Firefighters and rescue personnel at the scene of a bus bombing in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem, April 18, 2016. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — At least 21 people were injured in a bus bombing in Jerusalem, police said, in the first such attack in Israel in years. A city bus exploded and went up in flames Monday evening on a major thoroughfare in the southern end of the capital. The blast… Read more »
“The Good Jew” explored at conference A meeting of the western branch of the American Academy of Religion was held at the University of Arizona April 1-3. A panel presentation April 3, “The Good Jew: Rabbinic Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives” was moderated by Max Strassfeld, assistant professor of religious… Read more »
Simone Zimmerman (Facebook)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders’ campaign suspended its new Jewish outreach director over the tone of her past criticism of Israel. “She has been suspended while we investigate the matter further,” Michael Briggs, a campaign spokesman, said Thursday, referring to Simone Zimmerman. Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist,… Read more »
(Copyright Anne Lowe)
Tucsonan Anne Lowe created “Miriam Dancing With Her Timbrel” for the AJP, illustrating a poem she wrote some years ago. … Read more »
Brooklyn resident Charles Lenchner, left, and Rabbi Iris Richman, a founder of Rabbis for Bernie, were among those at a Jewish Sanders campaign event in Manhattan, April 10, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
NEW YORK (JTA) – Phil Aroneanu is a second-generation American Jew whose parents came to America as immigrants seeking refuge from an oppressive Communist regime in Eastern Europe. Aroneanu himself was born in New York City and later moved to Vermont. It’s a biography that to some extent mirrors… Read more »
Isaak Koschland, director of Jewish Day School, Ichenhausen, Germany (Courtesy Holocaust History Center)
Child victims will be the focus of the annual community Yom HaShoah commemoration, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, which will be held Sunday, May 1, at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. This year’s program, “They Were Children… Read more »
(L-R) Cantorial Soloist Nichole Chorny, Rabbi Robert Eisen and Education & Youth Director Rabbi Ruven Barkan read the Megillah at Congregation Anshei Israel’s Purim Palooza party on March 23. Snapshots of some local Purim celebrations around Tucson. … Read more »
Estelle Darnault as Mary Lou in “Blind Date à la Juive”
The Arizona International Film Festival, running now through May 1, is celebrating its 25th year with films from 25 countries. Revolving around the theme “Bridging Cultures,” 30 full length features and 58 shorts in a variety of categories are scheduled at nine downtown venues. Among the films is “Blind… Read more »
Hollywood scriptwriter Herb Tucker (David Alexander Johnston) explains to his girlfriend Steffy (Susan Kovitz) why he doesn’t want to get married again. (Tim Fuller) Invisible Theatre will stage Neil Simon’s comedy, “I Ought to Be in Pictures,” April 19-May 1. Ticket information is available at 882-9721 or invisibletheatre.com.… Read more »
Two members of the Tucson Jewish Community Center’s department of children, youth and family engagement will lead a workshop on “active listening” at “Adolescence to Independence,” a conference on empowering youth sponsored by Arizona’s Children Association, which will be held at the Tucson J on Friday, May 6. Scott… Read more »
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s board development committee, chaired by Eric Schindler, has recommended the following slate of officers for the 2016-2017 program year: Tom Warne, chair of the board; Eric Schindler, vice chair/board development; Helaine Levy, vice chair; Jim Wezelman, treasurer/secretary; Kathryn Unger, immediate past chair. Also… Read more »
(L-R) Rachel Davenport, Max Baruch, Alyssa Silva, Julie Zorn and Avi Erbst at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona council meeting March 29 at Temple Emanu-El.
(Karen Schaffner/AJP)
For local Jewish community organizations to reach and attract new members, specifically young Jewish adults, leaders must learn to use the tools of social media, such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. That was the message of “A Whole New World … Engagement of Young Adults and Young Families,”… Read more »
Simone Zimmerman says her fellow millennials "are angry" about what is happening in Israel. (Courtesy of J Street)
NEW YORK (JTA) – Simone Zimmerman, the Bernie Sanders campaign’s newly hired national Jewish outreach coordinator, is quite familiar with the American Jewish establishment. She is used to fighting against it. During the 2014 Gaza war, Zimmerman was one of the leaders of a group of young Jews that held… Read more »
Tel Aviv (TPS) – A torrent of Israeli taxes are about to hit the global tech giants Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay as new directives were announced on Monday by the Israel Tax Authority (ITA). The new policy follows civil protests against the tax rate paid by the large… Read more »
Ted Cruz at the Jewish Center of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 7, 2016. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
LAS VEGAS (JTA) – Ted Cruz came here to woo Republican Jews over the weekend, and in the absence of his opponents for the GOP presidential nomination came away with qualified support based not on who he is but who he is not — Donald Trump. Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich skipped… Read more »
Phil Aroneanu, New York state director of the Sanders campaign, speaks at a Jews for Bernie event in Manhattan, April 10, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
NEW YORK (JTA) – It might have been the last place you’d expect anger to erupt against the Bernie Sanders campaign. But at a Jews for Bernie brunch in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood on Sunday, the frustration seemed to boil over when some silver-haired Jewish supporters of Sanders began deriding… Read more »
Newly elected Argentine President Mauricio Macri, right, invited the family of the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman to his home in January. Clockwise to his left are Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff; Nisman's daughter Kala; Macri's wife Juliana and daughter Antonia, and Nisman's daughter Iara. (Courtesy of the Office of the President of Argentina)
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — In January 2015, Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff was stuck in Buenos Aires when his phone rang. He’d been planning a trip to New York but a storm had canceled all flights, and Polakoff, the rabbi of Cordoba, a province in central Argentina, was cooling his… Read more »
Rapper Action Bronson, left, chowing down on some Frankel's fare with the Frankel brothers, Zach, right, and Alex. (Screenshot from Instagram)
NEW YORK (JTA) — The scene could easily have been mistaken for a rock concert at one of Brooklyn’s countless music halls.Smartly dressed 20- and 30-somethings crammed into a small corner building. The overflow crowd, clad in skinny jeans and black beanies, spilled onto the sidewalk, where they drank coffee… Read more »
A building funded by the European Union in the West Bank. EU-funded construction of some 1,000 buildings has stirred controversy. (Ben Sales)
MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (JTA) — In a ramshackle village off a dirt road in the West Bank’s central hills, near an inhabited shack with a cloth roof and tin walls, stands an outhouse bearing a peeling sticker with the European Union flag. The text below the flag reads “Humanitarian… Read more »
Bob and Helene Fine meeting President Bill Clinton at the White House in December 2000, a few months after hosting first lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea for Passover seder. (Courtesy of Bob Fine)
NEW YORK (JTA) – How was Helene and Bob Fine’s family seder in 2000 different from every other Passover night? First lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea came. (President Bill Clinton would have joined, too, if not for Yasser Arafat, but we’ll get to that.) This was no… Read more »
