Andrew Pawlicki-Sinclair has joined the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona as the assistant director for leadership development and engagement. He has worked for Arizona Serve and the Arizona Conservation Corps managing AmeriCorps national service grants. Before that, Pawlicki-Sinclair served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member at Santa Rita High School… Read more »
Ryan Aaron Rudner, son of Eric and Monica Rudner, will celebrate becoming a bar mitzvah on Nov. 9 at Congregation Anshei Israel. He is the grandson of Calman and Gail Rudner and Alberto and Sara Mirta Bien-Willner, all of Tucson, and the great-grandson of Lidia Esses of Buenos Aires,… Read more »
The Berlin Wall opens in November 1989. (Patrick PIEL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
VIENNA (JTA) — “Neither ox nor donkey can block the path to socialism,” the East German leader Erich Honecker boldly declared on Aug. 14, 1989. Less than three months later, on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall would fall. Newsweek’s then-Berlin bureau chief Michael Meyer called 1989 the year that… Read more »
Carol Kitman first started photographing Yevgeny, left, and Alexander Vindman in 1980. (Carol Kitman)
(JTA) — Carol Kitman remembers meeting Alexander and Yevgeny Vindman nearly 40 years ago in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. The brothers were about 4 1/2 years old and dressed in matching blue sailor outfits with navy caps. Kitman was instantly taken with the twins and asked to take their photo.… Read more »
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky smiles after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the General Assembly in New York, Sept. 26, 2019. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) — Arkady Kesselman, a 20-year-old Jewish student, was set on leaving his native Ukraine for the West last winter. In a war-torn nation losing about 1.2 million citizens each year, where the average monthly salary is about $300, it’s not an unusual decision. But Kesselman has… Read more »
(JTA) — The eastern German city of Dresden has passed a resolution declaring a “Nazi emergency.” The Dresden City Council passed the motion last week saying that the city needed more support from state and federal sources to deal with rising far-right sentiment. Dresden is the headquarters of the… Read more »
(JTA) — Three German teenagers are under investigation for allegedly playing anti-Semitic songs and singing along after a visit to the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp in the center of the country. German police are investigating the three 14-year-olds from Grunberg, in western Germany, police for incitement to… Read more »
(JTA) — Several identifiably Jewish men and boys were attacked in a string of assaults in the Borough Park community of Brooklyn on the same night. Three of the attacks late Friday night involved the same passenger car over five blocks, the Yeshiva World News reported. Surveillance cameras captured each… Read more »
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — A quote from the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel will be the centerpiece of a mural painted in a public square in Buenos Aires. The city government and the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary held a contest to design the mural to honor human rights… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Trump administration quintupled to $25 million rewards for information leading to the return of Robert Levinson, the Jewish American last seen in Iran 12 years ago. The $20 million allocation from the State Department Rewards for Justice announced Monday is in addition to the $5… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israeli businessman will turn over to Yad Vashem a letter written by an 11-year-old Polish girl killed in the Holocaust after its sale by auction was blocked by a Tel Aviv court. Dudi Zilbershlag agreed to give the letter to the Holocaust memorial museum in… Read more »
(JTA) — Iran will inject uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges at its underground Fordow nuclear enrichment plant. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made the announcement during a speech Tuesday broadcast live on national television, the state-owned PressTV reported. The centrifuges had been spinning without the gas to produce stable isotopes… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the country’s police commissioner to investigate a murder threat against him on social media, police arrested a suspect. The Israel Police’s Lahav 433 cyber unit launched an investigation on Monday after this Facebook post: “Israel Police, prepare… Read more »
(JTA) — A time capsule from 1906 was unearthed at the site of the former home of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregation. The time capsule was removed from the cornerstone of the building located in the city’s Oakland neighborhood. The site was most recently the location of the Pittsburgh… Read more »
Liad Goldberg, left, with her sister Naama Issachar in happier times. (Courtesy of Goldberg)
(JTA) — In August, Liad Goldberg visited her sister in a Russian jail. It had been four months since Naama Issachar had been arrested at a Moscow airport while on a layover and accused of drug smuggling, and Goldberg was seeing her sister for the first time since the… Read more »
(JTA) — An umbrella group of more than 50 Jewish organizations from across the ideological spectrum condemned calls by Democratic presidential candidates to condition military aid to Israel on its approach to making peace with the Palestinians. “We are deeply troubled by recent statements that would place conditions, limitations,… Read more »
Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, Colo., was the target of a possible bombing plot, according to court documents. (Screenshot from Google Maps Street View)
(JTA) — A white supremacist has been arrested for plotting to blow up a synagogue in Colorado. Richard Holzer, 27, was charged for planning to attack Temple Emanuel, a congregation in Pueblo of 35 families whose building dates to 1900. According to an affidavit describing the charges, Holzer is… Read more »
Afghanistan's last Jew, Zebulon Simentov, blows the shofar at the sole synagogue in Kabul. (Massoud Hossaini/AFP via Getty Images)
(JTA) — As the old saying goes, two Jews, three opinions. Add one headache for the Taliban. Meet Zabulon Simentov, 66, who is believed to be the last remaining Jew in Afghanistan. Emran Feroz recently profiled Simentov for Foreign Policy and uncovered some incredible stories about the feisty Afghan… Read more »
(JTA) — Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that his country is aiding the Jews of Syria. Except it’s unclear whether any Jews actually remain in Syria after more than eight years of civil war. “We also help representatives of Judaism, we help Jews also in the restoration of their… Read more »
(JTA) — Presidential candidate Joe Biden says it would be a “gigantic mistake” to condition aid to Israel on stopping settlement expansion. The former vice president told a Wall Street Journal reporter it would be “absolutely outrageous” for the United States to take that approach — a position that… Read more »
