News

Bernie Sanders, the first Jewish presidential candidate to win a primary contest, will hold a rally tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave. His visit comes days before the Arizona Presidential Preference election on Tuesday, March 22. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. Tickets… Read more »

Purim is one of the most joyous holidays on the Jewish calendar, commemorating Queen Esther’s triumph, with the help of the wise Mordechai, in saving the Jews of ancient Persia from the wicked plot of Haman, evil adviser to the king. The holiday begins on March 23 this year… Read more »

Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz

Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz, the Kosher Information Bureau’s rabbinic administrator, will return to Tucson on Sunday, April 3 for the “Is It Kosher?” supermarket tour from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Albertsons, 6600 E. Grant Road (at East Tanque Verde Road). Attendees will learn what foods and beverages are kosher… Read more »

An exhibition of small sculpture and works on paper by international artist and sculptor Rotraut (Rotraut Klein Moquay) is on display at the Tucson Jewish Community Center Fine Art Gallery through April 13. Born in East Germany in 1938, Rotraut spent much of her life and career in France.… Read more »

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, will be honored with the Rabbi Samuel S. and A. Irma Cohon Memorial Foundation Award at Temple Emanu-El’s Shabbat service on Friday, March 18 at 7:30 p.m. The annual award honors individuals for outstanding service to… Read more »

Students at the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation will hold the 25th annual Holocaust vigil from 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 30 to 10 a.m. Thursday, March 31 on the UA Mall. Dedicated to remembrance, the vigil includes the reading of Holocaust victims’ names throughout the 24 hours. Holocaust survivors… Read more »

Tucson Hebrew Academy will hold its second annual family-friendly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Festival on Sunday, April 3, with expanded hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the THA campus, 3888 E. River Road. Presented by THA’s STEM program, led by science teacher Jennifer Lehrfeld, the… Read more »

Tucson Jewish Singles Over 40, for ages 40-65, will hold its inaugural meeting on Sunday, March 27 at 4 p.m. at Five Palms Restaurant, 3500 E. Sunrise Drive, with a free dinner (no-host beverages available). The group will meet on the fourth Sunday of every month for dinner, happy… Read more »

When Tucsonan Nora Navarro-Hernandez, who is not Jewish, visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for the first time, she had a real awakening. She was there for Shabbat. “I thought it was going to be quiet and really solemn,” she says. “I didn’t think there was going to be… Read more »

Shay Yossef and his wife, Efrat, with their children at their West Bank home in Har Bracha. (Beit Hatfutsot)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Orli Malassa doesn’t remember ever feeling anything but Israeli. To her parents, who came to Israel from Ethiopia in 1983 when she was 5 years old, Malassa’s accent-free Hebrew, fluent use of Israeli slang and effortless assimilation into the Jewish state has felt nothing short… Read more »

  By WASHINGTON (JTA) — Has Donald Trump’s time come, and will Jewish political conservatives embrace him? Trump, the real estate magnate and front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, rolled closer to victory on Tuesday with wins in at least three primary states. His strong showing, earning 161 delegates or more depending on… Read more »

ANATEVKA, Ukraine (JTA) — At the age of 53, Sergey and Elena Yarelchenko fled their native city of Lugansk with three suitcases and moved into a wooden room in a muddy refugee camp outside Kiev. Like hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine’s war-torn east, life for this Jewish… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – Israel has prominently emerged as a presidential campaign issue ahead of critical primary contests in five states on Tuesday, three of which – Ohio, Illinois and Florida – have substantial Jewish communities. Israel was the subject of a heated exchange in the Republican debate last… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — On a recent Sunday evening at a Jewish center in Brooklyn’s Midwood section, dozens of boys and men — ages 5 to 40-something — practice their kicks, strikes and jabs. They are clad in the usual all-white uniform, tied at their middles with cloth belts… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – For Samir Patel, the term “goy” is no slur. It’s a point of pride. Patel is a manager of Suhag Wine & Liquors, a family-owned business in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills, in Queens. He’s a Hindu immigrant from India, but the vast majority… Read more »

(JTA) – Hungarian officials likely anticipated some Jewish opposition to their decision to erect a monument in Budapest to a Holocaust-era lawmaker who promoted anti-Semitic legislation. What they probably didn’t expect was that the Feb. 24 unveiling of a bust honoring Gyorgy Donath would attract a protest of mostly… Read more »

  PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA) — Only after Yonatan Azriaev grabbed the terrorist’s arms and threw him against a wall of soft drinks did he think he was about to die. Azriaev, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect, had been handing out religious pamphlets in the open-air market… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — In a survey that spanned politics, religion and interfaith relations, one statistic stood out: nearly half of Israel’s Jews support expelling the country’s Arabs. The Pew Research Center’s study of Israelis’ attitudes, which had its findings released Tuesday, had asked respondents whether they agreed that… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Nearly half of Jewish-Israelis want to expel Arabs from the country. That’s one of several findings from a new survey of Israeli attitudes on religion, politics and Jewish identity conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center. Coming just three years after Pew‘s much-discussed study of… Read more »

ANALYSIS WASHINGTON (JTA) – Can Bernie Sanders actually win it? With his surprising victory in the Michigan primary by 2 percentage points on Tuesday — after trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits in the polls — the possibility has inched a little closer to reality. To be sure, Sanders still trails… Read more »