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More than 100 colleagues and friends turned out Sept. 12 to say thank you and l’hitraot (until we meet again) to Oshrat Barel at a party in her honor at the Harvey and Deanna Evenchik Center for Jewish Philanthropy. Barel returned to Israel after six years in Tucson, four… Read more »

Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Young Women’s Cabinet members visited Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging on Wednesday, Sept. 11 for a brief tour of the building, and the opportunity to get to know some Handmaker residents during a Rosh Hashanah card-making activity. Their visit was part of their… Read more »

The annual community-wide Project Isaiah High Holy Days hunger project kicked off Sept. 15. It is coordinated by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish Community Relations Council, with monetary and food donations benefiting the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. Synagogues and Jewish agencies will collect donations. The… Read more »

Jill Rich, social action chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, presented Federation CEO & President Stuart Mellan with a token of appreciation from Catholic Community Services Casa Alitas program on Sept. 13. JFSA has supported Casa Alitas over the past six… Read more »

Hon. John Peck

At its annual conference and meeting of 130 judges, magistrates, and court officers earlier this month in Prescott, the Arizona Justice of the Peace Association elected the Hon. John Peck president. Peck is the presiding judge of the Ajo Justice Court, elected to a second term in 2018, and… Read more »

Project Isaiah, the Jewish community’s annual High Holidays food drive benefiting the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, begins Sept. 15 and runs through Oct. 15. When asked why we fast on Yom Kippur, the prophet Isaiah responded, “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” (Isaiah… Read more »

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Young Men’s group held its annual leadership development retreat Aug. 23-25 on Mt. Lemmon, facilitated by Jewish Federations of North America National Young Leadership Cabinet co-chair Adam Miller, from Orange County, California. The 13 young men participated in leadership development programming including community… Read more »

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Young Women’s Cabinet held its annual retreat Aug. 17-18, themed “Be the Change.” The Cabinet spent 24 hours celebrating Shabbat, getting to know each other, learning about the Tucson Jewish Community, and the mission of the Federation.… Read more »

Bertie Levkowitz

Tucson Hebrew Academy will honor one of its founders, Bertie Levkowitz, at its 2019 Tikkun Olam Celebration next month. Daniel Asia, president of THA’s board of trustees, remembers meeting her back in 1988. “When we first got to Tucson I met Bertie and her then-husband, Jack, and I went… Read more »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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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 »