News

(JTA) — Arab-Israeli lawmaker and political leader Ayman Odeh refused to meet with the umbrella foreign policy body for American Jews because it shares office space with the Jewish Agency, an abrupt and dissonant end to a trip that was aimed at promoting greater Arab-Jewish cooperation. “I came here… Read more »

(JTA) — Avigail Alfatov eats her pizza upside down and has funny hiccups. Her favorite food is falafel and she makes her face shine by wiping it with green tea bags. How do we know this and, perhaps more important, why do we care? Well, Alfatov is the reigning… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) – More than 350 years after this city’s Portuguese Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and banned his writings for eternity, the philosopher’s books are for sale at the souvenir shop of the community’s synagogue. Spinoza, a Dutch-born Jewish philosopher who laid the intellectual foundations of the Enlightenment… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The teeming blocks around this city’s New Central Bus Station are anything but scenic. Packed with humanity at every hour of the day, they are dizzying monuments to urban blight: equal parts graffiti, chaotic traffic and bustling, black-market commerce. So on a sunny Friday last… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Israel discovered two massive natural gas fields off its coast five years ago, it was billed as a goldmine that would shift the balance of energy exports in the Middle East and fill Israel’s coffers. Five years later, drilling in the biggest field, known as Leviathan,… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Sitting in front of a computer at the center of Israel’s largest army base, a soldier stares at the screen, moving pixel by pixel over a satellite photograph, picking out details and finding patterns. A few years ago N.S., who has autism, thought the Israel Defense Forces wouldn’t take him.… Read more »

(JTA) – While America puzzles over the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, many American Jews are puzzling over an additional element: the religious identity of victim Nicholas Thalasinos. Pictured on his Facebook page wearing a scarf-style tallit prayer shawl, Thalasinos, who was killed along with 13 others in… Read more »

(JTA) – Since last week’s mass shooting in the California city of San Bernardino, U.S. authorities have been piecing together what might have led Syed Farook and his wife, Tafsheen Malik, to gun down 14 of Farook’s colleagues at a holiday party for county health department employees. The attack raises… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In carefully tailored stump speeches that ranged in tone from apocalyptic to chummy, all but one of the Republican presidential candidates showed up in an attempt to woo Jewish voters. Many of the speeches at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Candidates Forum, held Dec. 3 at… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at an annual U.S.-Israel confab, said Israel’s government must consider the consequences of evolving toward a single state incorporating the Palestinian areas. “How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish democratic state?” Kerry said Saturday at the Saban Forum in Washington,… Read more »

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — With the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay employees lifted this summer, it’s a good time to be pitching scouting to the liberal American Jewish streams. So says Bruce Chudacoff, the chair of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting. A representative… Read more »

Jewish culture and connection were the focus of a recent Tucson Jewish Community Center staff trip to Israel. The group of 10 returned to Tucson from their 12-day trip on Nov. 19 with a renewed sense of purpose. The Tucson J staff joined with delegations from the Shimon and… Read more »

The Jewish Culture Shuk, a one night smorgasbord of adult education classes, brings the community together through learning. Teaching from a Jewish perspective, instructors strive to help us understand and respect ourselves and others, and to deal with difficult situations at home and in the world. On Sunday, Nov.… Read more »

Tucson Hebrew High students are creating relationships with residents of Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, aided by a recent “Better Together” grant from an anonymous donor. The grant supports programs for young Jewish students to engage with the elderly in a hands-on fashion, encouraging the students to live out Jewish… Read more »

Tucsonan Danny Levkowitz recently finished building this 15-foot tall menorah, his first attempt at sculpture, at his east side home. Made of steel rebar with LED lights, the menorah took over two months to create, but it is something Levkowitz, the owner of Sun Lighting, has been dreaming about… Read more »

Families with special needs children of any age (infant to adult) are invited to a “no-shush” Shabbat service and potluck lunch hosted by Congregation Or Cha­dash on Saturday, Dec. 12 at 10 a.m. The event is organized by the Jewish Special Needs Moms group. The Dec. 12 gathering “is… Read more »

“I was a political appointee for two Republican presidents and two Democratic presidents. … What that makes me is an extinct species,” Ambassador Dennis Ross told a crowd of more than 850 at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s “Together” campaign kickoff on Nov. 18 at Congregation Anshei Israel.… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – American Jewish organizations don’t see the Syrian refugees as a threat; they see them as a reminder. With rare unanimity on an issue that has stirred partisan passion, a cross-section of the community has defended the Obama administration’s refugee policy in terms recalling the plight of Jews fleeing… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, sat kiddy-corner in armchairs at this week’s international climate summit near Paris, talking and laughing. “We have the best of relations, and they can be made even better,” Netanyahu told Modi at the meeting. To which Modi… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – The two men used to share the same synagogue pew. One’s wife was the other’s chief of staff. Now both share an ignoble distinction: guilty of accepting millions through illegal kickback schemes. There is one thing Sheldon Silver and William Rapfogel won’t share, however: a… Read more »