News

Bruce and Alayne Greenberg have been awarded the $2,500 Goldman Family Israel Scholarship Award from the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona for the Southwest Torah Institute 2014 Israel Experience Trip slated for May 4-18. Announcing the award on behalf of the Southwest Torah Institute, Rabbi Israel Becker expressed… Read more »

Young Women’s Cabinet, a two-year leadership development program through the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, is seeking young women of all Jewish backgrounds who are in their mid-20s through early 40s. The Young Women’s Cabinet consists of about 12 women each year who gain leadership development skills and exposure… Read more »

Hillels in North America have a new resource: www.JCollegeBound.org enables high school seniors to share their names and email addresses with the Hillel at the college or university they plan to attend. The Hillel director at the student’s new school will automatically be notified and will reach out to… Read more »

Israeli singer-songwriter Lior Balavi will perform at Tucson’s Israel 66 celebration at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on the evening of May 14, which will cap almost two weeks of events.

Tucson Celebrates Israel 66, almost two weeks of community-wide celebrations and commemorations coordinated by the Weintraub Israel Center, will take place May 2-14. “This year, the community decided to put Israel in the center, to dedicate more than one day to celebrating and honoring Israel,” says Oshrat Barel, community… Read more »

Ghada Zoabi, founder of Bokra, an Arabic Israeli news site, says the best way to improve the lives of Israeli Arabs is to make them better informed about their government's actions. (Courtesy of Bokra.net).

NAZARETH, Israel (JTA) — After Israel’s 2006 war with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah devastated the country’s northern region, most Israelis focused on rebuilding their towns and creating better defense infrastructure. Arab-Israeli journalist Ghada Zoabi turned her focus to the media. Though Israel has well-established protocols for civil defense… Read more »

Gershom Sizomu

NABAGOYE, Uganda (JTA) — As we celebrate Passover, it is important to remember that as great as the miracle of the Exodus was, freedom was only the beginning. I know this from reading the Torah, but I also know from personal experience. I was born in Uganda to Jewish parents at… Read more »

Supporters of Alan Gross, who has been imprisoned in Cuba since 2009, rally outside the White House on Dec. 3, 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alan Gross did not warn his family he was launching a hunger strike, but hearing the news, they understood why: The U.S. government subcontractor languishing in a Cuban prison feels forgotten. Gross,  a 64-year-old Jewish father of two from Potomac, Md., is currently serving a 15-year sentence… Read more »

Israeli President Shimon Peres and Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite attend a remembrance ceremony at Panerial Memorial on Aug. 1, 2013 near Vilnius, Lithuania. Around 100,000 victims, more than half of them Jewish, were murdered at the site by the Germans and Lithuanian groups during World War II. (Moshe Milner/Israeli Government Press Office via Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When a 2009 Holocaust-era assets conference concluded with a landmark statement of principles on Holocaust restitution, many restitution advocates had high hopes that a corner had been turned in the struggle for survivor justice. The Terezin Declaration, which had the support of 46 countries participating… Read more »

(JTA) — U.S. Secretary Of State John Kerry condemned as “grotesque” fliers that called on Jews in parts of Ukraine to register and pay a special tax to pro-Russian separatists. The fliers’ authenticity and origins are not clear. They appeared last week in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk,… Read more »

(JTA) — Pro-Russian separatists from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine denied any involvement in the circulation of fliers calling on Jews to register with separatists and pay special taxes. The fliers were distributed earlier this week in the city, where pro-Russian separatists led by Denis Pushilin this month took over… Read more »

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (JTA) — Every Friday at noon, my 2-year-old daughter and I rush through the doors of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City here to meet my father for lunch. We are usually late, and the JCC’s Heritage Center, catering to active seniors (and their… Read more »

A policewoman and police car are seen at the entrance of the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kan., following the fatal shootings there, April 13, 2014. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The suspect in deadly shootings at two Jewish institutions in suburban Kansas City made no secret of his hateful views, but nobody anticipated the attack that claimed three lives on Sunday. The shooter was identified as Frazier Glenn Miller, a 73-year-old white supremacist. The attack illustrates… Read more »

“You do not come to Israel to learn. You come to Israel to feel,” said a speaker at Israel Independence Hall. My feelings were so deep and profound that tears welled up uncontrollably often on Congregation Or Chadash’s mission to Israel, March 5 to 12. Let me try to… Read more »

The cast of ‘Olive and the Bitter Herbs,’ (L-R): David Alexander Johnston, Eric Anson, Susan Claassen, Susan Kovitz and Jack Neubeck (Tim Fuller)

Actress Olive Fisher, known for her “Gimme the Sausage” commercial, is a classic New York curmudgeon at war with the world in general and her next door neighbors in particular. Her closed-off life is shaken by the appearance of a ghost in her mirror, but that’s the least of… Read more »

The cast of “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” (clockwise from top left): Avis Judd, Carley Elizabeth Preston, T. Loving, Carlisle Ellis and Carrie Hill.

Five women explore identity and relationships in “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” a play by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the best-selling memoir by Ilene Beckerman. In monologues that are by turns comic and bittersweet, the characters recall prom dresses and cowboy boots, parents and lovers,… Read more »

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, rabbinic director of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services of New York’s National Center for Jewish Healing, will present at Congregation Anshei Israel’s “Torah and Healing” study session on Saturday, April 26 at 5 p.m. Weintraub, a licensed therapist, will lead “The Taboo… Read more »

Theodore Sasson

The University of Arizona’s Center for Judaic Studies will host “Continuity and Discontinuity in Jewish Culture,” the annual Western Jewish Studies Association conference, next month. Membership in the WJSA is not required to attend the conference. Theodore Sasson, senior research scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies… Read more »

Stuart Mellan

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has announced its slate of recommended officers and directors for the 2014-15 program year. The list of 26 names (see below: Nominees for JFSA officers, board named ) marks a significant restructuring of the JFSA board, which previously numbered more than 100 members.… Read more »

Gilberto Bosques

The 2014 community Yom HaShoah Commemoration, “Diplomatic Acts of Conscience and Courage,” will honor Tucson’s Holocaust survivors and Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques. The event will take place on Sunday, April 27 at 2 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El, and will begin with a procession and candlelighting ceremony by local Holocaust… Read more »

Four generations, including Oshrat Barel, director of Tucson’s Weintraub Israel Center (third from right), her grandmother, mother and daughters, celebrate Mimuna in Israel in April 2013.

As a first-generation Israeli of Moroccan descent, Oshrat Barel is bringing a personal touch to “Mimuna! Israeli-Moroccan Nights,” a traditional end-of-Passover celebration the Weintraub Israel Center and Temple Emanu-El will present on Tuesday, April 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the synagogue. The evening will include live music, Moroccan sweets… Read more »