News

(JTA) – Rising fears about a second wave of coronavirus cases in New York City’s Orthodox communities appear to be coming to pass, with the proportion of tests turning up cases of the disease more than four times the citywide rate in one heavily Orthodox neighborhood in newly released… Read more »

(JTA) — Before deciding to stay permanently, Chaim Chazin would visit the small city of Uman, Ukraine, every year around Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. For Chazin, a religiously observant music producer from Israel, the brief annual visits were energizing spiritual experiences away from money troubles back home.… Read more »

(JTA) — Israel passed a grim milestone over the weekend as its tally of coronavirus deaths exceeded 1,000. The country currently has the highest rate of new infections per capita in the world, with an average of 199.3 new cases a day per 1 million residents for the week… Read more »

(JTA) — Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down against anti-Semitism and other forms of hate speech. This summer, the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP led a one-month corporate boycott against advertising on Facebook, and a group of British Jews led a 24-hour boycott… Read more »

(JTA) — Yeshiva University rejected the formation of a campus group for queer students but said it was putting in place new policies to help LGBTQ students feel safe. The flagship Modern Orthodox college in New York sent a statement to students Thursday addressing a yearlong battle over whether… Read more »

Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona, in collaboration with the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation, the Tucson Jewish Community Center, and Arizona Youth Partnership, will present “Increased Risk in Troubling Times: Suicide Prevention for Today,” on Thursday, Sept. 10, which is World Suicide Prevention Day. The online… Read more »

(JTA) — Hundreds of synagogues have been shuttered for months. Jewish organizations are slashing budgets and staff. Jewish community centers, saddled with empty gyms and child care centers, have laid off masses of employees. Jewish camps closed this summer, Jewish day schools will hold only virtual sessions in the… Read more »

Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, has completed a significant philanthropic initiative to digitize and make searchable millions of Holocaust and Nazi persecution-related records. Building on its commitment to preserve at-risk history, there are now more than 19 million Holocaust records available globally, for free… Read more »

(JTA) — In early June, as anti-racism protests swept the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, Wisconsin, signed onto an interfaith letter supporting peaceful protest and condemning “a broken societal system which disproportionately affects communities of color.” This week,… Read more »

(JTA) — Residents of Uman, Ukraine, scuffled with Orthodox Jews who were seeking to enter a building in the city that is the site of an annual  Jewish pilgrimage. In a video posted to Facebook on Friday by Sergiy Alekseev, a city council member representing the far-right Svoboda party, several… Read more »

(JTA) — El Al, Israel’s national airline, is scheduled to make its first publicly advertised flight to the United Arab Emirates. The flight, which appears to be reserved for dignitaries, is set to leave Ben Gurion Airport on Monday bound for Abu Dhabi, the Associated Press reported. The flight… Read more »

(JTA) — Only one person has ever officially fulfilled the traditional Jewish birthday blessing of living “until 120,” but Rosalie Wolpe from South Africa is well on her way. Wolpe celebrated her 111th birthday last week at her Cape Town retirement facility, Highlands House Home for Jewish Aged, with… Read more »

(JTA) — Four years ago, the Movement for Black Lives put out a platform that, among a long list of detailed policy recommendations, accused Israel of genocide. Several major Jewish organizations expressed their outrage and put out statements condemning the platform. On Friday, the Movement for Black Lives convened… Read more »

(J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Goyim TV, an anti-Semitic video-sharing website that was promoted with a “banner drop” from a Los Angeles freeway overpass on Saturday, has been taken down by its domain host under a flood of complaints. Jon Minadeo Jr., 37, was behind both… Read more »

(JTA) — The Vatican both fought efforts efforts to reunite two Holocaust orphans with their relatives and urged Pope Pius XII not to protest the Nazi deportation of Italian Jews, Brown University historian David I. Kertzer has found. Kertzer published the results of his investigation into Vatican documents unsealed… Read more »

Gertrude A. Shankman, 105, died July 24, 2020. Gertrude was born Oct. 26, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. She was a longtime resident at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, where students from Tucson Hebrew Academy had visited to celebrate her birthday ever year since she turned 100. “As… Read more »

Chabad of Oro Valley will hold three socially-distanced Shofar blowing events outside its premises at 1171 E. Rancho Vistoso Blvd. #131 on Sunday, Sept. 20. The times are 9:15 a.m., 12:15 p.m. and 6 p.m. Each will include a 10-minute service in the parking lot. No registration is required.… Read more »

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, causing millions to lose their jobs and hunger levels to skyrocket, the Jewish environmental organization Hazon knew it had to dramatically reconfigure its priorities. Normally focused on running immersive Jewish environmental educational programs and promoting sustainable food and farming, the group suddenly shifted from… Read more »

Congregation Anshei Israel will give Tucsonans an opportunity to hear the Rabbi Sara Metz sound the Shofar live on Friday, Aug. 21 at 8:30 a.m., in the northwest parking lot (facing the sanctuary doors). Members also can pick up thei High Holy Days packages. Other LIVE Shofar blast opportunities… Read more »

The Tucson Festival of Books Authors In Conversation  series will present Tucson native Alexander Boxer, now a data scientist in Washington, D.C., and  author of “A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020), in an exclusive… Read more »