Stuart Milk The Tucson Jewish Community Center will host “A Conversation with Stuart Milk,”co-founder and board president of the Harvey Milk Foundation, on Sunday, Oct.13 at 6 p.m. Milk was instrumental in steering a bill through the California legislature in 2009 to make May 22 a state holiday honoring his uncle… Read more »
Dan Fellner Dan Fellner of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the Arizona Humanities Council will present “Jews in Eastern Europe” at a Hadassah Southern Arizona luncheon on Sunday, Oct. 13. Fellner has more than 25 years of experience in corporate public relations, television news and university teaching in the United… Read more »
Robert A. Williams, Jr. Robert A. Williams, Jr., the E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law, will speak on “Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization,” the topic of his most recent book, at the fall opening luncheon of the Brandeis… Read more »
Esther Sternberg, M.D., will speak on “The Science of the Mind-Body Interaction in Illness and Healing” at a Tucson Maimonides Society dinner on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at Hacienda del Sol, 5501 N. Hacienda del Sol Road. The Tucson Maimonides Society is a program of the Jewish… Read more »
The University of Arizona School of Music will present “A Barber/Britten Music + Festival: Symposium, Concerts and Film,” directed by professor and composer Daniel Asia, on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12-13. American composer Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is a classical music standard that can be heard in several… Read more »
De’oujenai, age 9, with Linda Solomon (Sheila Wilensky/AJP) Drivers heading north on Alvernon Way pass a digital sign in front of Our Family Services, which runs a New Beginnings housing division for the homeless: “One-third of Tucson’s children live in poverty. Fifty-two percent live with a single parent.” Linda Solomon, an award-winning Jewish photojournalist, aims to change… Read more »
The CANDLES Holocaust museum in Terre Haute, Ind. NEW YORK (JTA) — No earth was moved at the groundbreaking of one of the nation’s newest Holocaust memorials in May. Instead, the gatherers stood silently, symbolic shovels in hand, on the immaculate lawn where the privately funded $400,000 monument will soon rise. A succession of speakers delivered somber… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responds to President Obama's address in New York, Sept. 24. (Kobi Gideon/ via Getty Images) The good news for Israel in President Obama’s speech at the United Nations was his insistence that any steps Iran might take to solve the standoff over its nuclear program must be transparent and verifiable. The bad news was that Obama wasn’t clear about what those steps should be.… Read more »
Once a symbol of the promise of Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Oasis Casino in Jericho has been shuttered for 13 years. (David Silverman/Newsmakers) JERICHO, West Bank (JTA) — The Intercontinental Hotel Jericho’s towering brick palazzo, flanked by a row of palm trees leading to an ornate archway entrance, seems the very epitome of desert luxury. But inside, the hotel lobby — replete with marble floors and plush armchairs — stands empty on… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The story that this year’s J Street conference schedule tells is, typically enough, about getting Israel and the Palestinians to a two-state solution. Between the lines is another narrative as urgent as peacekeeping to the liberal pro-Israel group: getting J Street into the establishment. The second… Read more »
The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) — The photograph shows a lighthearted moment at the end of a war that four decades later still prompts analysis and evokes somber reflections. Snapped just after Israel and Egypt had signed an agreement ending… Read more »
Former Baptist Sunday school teacher designing for the frum fashionista. (JTA) — Just before Maria Patricia de Sousa set out for a yearlong stint at a seminary in Jerusalem seven years ago, she stopped by the house of an Orthodox Jewish woman in her home city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She wanted to find out about life in Jerusalem… Read more »
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, left, meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the presidential palace in Baku, June 28, 2009. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty Images) BAKU, Azerbaijan (JTA) — With less than a month to go until presidential elections, the moustachioed smile of Ilham Aliyev stares down at his countrymen from giant posters scattered around this bustling metropolis on the Caspian Sea. The Azerbaijani president has been in office since 2003 and is widely… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The reader opened with a recitation of Psalm 48 followed by a contemporary poem before yielding the floor to five male dancers, all wearing the standard haredi Orthodox uniform of black pants and white button-down shirt. One had bushy earlocks but no yarmulke. So began the… Read more »
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington, Aug. 9, 2013. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Pro-Israel groups suspended their high-profile lobbying effort for a strike on Syria now that the United States and Russia have struck a deal to strip the Assad regime of its chemical weapons. A spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which organized a Capitol… Read more »
A Chabad volunteer helps people clear damaged goods from their homes in Colorado. (Courtesy of Chabad) DENVER (IJN) — Before the start of Yom Kippur, a flood of historic proportions swallowed Boulder, Colo., and surrounding areas, displacing families, damaging synagogues and threatening services on the holiest day of the Jewish year — until determination came to the rescue. Orthodox Boulder Aish Kodesh hit the Internet… Read more »
Not only is climate change a hot topic, it coincides with Judaism’s long-held value of caring for the environment. “We have an obligation to God as stewards of the earth to not destroy the planet,” says Eve Shapiro, M.D., a local Jewish pediatrician who’s on the board of the… Read more »
The Tucson Jewish Youth Choir, led by Cantor Janece Cohen, is seeking singers for its 14th season. The group, for ages 7-14, performs at major events throughout the Tucson community, such as Tucson Meet Yourself, the Jewish Food Festival and the Israel Festival. Singers also participate in a choir… Read more »
Alexander Tentser and Anna Gendler Classical pianist Alexander Tentser and his wife, Anna Gendler, a violinist with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, will perform classical and romantic works by Mozart, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin in a concert to benefit Interfaith Community Services. The duo will perform on Saurday, Sept. 21 at 3 p.m. at Rincon… Read more »
George Hanson The Tucson Symphony Orchestra opens its 85th season on Oct. 4 with music director and conductor George Hanson on the podium. Maestro Hanson, now in his 18th year leading the TSO, is opening the season with an all-Russian program, “Victorious Shostakovich!” He will give a talk on the program… Read more »
