News

Despite living in an area under constant rocket fire from Gaza, Israeli Roni Keidar helps Palestinians from Gaza get emergency health care in Israel. Keidar will present “Nurturing Peace on the Gaza Border” on Thursday, March 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The free Heartbeat… Read more »

In response to Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) joined with the Union for Reform Judaism and several other Jewish organizations to create one coordinated campaign to raise relief funds for Israel. To date, the JFNA Terror Relief Fund has… Read more »

Operation Elijah, a community effort to ensure that every Jew in Southern Arizona has a seat at a Seder table for Pass­over, is seeking participants, both guest and hosts. If you are new to the community, single, a student, have no family in the area or are alone for… Read more »

Naomi Benaron

An acclaimed first-time novelist, an award-winning mystery writer, an internationally best-selling author and the reporter who wrote “A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State” will highlight the Brandeis National Committee’s 17th Annual Book & Author Events. The committee’s Tucson chapter… Read more »

Irving Olson, 99, with one of his water drop photographs (Renee Claire)

Irving Olson has been capturing photographic images for nearly 90 years. He continues to create pictures in a dark room, just not the “dark room” one typically associates with photo development. In a specially outfitted kitchenette in his Oro Valley home, Olson shuts out all light and digitally captures… Read more »

The grave of Ben Zygier in the main Jewish cemetery in Melbourne, where he was buried on Dec. 22, 2010 -- one week after he apparently hanged himself in Yigal Amir's cell at Ayalon Prison in Ramle. (Steve Yarrow)

SYDNEY (JTA) – As more details have seeped out about the mysterious life and death of Israel’s Prisoner X — identified last week by an Australian TV program as Ben Zygier — the wall of silence surrounding those who knew him has begun to show some cracks. On Tuesday,… Read more »

At Mazel Academy in Brooklyn, Torah scrolls were unrolled to dry after being damaged by the floodwaters from superstorm Sandy, Oct. 31, 2012. (Ben Harris/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — How essential is a house of worship to a neighborhood? That’s the crux of a question now exercising Congress as a bill advances that would provide direct relief to synagogues and churches damaged by superstorm Sandy last October. The bill, which passed the U.S. House of… Read more »

(L-R) Hebrew University students Bar, Yael and Amit comment on the Jan. 22 Israeli election during a night out on Ben Yehuda Street. (Sheila Wilensky/AJP)

Sheila Wilensky was in Israel recently with the American Jewish Press Association After spending a week in Israel one thing is certain: discussion about politics is a national sport – and with more than 30 political parties running in the Jan. 22 election, it’s not surprising. I arrived in… Read more »

BERGENFIELD, N.J. (JTA) — Some years ago I was discussing David Hartman’s work with the renowned Israeli philosopher Aviezer Ravitsky. “Hartman is not a scholar,” Ravitsky said about his colleague in Department of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University. “He is more than a scholar.” Indeed he was. Rabbi… Read more »

Men blowing shofars to help the unmarried find matches at the ceremony of the grave of Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel in a forest near Safed, Jan. 27, 2013. (Ben Sales/JTA)

AMUKAH, Israel (JTA) — They walked up a tree-lined path through stony hills to a square, white building — men in black hats, beards and frock coats; in T-shirts and jeans; in sweaters, slacks and velvet kippahs. They came by the hundreds — 19-year-olds looking for a match, 40-year-olds… Read more »

Eran, a gay Israeli-Frenchman, left, with son Elai-Gabriel and partner Jean-Louis at their Paris home, January 2013. (Courtesy Eran)

(JTA) — Wide-eyed and smiley, Elay-Gabriel seems utterly unaffected by the French media’s sudden interest in him. A dozen French journalists have visited the 18-month-old in recent months because he is trapped in a sort of legal limbo: He cannot obtain citizenship because the state does not recognize children… Read more »

Nick Muzin, left, consulting with then-Rep. Tim Scott at a forum in Charleston, S.C., hosted by Scott for Republican presidential candidates, August 2011. (Photo by Kay Fekete, courtesy of Nick Muzin)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – On a Saturday night following Shabbat, Nick Muzin arrayed on his dining room table what would turn out to be the winning strategy to elect the first black Republican to Congress from South Carolina in more than a century. The next night at the same table… Read more »

BEIT SHEMESH, Israel (JTA) — Next to the Modern Orthodox Orot Banot girls school in Beit Shemesh, fresh mounds of dirt and a huge hole in the ground indicate the spot where a community center is being built. Orot Banot was at the center of conflict between local haredi… Read more »

Israeli schoolchildren studying at Tel Aviv elementary school, 2010. (Moshe Shai/Flash90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – An in-depth comparative study of Palestinian and Israeli school textbooks is offering some conclusions that already are making some Israeli government officials very unhappy: Palestinian textbooks do not have as much anti-Israel incitement as often portrayed. While this finding might appear to be welcome news for… Read more »

Israeli women who immigrated from Ethiopia attending an event markin the Sigd holiday of Ethiopian Jewry in Mevaseret Zion, November 2012. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Following a TV report alleging that Ethiopian Israeli women were being given contraceptive shots against their will, Israel’s Health Ministry has ordered physicians to put a stop to the practice. The report, broadcast Dec. 8 on the “Vacuum” investigative news program on Israeli Educational Television,… Read more »

In a scene from the Oscar-nominated documentary "5 Broken Cameras," co-director Emad Burnat inspects his cameras. (Alegria Productions)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — It’s hard to imagine two more divergent perspectives on Israeli-Palestinian relations: that of a Palestinian farmer whose village is resisting the encroachment of a nearby Jewish settlement and of the security service chiefs responsible for maintaining order in the Palestinian territories. Surprisingly, however, these protagonists… Read more »

SYDNEY (JTA) — More information has begun to trickle out about the mysterious man known as Prisoner X who hanged himself in Israel’s Ayalon Prison in 2010. The Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Foreign Correspondent” program made headlines worldwide when it reported this week that the prisoner, whose identity was so… Read more »

Pope Benedict XVI praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, May 12, 2009. (Flash90/JTA)

ROME (JTA) — Pope Benedict XVI’s eight-year reign as head of the world’s 1 billion Catholics sometimes was a bumpy one for the Vatican’s relations with Israel and the wider Jewish community. But it was also a period in which relations where consolidated and fervent pledges made to continue… Read more »

Arik Lubovsky

Before I left for Israel, friends and family asked if I was afraid. “Not really,” I replied. It wasn’t until I was actually there, relaxing on the patio of the Mizpe Hayamim health farm … Read more »

David Siegel, consul general of Israel in Los Angeles, speaks at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, Jan. 30. (Kathryn L. Unger)

David Siegel, consul general of Israel in Los Angeles, gave a briefing to more than 40 Jewish community leaders on Wednesday, Jan. 30 at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. Siegel became consul general in 2011, serving the Southwestern United States. Most recently, he’d served as chief of staff… Read more »