Local

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will hold a reception for winter residents on Thursday, Feb. 14 at 5 p.m. at the home of Randee and Myron Jacobs. Casual attire is suggested. The guest speaker will be Amy Hirshberg Lederman, who will present “Every Family Has a Story to… Read more »

The Young Women’s Cabinet will kick off a healthy new year with its winter event on Wednesday, Feb. 6 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The evening will include a cardio-kickboxing class and a discussion of heart health with Claudine Messing, vice president of… Read more »

Rabbi Arthur Green

Rabbi Arthur Green has forged his own spiritual path for a half-century. A preeminent authority on neo-Hasidism, mysticism and Jewish spirituality, Green will be in residence at Temple Emanu-El from Feb. 7 to 9 as the distinguished scholar for its 2013 Arthur T. Bilgray lecture series. Recognized as one… Read more »

Matisyahu

Matisyahu, the no-longer-Hasidic reggae superstar, will bring his first acoustic tour to Tucson on Wednesday, Jan. 30, performing at the Rialto Theatre. The concert will feature acoustic renditions of tracks from his latest album, “Spark Seeker,” in addition to some fan favorites. While in Santa Monica earlier this month… Read more »

Rabbi Billy Lewkowicz

Congregation Bet Shalom will celebrate its 30th year by honoring Rabbi Philip (“Billy”) Lewkowicz and his wife, Ada, at a gala dinner on March 3. “Rabbi Billy has been associated with our congregation as a guest speaker, participant in study groups and panel discussions and especially as our religious… 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 »

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 »

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 »

Sharon Megdal (third from left) toasts “L’Chaim”with desalinated seawater with her colleagues at a desalination plant in Hadera, Israel.

University of Arizona Distinguished Outreach Professor Sharon Megdal grew up in Irvington, N.J., where scarcity of water wasn’t a problem. After she settled in Tucson in the late 1970s, her perspective began to change. “I lived here a dozen years before becoming immersed in water,” says Megdal, who started… Read more »

A family reunites outside the New Jersey home of Elise and Hal Hirshberg, parents of Tucsonan Amy Lederman. Front row: (L-R) Sylvia Boris, Lederman, Lynn Pollan, Carol Lewis, Farida Deske, Elise Hirshberg, Myriam Nahmani. Back: Shelley Hirshberg, Bella Bernard, Jeff Hirshberg (Robert D. DeCuir)

Since the beginning of time, in every culture, across every continent, one thing connects us all: the deeply human need to convey what is important to us from one generation to the next. The telling and retelling of the stories of our lives is essential to the creation of… Read more »

One of the oldest gowns in the Jewish History Museum exhibit was worn in 1702. The gown was shown in the museum’s first ketubah exhibit and was so fragile it was kept behind glass. It has since been restored at the Costume and Textile Study Center in Norfolk, England, and has been donated to the JHM permanent collection.

Three dark-colored wedding gowns will be spotlighted in the Jewish History Museum’s Fifth Annual Ketubah exhibit, which opens Jan. 1, including a Virginia widow’s gown of black satin with a collar trim of white lace. The bride who wore it, Elizabeth Rachel Richardson, was a wealthy confederate widow, says… Read more »