News

Jewish Family & Children’s Services will hold its Celebration of Caring luncheon on Thursday, April 18 at 11:30 a.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, 445 S. Alvernon Way. The event will include an overview of JFCS’s social and behavioral health programs. Stories about people the agency serves will be portrayed… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish community and friends will come together to commemorate Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom Hazikaron, on Sunday, April 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. “Yom Hazikaron is the day for us to respect those who gave their lives for the security of Israel and… Read more »

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s nominating committee, chaired by Jeff Katz, has recommended the following slate of officers for the 2013-2014 program year: Kathryn L. Unger, chair of the board; Madeline Friedman, vice chair; Terry Perl,  vice chair; James A. Whitehill, vice chair; James Wezelman, treasurer; Shelly Silverman,… Read more »

Israeli soldiers with Purim packages donated through Connections Israel (Courtesy Connections Israel)

Congregation Or Chadash religious school students in grades 1-6 partnered with Connections Israel, a nonprofit organization based in Jerusalem, to send mishloach manot (Purim baskets) to soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces. Along with donating money for the holiday treats, the students wrote letters that were added to the… Read more »

Ron Blomberg

Former New York Yankee first baseman Ron Blomberg made history as the first designated hitter in the major leagues. “In 1973 I screwed up the game of baseball and I’m very proud of it, and having a Jew to do it is great,” he told the AJP in a… Read more »

(L-R) Nancy Mellan, Diane Weintraub, Israeli artist Tzameret Zamir, Stuart Mellan and Ron Weintraub at Zamir’s mosaic of peace project on the anti-sniper wall at Netiv Ha’asara. The mosaic will spell the world ‘shalom.’

At my age (closing in on 60), I often tell myself, in a reassuring tone, that “age is just a state of mind.” Now that the State of Israel is turning a ripe old 65, I wonder, what is Israel’s state of mind? And how do we, American Jews,… Read more »

Israeli flags fly high at a recent Israel Festival in Tucson. (Marty Johnston/TJCC)

“Israel’s Incredible Innovations” — 65 years’ worth of remarkable achievements in computing, medicine, agriculture, biotechnology, renewable energy and many other fields — will be front and center at the Israel 65 Festival on Sunday, April 21, which will be held from noon to 6 p.m. on the Jewish community… Read more »

Phyllis Fields, second from right, during a 1989 family trip to Hawaii. (Courtesy Fields family)

The Seeking Kin column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Earlier this month, a “Seeking Kin” column concluded with Rozanne Dittersdorf of New York expressing hope that Phyllis Garfunkel, a childhood friend with whom she lost contact in the late 1940s, “found happiness over… Read more »

A scene from internment by Wolfgang Gerson, watercolor on toilet paper, from Camp N in Sherbrooke, Quebec, circa 1940-1942. Gerson painted on whatever he could due to the scarcity of paper. (Courtesy the Gerson family/Photo by Jessica Bushey)

VANCOUVER, Canada (JTA) — When Austrian and German Jews escaped Nazism by fleeing to Britain during the 1930s, the last thing they expected was to find themselves prisoners in Canada, interned in camps with some of the same Nazis they had tried to escape back home. But that’s what… Read more »

SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Fla. (JTA) — Sitting outside a Starbucks coffee shop in this small city north of Miami Beach, Paul Hariton recalls the dramatic night in 2002 when he and his wife decided to leave their native Venezuela. Leftist leader Hugo Chavez had just returned to power following… Read more »

Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris, third from left, leading the march in his city from Liberty Square to the Old Railway Station, March 2013. (Michael Thaidigsmann/WJC)

THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) — Antonis Samaras stood in the pale morning light coming through the stained glass windows of the only Thessaloniki synagogue to survive World War II and vowed, “Never again.” For Greek Jews marking the 70th anniversary of the destruction of this city’s historic Jewish community, the… Read more »

Yityish Aynaw, Miss Israel, meets President Barack Obama during his visit to Israel, March 2013. (Avi Ohayon/GPO/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Yityish Aynaw immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at age 12, she was thrust into an Israeli classroom. An orphan lacking Hebrew skills, Aynaw says she relied on other kids and her own sheer ambition to get through. Ten years later Aynaw, 22, is the… Read more »

Israeli ZAKA emergency rescue team carrying a body bag with one of the victims of the Hezbollah terrorist attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, July 19, 2012. (Dano Monkotovic/FLASH90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The conviction in Cyprus of a Hezbollah operative plotting to attack Israelis could undercut efforts by the terrorist group to carry out additional attacks outside the Middle East. Last week’s conviction was the second confirmation in recent months that Hezbollah is active on European soil. The… Read more »

President Obama placing a stone on the headstone of Yitzhak and Leah Rabin during a visit to Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, March 22, 2013. (Mark Neyman/GPO/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — For a trip that U.S. officials had cautioned was not about getting “deliverables,” President Obama’s apparent success during his Middle East trip at getting Israel and Turkey to reconcile has raised some hopes for a breakthrough on another front: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The question now is whether… Read more »

In the documentary, "The Mereh Affair -- The Itinerary of a Killer," Mohammed Mereh is shown skiing four weeks prior to his killing spree in Toulouse in March 2011. (France 3/You Tube)

(JTA) — Four weeks before he murdered seven people in Toulouse, a cheerful Mohammed Merah was filmed laughing and showing off his skiing skills to friends at a popular Alpine resort. The footage, televised on March 6, formed the opening sequence in a controversial documentary about the 23-year-old, French-born… Read more »

  The families surround long tables covered by white tablecloths. Festive decorations line the walls, and the kitchen is free of chametz, the leavened foods forbidden on Passover. Seder plates sit in front of hungry participants. But instead of someone reading the Haggadah or reciting the kiddush over wine,… Read more »

Tucson’s Israel 65 Festival next month will celebrate “Israel’s Incredible Innovations,” such as: Computers • MinDesktop, a thought-controlled, hands-free computer for the disabled that could be used without a keyboard or mouse. Developed by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev students under the supervision of professor Rami Puzis, it features… Read more »

The annual Mimuna concert, a Moroccan-style end-of-Passover celebration sponsored by the Weintraub Israel Center and Temple Emanu-El, will be held Tuesday, April 2 at 6 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El. “We will host two very special musicians for a live performance of the MoroMore group, with Bulgarian musician Anton Shekerjiev… Read more »

Howard J. Schwartz, M.D., will speak on “Ethical Issues for Jewish Doctors” at a Hadassah Southern Arizona lunch on Thursday, April 18 at noon at Skyline Country Club. Born in New York City, Schwartz attended yeshiva and received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his M.D. from the Einstein… Read more »

Elinor and Yale Palchick both served in the Philippines during World War II. (Courtesy Yale Palchick)

During World War II, Tucsonan Yale Palchick, now 91, helped liberate a Japanese war camp holding American POWs, was at Okinawa at the war’s end and in Tokyo a few days after the United States dropped its third atomic bomb on Aug. 19, 1945. But mostly, “I was trying… Read more »