Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold meeting with Tehran Children in Israel, February 1943. (Jewish Agency for Israel)
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (JTA) — After starving for months in Siberia, 5-year-old Natan Rom thought he was in paradise when he arrived in this colorful trading hub in Central Asia. It was 1940, and Rom, along with his parents and older sister Ziva, was one of countless Jewish refugees… Read more »
Jared Kushner exits Trump Tower in New York City, Dec. 7, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(JTA) — American Jews are watching the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency with both fear and hope. Many have expressed worries about some of his supporters’ ties to the so-called “alt-right” movement, whose followers traffic variously in white nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-Semitism and a disdain for “political correctness.” Those fears… Read more »
President Donald Trump speaking at a luncheon at the Congress of Tomorrow Republican Member Retreat in Philadelphia, Jan. 26, 2017. In the background are Senate Majority Whip John Cronyn, left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have been talking each other up plenty since the latter’s election upset in November. But those expecting Trump to turn his kind words and pledges on Israel into fast action may have to be patient. The… Read more »
From left to right: Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women; Rabbi Tamara Cohen, chief of innovation at Moving Traditions, and Debbie Hoffmann, NCJW's board president, at the National Mall for the Women's March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017. (Ron Sachs)
(JTA) — One Jewish group that joined the Women’s March on Washington has seen its online donations double since the election of Donald Trump as president. Another has twice as many guests as usual attending its annual conference. A third has seen its social media engagement skyrocket. And after… Read more »
Journalists visit a renovated barrack at Auschwitz, Dec. 1, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — I did a shameful thing on my first visit 20 years ago to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In a guestbook outside an Auschwitz museum exhibit featuring information on 70,000 Polish non-Jews who were murdered here, I downplayed the significance of their deaths… Read more »
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner leave the presidential inauguration at the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 2017. (Saul Loeb/Pool/Getty Images)
(JTA) — President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, attended the Inauguration Day service Friday at St. John’s Episcopal Church, a tradition that goes back to 1933. The live video showed the Trumps shaking hands with the pastor and entering the church, followed immediately by his daughter Ivanka and her… Read more »
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Women’s Philanthropy social action committee will hold a Purse and Paint Party to benefit Sister Jose Women’s Center next month. The party will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Tucson Hebrew Academy. Women are asked to donate new or… Read more »
The Coalition for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona is accepting applications for scholarships to Jewish overnight camps for the summer of 2017. The need-based camp scholarship is funded by the Mo and Frances Beren Family Scholarship Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona.… Read more »
True Concord performs at Lincoln Center in 2015. (Courtesy True Concord Voices & Orchestra)
True Concord Voices & Orchestra will perform Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” at the 5th annual Tucson Desert Song Festival later this month. Mendelssohn’s oratorio retells events from the life of Prophet Elijah in the Books of Kings. “‘Elijah’ is, like its composer, complex,” says True Concord Musical Director Eric Holtan.… Read more »
Arizona Balalaika Orchestra
The Arizona Balalaika Orchestra will present its 37th annual concert of traditional folk music from Russia, Poland, Ukraine and other Slavic countries, on Saturday, Jan. 28 at 7 p.m. at Pima Community College Center for the Arts Proscenium Theater, West Campus, 2202 W. Anklam Road. “The audience will certainly… Read more »
"Gate's Pass" by Lauri Kaye
Local artist Lauri Kaye’s “A Tucson Portrait Story” series will be displayed in the Upper Link Gallery at the Tucson International Airport from Feb. 6-March 16. The drawings depict iconic Tucson people, places and events, from the Loft Cinema to street musicians to monsoon rains, in a graphic journalistic… Read more »
"Left Turn Lane #1" by Thelma Scudi Thelma Scudi, a self-trained artist from Tucson, works in cloth and mixed media and credits her talent to her ability to see wonder and beauty in spite of reality. An exhibit of her art quilts, “The Left Turn Lane,” will be on display at the Tucson Jewish Community Center… Read more »
Arsenio Hall Arsenio Hall, a comedian, actor and television star, believes in the healing power of laughter, and he surrounds himself with like-minded people. “The greatest thing in the world is laughter, from my son to my friends, laughter keeps you young and it keeps you alive,” says Hall. Nothing impedes… Read more »
Michelle Blumenberg
Michelle Blumenberg, executive director at the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation, has spent her career helping to secure and expand a vibrant Jewish community in Tucson and beyond. “I feel that it’s important to give what I can to help ensure that we have a Jewish community in the… Read more »
René and Anya Schaap visited the ‘This Is Hunger’ exhibit in Tucson. (Courtesy Denise Uyehara)
The statistics are disturbing, but it is the faces and the stories of “This Is Hunger” that remain with viewers. The double trailer that houses “This Is Hunger,” a multimedia exhibit created by the national nonprofit MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, was parked at the Tucson Jewish Community… Read more »
Nogales firefighter Marcela Donovan Hammond and
Israeli Consul General Sam Grundwerg at the Tucson
Jewish Community Center on Jan. 8. (Marty Johnston)
At a ceremony on Jan. 8 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center honoring local firefighters who helped battle fires in Israel in November, Sam Grundwerg, consul general of Israel to the Southwest United States, commended the volunteers on being their “brother’s keeper,” comparing them to Judah, who, according to… Read more »
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, says as his career began he realized creating a partnership between Jews and Evangelical Christian had huge potential. “I looked at it in terms of the Jewish people, and the need to have relationships between… Read more »
Mayor Rafael Ben-Sheetrit, left, and Rabbi Joseph Lasry unveil a sign that renames a Beit She’an street ‘Derech Hashisha’ or ‘Road of the Six.’ (Courtesy Oshrat Barel)
Oshrat Barel, who serves as director of the Weintraub Israel Center and Tucson’s community shlicha (Israeli emissary), visited her hometown of Beit She’an last month for a memorial ceremony marking 14 years since the murder of her father and five others in a terrorist attack on the Likud party… Read more »
Geza Rohrig in "Son of Saul" (Courtesy Jewish History Museum)
Despite receiving critical acclaim for masterfully portraying the lead role in the Academy Award-winning film “Son of Saul,” Hungarian-born Geza Rohrig does not identify as an actor. “I’m an accidental actor. I’m a writer, that’s what I do. It gives me much more freedom, because I can write whatever… Read more »
Joan B. Diamond, 87, philanthropist and Jewish community volunteer, died Dec. 28, 2016. Diamond was an early supporter of the University of Arizona Steele Children’s Research Center, which opened in 1992, and joined her husband, real estate developer Donald Diamond, in providing the lead gift to establish the Diamond… Read more »
