News

Around 50 people attended a panel discussion, “Jewish Responses to the Border,” at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on March 14. Three of the four panelists, including Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon and Bob Feinman, are Jewish. The event, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of… Read more »

THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) — It was spring in northern Greece, 1943. Efthymios Kontopoulos, 13, had come to Thessaloniki for the day when he saw Nazis rounding up the city’s Jews. “My father brought me into town,” Kontopoulos, who is not Jewish, said. “We saw them being taken away. They… Read more »

A Tucson Walking Tour in Women’s History, presented by the Arizona Women’s Heritage Trail, draws from the significant involvement of Jewish women in the city’s history. Take the former residence of Theresa Marx Ferrin at the corner of Meyer and Cushing Streets. Ferrin and her family lived in the… Read more »

The annual community-wide Yom HaShoah commemoration, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Coalition for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, will be held Sunday, April 7 at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. This year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum… Read more »

Israeli peace activist Roni Keidar speaks in Tucson (Guy Gelbart)

It’s not easy living 500 yards from the Gaza border. Roni Keidar, who lives in Netiv Ha’asara — the closest community in Israel to the Gaza Strip — is an Israeli educator and active member of Other Voice, a non-partisan group promoting peace and encouraging dialogue between Israelis and… Read more »

Stumbling stones honoring Jill Ranucci's great-grandparents, Rudolf and Laura Lowenthal, who died in the Sobibor death camp. (Courtesy Jill Ranucci)

In October, I attended a Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) ceremony in Magdeburg, in the former East Germany, to honor my great-grandparents, Rudolph and Laura Lowenthal, who died in the Holocaust. My sister and two cousins, the other surviving family members, accompanied me. The first Stolpersteine were created by German artist… Read more »

Mark Frederick (left) and Brandon Katz participate in a weekly art class at the Tucson Jewish Community Center’s Taglit program. (Photo: Travis Fischer)

Participants in the Tucson Jewish Community Center’s Taglit program for young adults have a wide range of disabilities, both cognitive and physical. Still, the special needs program offers an extensive schedule of daily activities for the program’s 20 full-time participants, ages 19 to 35. Whether it’s yoga, karate, fitness… Read more »

The Noah Warren Cohen Scholarship has been established in memory of Noah Warren Cohen, a young man with great enthusiasm for social causes and compassion for those less fortunate. Noah died in 2010 at the age of 12 and his family has established a scholarship fund that will award… Read more »

The Galina, a replica of a typical refugee ship, at The Atlit ‘Illegal’ Immigrant Detention Camp in Israel (Sheila Wilensky/AJP)

Sheila Wilensky was in Israel in January with the American Jewish Press Association. Prior to Israel’s establishment as a state in 1948, Jews from around the world tried to settle there. But it wasn’t easy. Coming from Arizona, where we constantly hear about “illegals,” it was new history for… Read more »

Israeli President Shimon Peres presents the Presidential Medal to President Obama at Peres' residence in Jerusalem, March 21, 2013. (Mark Neyman/GPO/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Obama had three goals for his first presidential trip to Israel. He wanted to persuade Israelis that the United States is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He wanted to promote the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, albeit without any specific “deliverables.” Most… Read more »

President Obama speaks to Israeli students at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, March 21, 2013. (Uriel Sinai/Getty/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to Israel and called for a renewed peace process in a speech to thousands of Israelis in Jerusalem. In the centerpiece of his first presidential visit to Israel, Obama on Thursday stressed America’s “unbreakable” alliance with Israel and support for Israel in the… Read more »

(JTA) — Frolicking with her fiance in the cool waters of the Suez Canal, Lilian Abada would never have imagined she was about to experience the first of a string of events that would ultimately lead her to flee her native Egypt for Israel with only one suitcase. When… Read more »

President Obama greeted by children waving Israeli and American flags at a welcoming ceremony at Shimon Peres' residence in Jerusalem, March 20, 2013. (Uri Lenz/FLASH90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s safe to say, haven’t always been the best of friends. The leaders of two closely allied countries, they’ve have had a relationship described more often as tense than anything else. But on the first day of Obama’s… Read more »

Some interesting color in this one on President  Obama’s time childhood in Indonesia, plus a couple jokes between leaders. Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met just outside the PM’s residence. When they entered the home, they went in front of flags for a photo-op. Obama invited Sara Netanyahu… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets President Obama at a welcome ceremony for the president at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, March 20, 2013 (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — President Obama began his first presidential visit to Israel with an airport speech calling the United States the “strongest ally and greatest friend” of Israel. “Why does the U.S. stand with Israel?” Obama asked the crowd at the welcoming ceremony Wednesday afternoon at Ben-Gurion Airport. “We… Read more »

Israel's President Shimon Peres (C, seated) sits next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L, seated) as they pose for a group photo together with the ministers of the new Israeli government, in Jerusalem, 18 March 2013. The new government comprises four parties - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nationalist Likud-Beiteinu alliance, the pro-settler Jewish Home, the centrist Yesh Atid which advocates socio-economic reforms, and another centrist party of former foreign minister Tzipi Livni. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally assembled a governing coalition following nearly six weeks of negotiations, the maximum time allowed under Israeli law. The Knesset approved the new government on Monday by a vote of 68 to 48, with four absent. The Israeli government coalition includes Netanyahu’s ruling… Read more »

Palestinians protesting against the Assad regime and waving Free Syrian Army flags at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Feb. 1, 2013. (Mahfouz Abu Turk/Flash90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s the latest Palestinian refugee crisis, but it has nothing to do with Israel or the West Bank — yet. With Syria home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the raging civil war there is destabilizing a population with nowhere to turn, and some analysts are… Read more »

The Neirab Palestinian refugee camp near Aleppo is the largest of its kind in Syria. (UNRWA)

HERZLIYA, Israel (JTA) — Three weeks ago, militants in Gaza landed a rocket near the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Two weeks ago, Egypt raised its state of emergency in the Sinai Peninsula, warning of an increase in jihadist activity there. Last week, a rock thrown by a West Bank… Read more »

The Torah ark at the newly built Tiferet Israel Este synagogue in Caracus, Venezuela, March 17, 2013. (Association Israelita de Venezuela)

(JTA) — For more than a decade, Venezuelan Jews have been holding their breath, subject to the whims of a mercurial president who used his bully pulpit to intimidate, rail against Israel and embrace Iran   There was the police raid of a Caracas school in 2004, allegedly to search… Read more »

Pope Francis, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, speaking at a B'nai B'rith Argentina event commemorating Kristallnacht, Nov. 12, 2012. (Courtesy B'nai B'rith Argentina)

ROME (JTA) — When the white smoke rose last week at the Vatican, signaling to the world that the College of Cardinals had chosen a new pope, Catholics weren’t the only ones waiting with bated breath. Jews, too, were eager to see whether the new pontiff would be someone… Read more »