning on CNN. The rabbi who leads an interfaith group got a text from a Muslim friend. The corporate lawyer was tracking a pro-bono email list she’s on. Within a few hours, all of them had descended on Dulles Airport,… Read more »
People protest President Donald Trump’s executive order in immigration at Los Angeles International Airport, Jan. 28, 2017.(Daniela Gerson)
(JTA) — The U.S. ban on refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries has affected several Jewish families, according to the refugee support and advocacy group HIAS. The ban, which came Friday in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, has plunged into further uncertainty the lives of a Jewish… Read more »
Marchers with the National Council of Jewish Women and other Jewish organizations assembled on the National Mall for the Women’s March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017. (Ron Sachs)
Photo credit: Ron Sachs
WASHINGTON (JTA) – “Cantor Kaufman!” Rabbi Jonah Pesner shouted across the intersection of 3rd and D in Washington’s Northwest quadrant, packed sidewalk to sidewalk with women in pink pussycat hats and their male friends. “A song!” Jason Kaufman, the cantor at Beth El in Alexandria, Virginia, draped in a… Read more »
Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold meeting with Tehran Children in Israel, February 1943. (Jewish Agency for Israel)
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (JTA) — After starving for months in Siberia, 5-year-old Natan Rom thought he was in paradise when he arrived in this colorful trading hub in Central Asia. It was 1940, and Rom, along with his parents and older sister Ziva, was one of countless Jewish refugees… Read more »
