News

WASHINGTON (JTA) — With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu poised to win re-election later this month, some critics of Israel’s peace and security policies worry out loud that Israel’s political cycle — its pattern of cycling alternately between the political left and right — is stuck on the right. “This… Read more »

Yair Lapid, founder of the Yesh Atid party, at an economy conference in Tel Aviv on Dec. 25, 2012 presenting a graph similar to the "bomb" graph shown by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly three months earlier. The Lapid graph shows the difficulties of the middle class. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Uncertainty is an inherent condition of democratic politics, but one outcome is all but certain in next week’s Israeli elections: the right wing will win and the left wing will lose. Almost every party acknowledges that the merged Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu factions will take… Read more »

Left to right, Hanin Zouabi, Zehava Gal-on, Shelly Yachimovich, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett and Aryeh Deri. (Graphics by Uri Fintzy)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Remember the second U.S. presidential debate in October, when the incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney stood about six inches from each other, with one interrupting the other at every turn? Add about a dozen candidates, take away the formal rules of debate, switch… Read more »

Kathy Unger, chair of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona board, makes calls on Super Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011.

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will hold its annual fundraising phone-a-thon, renamed “Super Extraordinary Sunday,” on Jan. 27. The event will also include numerous mitzvah projects. “This is Super Sunday gone viral, reaching and bringing together more people than ever before. While dedicated volunteers man the phones, other… Read more »

A Palestinian boy in the town of Duma holds a signed “peace ball” from Tucson’s Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk. (Paul Afek)

It sounds like the start of a “walks into a bar” joke — four Jews, four Muslims and two Christians traveled from Tucson to Israel and the Palestinian territories. But this was a serious interfaith peace mission organized by the International Center for Peace and Justice, a local organization,… Read more »

An Orthodox wedding in Israel (Gil Cohen-Magen)

The Weintraub Israel Center and the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies will present an exhibit and lecture by Israeli photojournalist Gil Cohen-Magen on Monday, Jan. 28 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Over the past decade, Cohen-Magen was given exclusive access to the ultra-Orthodox in Israel,… Read more »

Tal Becker

Tal Becker, the principal deputy legal advisor at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will be the featured speaker at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Tucson annual dinner on Wednesday, Jan. 30. Becker is also a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and a member… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish Community Center will present Great Decisions, a nine-week nonpartisan discussion series on global affairs, sponsored nationally by the Foreign Policy Association and locally by Tucson Great Decisions, www.tgda.org, beginning Monday, Jan. 21, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Participants may attend one or more sessions. The eight… Read more »

What can parents and grandparents do to help keep kids safe? Temple Emanu-El’s Women of Reform Judaism will present “Keep Our Kids Safe,” a free panel discussion about helping children navigate difficult issues, on Sunday, Jan. 13 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. The panel will cover the following topics:… Read more »

Handmaker Youth Leadership Team will hold a winter event on Sunday, Jan. 13 at 2 p.m. at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging. The volunteer program is for youth ages 11 to 18 years, who interact with Handmaker residents at quarterly group events. The program, which began in May… Read more »

Benjamin Evett and J. Michael Flynn as C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud in “Freud’s Last Session” at Arizona Theatre Company

Arizona Theatre Company will stage “Freud’s Last Session” by Mark St. Germain, which played to record breaking off-Broadway crowds, Jan. 19 through Feb. 9 at the Temple of Music and Art. Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, two of the 20th century’s greatest intellects, come together in 1939 as England… Read more »

Back in the ’70s I considered myself an ardent feminist. I displayed a bumper sticker on the back of my pale green Rambler that said “Sexism is a Social Disease.” Most of my closest friends at that time were women and my two older sisters were great influences on… Read more »

International Hygiene Exhibition, 1911 promotional poster. The eugenics movement pre-dated Nazi Germany. A 1911 exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden included a display on human heredity and ideas to improve it. The exhibition poster features the Enlightenment’s all-seeing eye of God, adapted from the ancient Egyptian “Eye of Ra,” symbolizing fitness or health. (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin)

The Nazi regime was known for devising scientific theories to prop up its drive to perfect an “Aryan master race,” which led to the murder of millions of Jews and others during the Holocaust. “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition produced by the United States Holocaust… Read more »

President Obama speaks with Jacob Lew on the Colonnade of the White House in 2010. Lew was nominated as Treasury secretary on Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Jacob Lew helped Orthodox observance reach the highest precincts of governance. But can a man that Republicans say “can’t get to yes” be confirmed as secretary of the Treasury? President Obama on Thursday nominated Lew, his chief of staff, to the post on Thursday, replacing Timothy… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, launched a gun control initiative on the second anniversary of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson. “I was shot in the head while meeting with constituents two years ago today,” Giffords wrote with Kelly, an ex-astronaut, in… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – “Ooh, aah, look who’s coming!” the crowd of young people chants. “It’s the next prime minister!” Hundreds of voices rise from a packed dance floor Sunday as Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, enters the room grinning, singing along with the pounding music overhead and leaning… Read more »

Jewish Czech presidential candidate Jan Fischer, right, attending the Terezin memorial ceremonies to honor the victims of Nazi persecution, May 2012. (Courtesy Jan Fischer campaign)

If the pundits are correct, the Czech Republic may become the first country other than Israel to elect a Jewish president. Jan Fischer, 62, an understated former prime minister who led a caretaker government following a coalition collapse in 2009, is neck and neck in the polls with another… Read more »

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, left, and potential successor Chuck Hagel listening as President Obama announces at the White House that he is nominating Hagel for the defense post, Jan. 7, 2013. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Now that Chuck Hagel is officially President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, Jewish groups concerned about Hagel’s record on Israel and Iran are faced with a choice. Do they fight hard to derail his nomination, joining common cause with Republican opponents? Or do they… Read more »

Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, is tasked with finding a solution to the growing battle over women’s prayer restrictions at the Western Wall. (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — He brought unprecedented attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry. He stood up to the KGB. He survived nine years in Siberia. He served in Israel’s fractious government. Now, Natan Sharansky is facing his next challenge: finding a solution to the growing battle over women’s… Read more »

California filmmaker Roberta Grossman, who was inspired to make "Hava Nagila (The Movie)" by cherished memories of dancing to the tune at family affairs, spent three years researching the song's history. (Courtesy "Hava Nagila The Movie")

NEW YORK (JTA) — You’re at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah, mingling at the bar or catching up with a distant relative, when you hear it — the opening notes of a familiar tune that as if by some invisible force carries you and other guests to the dance… Read more »