News

Tracing Roots celebrates two years linking teens, seniors

Handmaker resident Les Waldman, third from left, with the Gibly family: Haya, Yochanan, Zakai, Raquel, Nati and Ayelet, at the April 30 Tracing Roots and Building Trees reception at Handmaker. (Nanci Levy)
May 11, 2017 /

Tracing Roots and Building Trees, an intergenerational program that brings together residents of Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging with students from Tucson Hebrew High, wrapped up its second year with a reception at Handmaker on Sunday, April 30.  Fifteen Handmaker residents and 13 teens participated in the program,… Read more »

Tucson sisters launch first Woops! in the West

Sisters Naomi Lippel (left) and Ellie Lippel at Woops! Bakeshop (Courtesy Woops!)
May 11, 2017 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor

Tucson’s Main Gate Square sports a chic new bakery called Woops! The Woops! phenomenon got its start in 2012 with a pop-up holiday kiosk in New York’s Bryant Square Park selling nothing but macarons, the petite, colorful French sandwich cookies (as opposed to macaroons, the chewy coconut cookies often… Read more »

Three rabbis to explore ‘Finding G-d’ in Handmaker talk
May 11, 2017 /
(L-R) Rabbi Yossie Shemtov, Rabbi Thomas Louchheim and Rabbi Robert Eisen

Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging will continue its Rabbi Lecture Series with “Finding G-d (in the) Every Day,” featuring Rabbis Yossie Shemtov, Robert Eisen and Thomas Louchheim, on Sunday, May 21 at 3:30 p.m. “The Baal Shem Tov taught us that everything you see or hear can serve… Read more »

Local bike drive, volunteer training aim to aid refugees
May 11, 2017 /

The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has launched “Bikes Without Borders” to distribute bicycles to newly arrived refugees through local refugee resettlement agencies. “Bikes Without Borders” is seeking donations of new or used adult and child-sized bicycles and helmets, locks, lights and other… Read more »

In museum talk, novelist to explore Inquisition in Mexico
May 11, 2017 /

The Jewish History Museum will host “Hidden Ones: A Veil of Memories,” a book signing and talk with novelist Marcia Fine, as part of its exhibition from the New Mexico History Museum, “Fluid Identities: New Mexican Crypto-Jews in the Late 20th Century.” The free talk will be held Tuesday,… Read more »

James Comey, fired by Trump and reviled by Democrats, had admirers among Jewish defense officials

FBI Director James Comey prepares to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, May 3, 2017. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
May 10, 2017 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — “You make us better,” James Comey told the Anti-Defamation League in his final public speech as FBI director. Judging from the applause in the conference room at the venerable Mayflower Hotel here, the feeling was mutual. Mired in investigations of the scandals of 2016 (Hillary… Read more »

Israel’s justice minister says Trump peace plan won’t go anywhere — and she’s happy about it

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked casts her vote in preliminary parliamentary elections in Jerusalem, April 27, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
May 10, 2017 / Ben Sales, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — Ten days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked visited the Jewish settlement in Hebron. A community of several hundred ensconced in a city of 150,000 Palestinians, Hebron’s Jewish residents are considered to be among the most extremist and controversial Israeli settlers.… Read more »

President-elect Macron and his French Jewish supporters may be on a collision course

A man looks at an Emmanuel Macron poster at the French consulate in Jerusalem, May 7, 2017. (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)
May 9, 2017 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

PARIS (JTA) — French Jews may have voted en masse for Emmanuel Macron in the final round of France’s presidential elections, but that doesn’t make him their dream president. Like many other supporters of the 39-year-old former investment banker, who on Sunday became the youngest French president in recent… Read more »

ANALYSIS Emmanuel Macron wins French election, but Marine Le Pen wins legitimacy

Emmanuel Macron addressing supporters at the Louvre in Paris after winning the French presidential election, May 7, 2017. (David Ramos/Getty Images)
May 9, 2017 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

  (JTA) — Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old  former investment banker and political centrist, handily defeated the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election. Exit polls showed Macron winning Sunday’s vote by a margin of 65 percent to 34 percent. Although her bid to lead the country failed, Le Pen’s divisive campaign against Macron achieved some of… Read more »

Trump executive order allows campaigning from the pulpit

President Donald Trump greeting clergy members, including Rabbi Marvin Hier, right, in the Rose Garden at the White House, May 4, 2017. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
May 6, 2017 / Ben Sales, JTA

