News

(JTA) — President Donald Trump’s decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital drew wide international criticism, with 128 countries including the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada voting in favor of a United Nations resolution condemning it. But several countries saw Trump’s decision in a different light: as an example to follow.… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — On the national day of mourning for Holocaust victims in the Netherlands, a major mosque in the kingdom’s capital celebrated the conversion to Islam of a Jewish survivor of that genocide. At least, that’s what Amsterdam’s Blue Mosque said. According to its Facebook, 87-year-old Sal van Coeverden… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When war broke out on Israel’s northern border in 2006, Avigdor Guy remained calm. He lived in the northern port city of Haifa, but he didn’t think the war would hit home — until, that is, it did. “Twelve years ago, they asked me if… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — An inflection point in American policy towards Iran came this afternoon, when President Trump announced he will re-impose nuclear sanctions on Iran and effectively withdraw the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Having done so, the administration should anticipate the range… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal, is bad policy and calls into question America’s international credibility. Mr. Trump has now set the international community on a slippery slope, imperiling the national security… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When President Donald Trump teased and then announced he would be pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, the next obvious question was, what next? What was Plan B? “Congress has heard nothing about an alternative,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Andrea Weiss, an associate professor of Bible at the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and its incoming provost, remembered the joy that Rabbi Aaron Panken brought to his work. Weiss recalled how Panken would pop into his colleagues’ offices asking if… Read more »

(JTA) — In recent years we have witnessed anti-Israel demonstrations that have turned overtly anti-Semitic and even violent, but police ignored initially as only political activity. We have seen prosecutors and judges rule that an arson attack on a synagogue is not anti-Semitic because the perpetrator was motivated by… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Julius Kahn III grew up in San Francisco, playing in Julius Kahn Playground, named for his grandfather. The view from this clearing in the opulent Presidio Heights neighborhood is among the best in the city, meaning it’s… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – When Elad Horovitz was shot in the head during Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza, his first concern was survival, not how to maintain peripheral vision while driving. Horovitz, then 20, was shot through his left ear and right eye. Somehow he survived, losing half of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rod Rosenstein came to the annual conference of the Anti-Defamation League with plaudits for Donald Trump despite being at the center of the president’s contentious relationship with his Justice Department. He extolled Trump’s call for unity in the wake of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally in… Read more »

Ellen Hershkin

A national call to action for National Women’s Health Week (May 13–19) Women’s health is on life support. Inequities in insurance premiums, gender bias, treatment and care must end. Women’s health doesn’t advance itself, so it’s up to women to be their own healthcare advocates. Women have always been… Read more »

Alba Jaramillo, J.D., has worked for almost two decades in the field of human rights, particularly immigrant and women’s rights. She’s an expert on domestic and sexual violence, both as a professional and as a survivor herself. Yet none of that prevented her from being terrorized by a serial… Read more »

“I don’t know what path I would be on right now without JLTC . . . everything has changed,” says Catalina Foothills High School junior and student body president Peris Lopez. The Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition is life-changing for the sophomores and juniors it brings together annually from high schools across Tucson.… Read more »

After six years of dedicated service as the president and CEO of the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, Tracy Salkowitz is moving on. Salkowitz and her husband, Rick Edwards, are heading to Mendocino, California, where the climate is kinder on her lungs. But her hands-on approach to community… Read more »

Leslie Glaze

Leslie Glaze, Ph.D., furthers the critical work of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona in both traditional and novel ways. That’s why the selection committee tapped her as the recipient of the JFSA’s 2018 Special Recognition Award. She will be honored next week at the 2018 Jewish Community Awards… Read more »

Works by Ann Lapidus and Jeanne Hartmann will be on display at the Fine Art Gallery of the Tucson Jewish Community Center through May 17. Ann Marcus Lapidus creates abstract painting with a vivid palette. She has a B.A. in art from Pomona College and a semestrial degree from… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Donniel Hartman had some bad news for his audience on the largely liberal Upper West Side: The two-state solution might not be dead, but it’s not imminent either, and most Israelis don’t believe the two-state solution is “implementable in their lifetime.” It’s not a… Read more »

A view of a Starbucks shop in Washington, D.C., April 17, 2018. The company announced that it will close more than 8,000 U.S. stores on May 29 to conduct "racial-bias education" following the arrest of two black men in one of its cafes. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Starbucks denied that it demoted the Anti-Defamation League from a lead role in its anti-bias training, saying it continues to view the Jewish group as a valuable partner in future training. Reggie Borges, a spokesman for the coffee giant, spoke to JTA on Wednesday following… Read more »

High School Students are invited to compete in The Norman Alexander Award for Excellence in Jewish Student Writing by submitting a 500-word essay on: Jewish Contributions to American Music. Examples are: Paula Abdul, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Shlomo Carlebach, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Billy Joel,… Read more »