Participants at the Tucson Jewish Community Center weekly Goat Yoga class get a workout and then some. They are joined by miniature kids from Goats of Tucson Yoga. At the hour-long evening program, the yogis usually are more interested in the costumed creatures than yoga poses, especially when plank,… Read more »
Noa Baum (Sam Kinter)
Award-winning storyteller, author and educator Noa Baum returns to Tucson this month for several public events as well as workshops for high school students, college students and faculty, and nonprofit leaders, all aimed at fostering intercultural understanding. “We believe in the power of story to reach across the divides… Read more »
Danielle Levy and Shay Friedwald, Tucson’s new shinshinim (Israeli teen emissaries) visited Disneyland over the 2019 Labor Day weekend with Congregation Anshei Israel’s B’Yahad madrichim (teen leaders) and USY programs.
Editor’s note: This is a new, occasional column to update the community on the activities of the Weintraub Israel Center’s shinshinim (Israeli teen emissaries). Tuson? Taksen? Tucson? And then we are told that we’re about to live a whole year, in the middle of the desert, with a complete… Read more »
Tucsonan Aimee Katz (front right) with third-grade students at the Alfassi school in Mitzpe Ramon, Israel. Katz taught English in Mitzpe Ramon during the 2018-19 school year. (Courtesy Aimee Katz)
Leaving home is difficult, especially since I had lived nowhere else besides Tucson, except for sleepaway camp and teaching in Israel for short stints during the summers. A year ago, however, I traded in the Arizona desert for Mitzpe Ramon, a small southern Israeli desert town in the middle… Read more »
If you’ve been meaning to get together with friends but haven’t found the time, here’s an additional incentive: PJ Library’s Get Together program offers up to $100 reimbursement for hosting two or more families to gather and have some fun. PJ Library of Southern Arizona is participating in Get… Read more »
Scott Warren listens to a question from the audience at the Jewish History Museum gallery chat, Sept. 6. (Debe Campbell)
Tucson’s Jewish History Museum marked its reopening for the 2019-2020 season with a gallery chat by Scott Warren, Ph.D., a humanitarian aid worker and academic geographer. Focusing on the topographies of migration, Warren addressed the geographic sense of landscape and place and how memory and erasure can affect them.… Read more »
David Meiri Professor David “Dedi” Meiri of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming University of Arizona Inaugural Interdisciplinary Cannabis Symposium. The symposium, sponsored by the UA’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, BIO5 Institute, College of Medicine-Tucson, and College of Science,… Read more »
Adeli and Rabbi Boruch Zimmerman, with son Mendel, join the leadership team at Chabad Oro Valley. (Courtesy Rabbi Boruch Zimmerman)
Since opening in 2012, Chabad Oro Valley, led by Rabbi Ephraim and Mushkie Zimmerman, has grown its roster of participants to about 500 — and outgrown its current space. For the High Holidays, Chabad Oro Valley will celebrate in a new 3,388-square-foot home in Sun City’s Mountain View Plaza,… Read more »
Carolynn Scherer Carolynn Scherer Katz will present “Iran Update: a Jewish Perspective” at a Hadassah Southern Arizona lunch later this month. Scherer Katz is a scientist and team leader of the nuclear nonproliferation and systems analysis team at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was instrumental in drafting Safeguards-by-Design documents for the… Read more »
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Keith Marcum joins the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona as communications and marketing manager. Most recently, he managed marketing and sales for Kuumba Made Inc., in Tucson. Before that, he was marketing manager at IMPACT of Southern Arizona, a Tucson non-profit. He is a graduate of James Madison… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a statement in Ramat Gan on September 10, 2019. Photo by Hadas Parush/Flash90
(JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that if he is re-elected next week, he’ll immediately annex a big part of the West Bank: the Jordan Valley. That’s kind of a big deal. On the other hand, it’s not really — yet. That specific eastern swath of the West Bank… Read more »
Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia, Wash., is the only synagogue in the United States known to be sheltering an undocumented immigrant. (Rabbi Seth Goldstein)
(JTA) — In a few weeks, the congregants at Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia, Washington, will gather for Yom Kippur services, where a line in the traditional liturgy declares, “My house will be a house of prayer for all nations.” In this synagogue’s case, that will literally be true.… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel likely will have to go to war with Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said. “There probably won’t be a choice but to launch an operation, a war with the terror forces in Gaza,” Netanyahu said during an interview with the Kan public broadcaster on Thursday morning. “We have… Read more »
Jeiwsh thought leaders and activists from around the world present the Declaration of Our Common Destiny to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Sept. 10, 2019. (Avishag Shaar-Yashuv)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Despite our differences, Jews around the world have remained bound together by a shared history, by the Torah and by our core values, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told Jewish thinkers from around the world. The 30 scholars and activists met this week in Jerusalem to hammer… Read more »
From left to right: Avigdor Liberman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ayelet Shaked, Ayman Odeh and Benny Gantz are all major players in the upcoming Israeli election. (Getty Images/JTA Photo Montage)
(JTA) — Trying to understand next week’s Israeli elections can get confusing. Especially since we’re talking about the second election in one year. Longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is mired in a series of corruption scandals and again facing a serious challenge from former military chief of staff Benny… Read more »
For Sarah Hurwitz, an introductory course launched an exploration of Judaism. (Random House)
When Sarah Hurwitz was working as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, and later as head speechwriter for Michelle Obama, she often was assumed to be a good source of knowledge about Judaism. Except Hurwitz wasn’t. She had grown up nominally Reform. And after her bat mitzvah, Hurwitz… Read more »
BOSTON (JTA) — A health care organization with historic ties to the city’s Jewish community and an Ivy League university have been awarded a $53.4 million grant by the National Institute on Aging, one of the largest federal awards ever to study dementia. Hebrew Senior Life, an affiliate of… Read more »
(JTA) — A city councilman in Paterson, New Jersey, used the term “Jew us down” at a public meeting to criticize developers looking to buy land for less money. Colleagues of Michael Jackson condemned his use of the term, calling it “highly insensitive,” “reprehensible” and “totally inappropriate.” Councilman Al… Read more »
Robert (“Bobby”) Sharpe died Aug. 28, 2019, in Snowmass Village, Colorado, after a long battle with terminal brain cancer. Born and raised in Minnesota, Sharpe’s career took him to the movie business in Los Angeles and the garment industry in Minnesota before he was drawn to Tucson, where he… Read more »
(JTA) — John Bercow, the British House of Commons speaker who became widely known for his cries of “Order!” and other colorful rhetoric, announced Monday that he will resign his post by the end of October. Bercow is Jewish and said last year: “I’ve always been very open about… Read more »
