Purim is one of the most joyous holidays on the Jewish calendar, commemorating Queen Esther’s triumph, with the help of the wise Mordechai, in saving the Jews of ancient Persia from the wicked plot of Haman, evil adviser to the king. The holiday begins on March 23 this year… Read more »
Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz, the Kosher Information Bureau’s rabbinic administrator, will return to Tucson on Sunday, April 3 for the “Is It Kosher?” supermarket tour from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Albertsons, 6600 E. Grant Road (at East Tanque Verde Road). Attendees will learn what foods and beverages are kosher… Read more »
Rotraut Klein Moquay
An exhibition of small sculpture and works on paper by international artist and sculptor Rotraut (Rotraut Klein Moquay) is on display at the Tucson Jewish Community Center Fine Art Gallery through April 13. Born in East Germany in 1938, Rotraut spent much of her life and career in France.… Read more »
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, will be honored with the Rabbi Samuel S. and A. Irma Cohon Memorial Foundation Award at Temple Emanu-El’s Shabbat service on Friday, March 18 at 7:30 p.m. The annual award honors individuals for outstanding service to… Read more »
Students at the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation will hold the 25th annual Holocaust vigil from 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 30 to 10 a.m. Thursday, March 31 on the UA Mall. Dedicated to remembrance, the vigil includes the reading of Holocaust victims’ names throughout the 24 hours. Holocaust survivors… Read more »
At one of the Tucson Hebrew Academy STEM festival’s student-run booths, students play Dance Dance Revolution by completing circuits with their feet. (Phillip McCauley/THA)
Tucson Hebrew Academy will hold its second annual family-friendly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Festival on Sunday, April 3, with expanded hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the THA campus, 3888 E. River Road. Presented by THA’s STEM program, led by science teacher Jennifer Lehrfeld, the… Read more »
Tucson Jewish Singles Over 40, for ages 40-65, will hold its inaugural meeting on Sunday, March 27 at 4 p.m. at Five Palms Restaurant, 3500 E. Sunrise Drive, with a free dinner (no-host beverages available). The group will meet on the fourth Sunday of every month for dinner, happy… Read more »
Weintraub Israel Center trip participants at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. Kneeling (L-R): Jane Rodda, Fernanda Quintanilla, Oshrat Barel, Steve Weintraub, Jeff Artzi (standing, wth wreath) and Nicky Anspach. Standing, first row: Carlos Hernandez, Nora Navarro-Hernandez, Deborah Yoklic, James Whitehill, Sally Trattner, Iris Posin, Conrad Plimpton, Stephen Caine, Barbara Yamada, Linda Behr, Stan Behr, Marcia Wiener, Irene Watkins, Linda Horowitz, Martin Horowitz, Phyllis Mack, Ray Carroll and Muki Jankelowitz (guide). Second row: Carol Weinstein, Judith Brown, Richard Fertal, Ken Miller, Karen Paulsen-Balch, Marisa Balch and Riann Balch. Third row: Morris Riback, Paula Riback, Rebecca Crow, Rick Edwards, Neal Savage, Marilyn Medwied, Heather Caine, Myles Beck and Richard Spears. Not pictured: John Crow, Sherry Hoffman-Blum, Tracy Salkowitz, John Winchester and Denise Wolf. (Courtesy Weintraub Israel Center)
When Tucsonan Nora Navarro-Hernandez, who is not Jewish, visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for the first time, she had a real awakening. She was there for Shabbat. “I thought it was going to be quiet and really solemn,” she says. “I didn’t think there was going to be… Read more »
Shay Yossef and his wife, Efrat, with their children at their West Bank home in Har Bracha. (Beit Hatfutsot)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Orli Malassa doesn’t remember ever feeling anything but Israeli. To her parents, who came to Israel from Ethiopia in 1983 when she was 5 years old, Malassa’s accent-free Hebrew, fluent use of Israeli slang and effortless assimilation into the Jewish state has felt nothing short… Read more »
Donald Trump speaking at a primary night news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., March 15, 2016. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
By WASHINGTON (JTA) — Has Donald Trump’s time come, and will Jewish political conservatives embrace him? Trump, the real estate magnate and front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, rolled closer to victory on Tuesday with wins in at least three primary states. His strong showing, earning 161 delegates or more depending on… Read more »
