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 »
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 »
he ‘Garden of Hope’ at the Tucson Jewish Community Center will be a multipurpose healing space. (Photo: Barbara Grygutis Sculpture LLC) Gan Tikvah, the Garden of Hope, is nearing completion at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. It will have a fluid connection to the current Sculpture Garden and provide a shady and tranquil pocket park for all seasons. It will offer an outdoor venue for classes, programming, and, with dramatic… Read more »
As each news cycle seems to create new challenges to our Jewish community’s sense of wholeness, how will we respond — individually and collectively? Will we become broken and divided — or if not — how will we retain our footing so that we may remain connected to each… Read more »
Esther Becker will explore “Conversations with G-d” at the annual Women’s Academy of Jewish Studies Women’s Book Brunch, Sunday, Sept. 15 at Congregation Chofetz Chayim. “We live in an era when we all have our challenges to deal with and no one goes unscathed,” says Becker. “I wanted to… Read more »
The Union for Reform Judaism’s Taste of Judaism classes, taught by Temple Emanu-El’s Rabbi Batsheva Appel, will be offered at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on Sundays, Sept. 8, 15, and 22 from 2:30-4:30 p.m., and at Temple Emanu-El on Thursdays, Sept. 12, 19, and 26, from 6-8 p.m.… Read more »
Abbii Cook, a University of Arizona alum, now UA Hillel Foundation’s assistant director, stands in front of Old Main, the first building constructed on the UA campus. (Photo courtesy University of Arizona Hillel Foundation)
It’s very nostalgic to be back in Tucson,” says Abbii Cook, University of Arizona Hillel Foundation’s new assistant director. “I’m so excited to be back at the place that really shaped me. It’s like a full circle,” she says. Cook spent a lot of time at Hillel as a… Read more »
Tucsonan Aliya Markowitz in Jerusalem’s Old City during the 2019 March of the Living trip to Poland and Israel. (Photo courtesy Neil Markowitz)
Eighteen-year-old Aliya Markowitz had a goal: maintain a 4.0-grade point average through all four years at Catalina Foothills High School. She achieved this, while being active in BBYO, serving on the youth group’s Tucson and regional boards, and participating in the March of the Living two-week trip to Poland… Read more »
Scott Warren Scott Warren, Ph.D., will be the Gallery Chat speaker at the Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center as it reopens for its 2019-2020 season on Friday, Sept. 6, at 11 a.m. He will speak about human migration through the Sonoran desert and how it shapes both memory and… Read more »
Green Valley Fire Captain Mark Lytle, a member of ICSAVE’s team of volunteers, learned about Israeli emergency medical services as part of Tucson’s first Firefighters Without Borders delegation in October 2013. The Magen David Adom (Red Shield of David) is Israel’s national ambulance, blood services, and disaster relief organization. It has been a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement since 2006. (Photo courtesy Mark Lytle)
Mark Lytle, a native Tucsonan who has worked in the fire service for 24 years, is part of a coalition of first responders who created Integrated Community Solutions to Active Violence Events, or ICSAVE, to provide free active violence trainings to schools, religious institutions, and other groups across Arizona.… Read more »
Robert Lopez-Hanshaw directs Tucson’s new Ha’Zamir choir branch. (Photo: Debe Campbell/AJP)
HaZamir Tucson is launching as a new branch of the International Jewish Teen Choir, a musical youth movement of 41 choral chapters across the United States and Israel. An inter-congregational group of local Jewish teens will cap their year of practice with a festival in New York where 450… Read more »
Dr. Michele Ley Women should get a formal breast cancer risk assessment between the ages of 25 and 30, according to the new guidelines set by The American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS), published in May. According to the organization, one in eight women, or 12 percent of women in the United… Read more »