  (JTA) — Jewish groups largely came out against a new executive order allowing clergy to endorse or oppose candidates from the pulpit, fearing that it will erode the separation between church and state. The order, which President Donald Trump signed Thursday at the White House on the National… Read more »

How the Six-Day War changed American Jews

Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War energized the movement to free Soviet Jewry, leading to pro-Israel and anti-USSR demonstrations like this one in New York City in June 1967. (Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)
May 6, 2017 / Ben Sales, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — On the morning of June 5, 1967, as Arab armies and Israel clashed following weeks of tension, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg sat anxious amid his congregants at daily prayers — fearful that the Jewish people would face extinction for the second time in 25 years.… Read more »

A celebrity photographer trains his lens on Holocaust survivors

Holocaust survivor Felix Fibich in “Survivor: A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust.” (Harry Borden)
May 6, 2017 / Curt Schleir

(JTA) — Harry Borden is Britain’s Annie Leibovitz. Sort of. The American-born, U.K.-raised portrait photographer, 52, admits there “are some parallels” in their careers, though “obviously, I’m nowhere near as successful,” he told JTA. Still, Borden is England’s go-to photographer when a publication wants a celebrity portrait. Elton John, Paul… Read more »

FIRST PERSON I’m Jewish and I just became an EU citizen. It feels a little like boarding the Titanic.

Cnaan Liphshiz, his wife and eldest son in a tulip field near Amsterdam, April 3, 2016. (Courtesy of Liphshiz)
May 6, 2017 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

  AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Considering Marine Le Pen’s historical gains in the French presidential elections, the Dutch far-right’s rise and the assault on ritual slaughter in Belgium, this spring is shaping up to be a life-changing time for Europe — its religious minorities in particular. In other words, it’s… Read more »

OP-ED The war never ended for poor, elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union

Afim and Emma A. are clients in need of assistance from the Hesed social welfare in Rustavi, Georgia. (Sarah Levin of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee)
May 6, 2017 / David Schizer, JTA

  (JTA) — We Americans use the phrase “the greatest generation” to describe those who grew up during the Depression, prevailed in World War II and contributed to America’s postwar prosperity and influence. But on a visit last week to Jewish communities in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Belarus’ Minsk and… Read more »

Linda Sarsour: Why the Palestinian-American activist has courted controversy

Linda Sarsour speaks during a Women for Syria gathering at Union Square in New York City, April 13, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
May 6, 2017 / Ben Sales, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — One of the best symbols of the current Jewish political divide is a Muslim woman. To Jews on the left, Linda Sarsour is a courageous and effective activist who builds bridges and breaks stereotypes. To Jews on the right and some in the center, she’s… Read more »

Trump, Abbas link renewed peace talks to countering Islamic State

President Donald Trump gives a joint statement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, May 3, 2017. (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
May 6, 2017 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks would help bring about the defeat of the Islamic State terrorist group. “I know President Abbas has spoken out against ISIS” and other terrorist groups, Trump said Wednesday at a White… Read more »

No one is assigned to Jewish outreach at the DNC. Who ya gonna call?

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, speaking to a crowd of supporters at a unity rally in Salt Lake City, Utah, April 21, 2017. (George Frey/Getty Images)
May 3, 2017 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – You’re a Jewish donor or macher and you need to talk to someone at the Democratic National Committee, stat. Who’s most likely to return your call? Tom Perez, the party chairman, according to Jewish and Democratic insiders. Perez is also pretty much it – no one… Read more »

Abbas’ meeting with Trump may be his chance to shine. Does he have what it takes?

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaking to the media in Berlin, April 19, 2016. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
May 3, 2017 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump wants a deal with Israel and the Palestinians. The Israeli and Palestinian leaders say they want Trump to make the deal. What could go wrong? For all the good cheer guaranteed when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets Wednesday with Trump at the… Read more »

A U.S. government body on religious freedom is accused of going easy on Israel

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 23: Dr. James Zogby participates in a panel discussion about the Muslim experience in America at the Washington National Cathedral October 23, 2012 in Washington, DC. Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
May 1, 2017 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The U.S. State Department’s most recent religious freedoms report includes more than 1,400 words on access to holy sites in Israel. The most recent report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has zero words on access – or on anything to do with Israel.… Read more »