Rabbi Moshe Azman, founder of the Anatevka community near Kiev, Feb. 29, 2016. (R. Litevsky/Courtesy of the Office of Rabbi Moshe Azman)
ANATEVKA, Ukraine (JTA) — At the age of 53, Sergey and Elena Yarelchenko fled their native city of Lugansk with three suitcases and moved into a wooden room in a muddy refugee camp outside Kiev. Like hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine’s war-torn east, life for this Jewish… Read more »
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaking at a news conference at Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach, Fla., March 11, 2016. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israel has prominently emerged as a presidential campaign issue ahead of critical primary contests in five states on Tuesday, three of which – Ohio, Illinois and Florida – have substantial Jewish communities. Israel was the subject of a heated exchange in the Republican debate last… Read more »
Mordechai Genut, founder of Frum Karate, with some beginners' students. (Courtesy of Mordechai Genut)
NEW YORK (JTA) — On a recent Sunday evening at a Jewish center in Brooklyn’s Midwood section, dozens of boys and men — ages 5 to 40-something — practice their kicks, strikes and jabs. They are clad in the usual all-white uniform, tied at their middles with cloth belts… Read more »
Samir Patel, left, with an associate and his father, right, says he gets about five requests each Saturday to act as a Shabbos goy for Orthodox Jews. (Uriel Heilman)
NEW YORK (JTA) – For Samir Patel, the term “goy” is no slur. It’s a point of pride. Patel is a manager of Suhag Wine & Liquors, a family-owned business in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills, in Queens. He’s a Hindu immigrant from India, but the vast majority… Read more »
Protesters at a 2014 rally in Budapest against the Hungarian government's planned statue that was seen as minimizing Hungarian complicity during the Holocaust. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
(JTA) – Hungarian officials likely anticipated some Jewish opposition to their decision to erect a monument in Budapest to a Holocaust-era lawmaker who promoted anti-Semitic legislation. What they probably didn’t expect was that the Feb. 24 unveiling of a bust honoring Gyorgy Donath would attract a protest of mostly… Read more »
Yonatan Azriaev recovering from his wounds at a Petach Tikvah hospital, March 10, 2016. (Ben Sales)
PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA) — Only after Yonatan Azriaev grabbed the terrorist’s arms and threw him against a wall of soft drinks did he think he was about to die. Azriaev, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect, had been handing out religious pamphlets in the open-air market… Read more »
Israeli Arabs protesting in Tel Aviv against home demolitions, April 28, 2015. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash 90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — In a survey that spanned politics, religion and interfaith relations, one statistic stood out: nearly half of Israel’s Jews support expelling the country’s Arabs. The Pew Research Center’s study of Israelis’ attitudes, which had its findings released Tuesday, had asked respondents whether they agreed that… Read more »
Palestinian women pass an Israeli police checkpoint in Jerusalem, Oct. 8, 2015. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Nearly half of Jewish-Israelis want to expel Arabs from the country. That’s one of several findings from a new survey of Israeli attitudes on religion, politics and Jewish identity conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center. Coming just three years after Pew‘s much-discussed study of… Read more »
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders acknowledging supporters at a campaign rally in Miami, March 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
ANALYSIS WASHINGTON (JTA) – Can Bernie Sanders actually win it? With his surprising victory in the Michigan primary by 2 percentage points on Tuesday — after trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits in the polls — the possibility has inched a little closer to reality. To be sure, Sanders still trails… Read more »
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, March 9, 2016. (Hillel Maeir/TPS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a much-anticipated press conference with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday afternoon, March 9, in which the two criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his failure to denounce the wave of terror. Following Netanyahu’s statement, Biden stated his disapproval of Abbas’ failure… Read more »
