News

Brandeis National Committee, Tucson Chapter, will host local author John Maley at its fall opening lunch Monday, Oct. 20, 11 a.m. at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel at Reid Park. Maley has been a soldier, peace officer, corrections officer, probation officer and has worked as a private investigator in… Read more »

Jewish National Fund has announced the Schwartz-Hammer Alexander Muss High School in Israel Impact Fellowship Program, which provides scholarships to send Arizona teenagers on a summer program to Israel.  Applicants must raise $1,000 through JNF’s “Plant Your Way” program. The fellowship, which includes everything from on-campus housing to field-… Read more »

At the Bonnyton Gold Club restaurant, "pies and mince" have replaced traidtional Jewish staples. (Ben Sales)

EAGLESHAM, Scotland (JTA) — As teenagers in the 1960s, Lewis Geneen and Colin Black liked to spend their summer Sundays playing rounds at the Bonnyton Golf Club course, breaking only for a lunch of fish and borscht. Sitting atop a hill on the outskirts of Glasgow, Bonnyton was then… Read more »

The Civic Orchestra of Tucson, the oldest community orchestra in the region, will begin its 2014-2015 season with a free concert at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The concert, on Saturday, Oct. 11 at 7 p.m., also marks the orchestra’s participation in Daniel Pearl World Music Days to honor… Read more »

Yoram Bauman

Yoram Bauman, Ph.D., “the world’s first and only stand-up economist,” will present “Comedy, Economics and Climate Change” at the University of Arizona on Monday, Sept. 29 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Berger auditorium, 1130 E. Helen St. “It turns out that comedy actually pays better than teaching,”… Read more »

Paul Reiser

The Hearth Foundation will present its 2nd Annual “Comedy for a Cause” starring Paul Reiser on Thursday, Oct. 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Fox Tucson Theatre. A seasoned actor, writer, producer and stand-up comedian, Reiser co-created and starred in the critically acclaimed NBC series “Mad About You,” which… Read more »

Vivian Ackerman, left, and Selma Paul Marks (Sheila Wilensky/AJP)

Friendships may be coveted throughout life, but how many span more than 65 years? Selma Paul Marks, now 91, was pregnant with her first child when she attended her friend Vivian’s wedding to Harry Ackerman at the Stone Avenue Temple on March 23, 1947. Years later, Marks and Ackerman,… Read more »

Interfaith Community Services will present a lunch and learn forum on “Mental Health and Aging,” on Wednesday, Oct. 22 from noon to 2 p.m. at Congregation Anshei Israel. Some 20 percent of adults ages 55 and over experience mental health concerns. For example, what’s the difference between signs of… Read more »

Summer’s over but worldwide trouble spots rage on. The influx into Arizona of Central American migrants fleeing violence, the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine, and the Israel-Gaza conflict were the subjects of an educational forum on Sept. 10, hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of… Read more »

Martin Indyk said that refraining from imposing ideas on the Israelis and Palestinians inhibited both sides from embracing them. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – What was supposed to have revived the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — allowing negotiations to develop organically — instead helped kill them, Martin Indyk, until recently the top U.S. peace broker, told JTA in a candid and wide-ranging interview. Speaking by phone Sept. 19 while in transit… Read more »

President Barack Obama speaking at the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 24, 2014. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) – President Obama devoted the bulk of his U.N. speech to the fight against violent Islamic extremism and hardly mentioned Iran’s nuclear program. In his address last year to the General Assembly, Obama spent a great deal of time talking about Tehran’s nuclear pursuit, describing it… Read more »

Secular Israelis outside the Cinema City theater in Jerusalem demonstrating in favor of allowing movie theaters to open on Shabbat, Feb. 25, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – During the past 18 months, the governing coalition in Israel has passed legislation to extend the nation’s mandatory conscription to the haredi Orthodox — a group currently exempted from military service — and Knesset leaders have advanced bills that would allow for civil unions and… Read more »

(JTA) — An Ohio University Student Senate meeting erupted into a chaotic scene and four students were arrested over protests of the Senate president’s “blood bucket challenge” of Israel. At Wednesday night’s meeting of the Student Senate, pro-Israel students staged a filibuster and called for the resignation of Megan Marzec over… Read more »

Melissa Duchan

NEW YORK (JTA) – For years, Melissa Duchan had found the dress code for girls at her Orthodox school in Brooklyn, the Yeshivah of Flatbush, onerous. But it wasn’t until recently that Duchan, 16, felt that scrutiny of female students had crossed the line from irritating to what she called “predatory.”… Read more »

Israel's Andy Ram sprawled on the court following his five-set doubles victory with partner Yoni Erlich, holding racket, against Argentina in a Davis Cup match in Sunrise, Fla., Sept. 13, 2014. (Andrea Eidman)

SUNRISE, Fla. (JTA) – It wasn’t Tel Aviv, but thousands of people chanting his name at a Davis Cup match following a grueling victory was a pretty good way for Israel’s Andy Ram to leave the game oftennis to which he had devoted more than half his life. Ram, 34,… Read more »

Researchers searching for human remains in Wasosz, the site of a massacre of Jewish villagers in 1941. (Podlaska Archaeological Laboratory)

(JTA) — In September 1941, a group of villagers wielding axes and other tools descended upon the homes of their Jewish neighbors and murdered every last one, according to testimonies gathered by Holocaust scholars. Not much else is known about the massacre in Wasosz, a village 100 miles east… Read more »

The leader of France's far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, seen here at a May Day demonstration in Paris in 2012, has a growing following among Jews. (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

(JTA) — From the window of his Paris home, Michel Ciardi can see into the waiting room of a government welfare agency where a predominantly Arab and African crowd awaits government checks. A former communist, Ciardi once believed the scene at the agency was a necessary element of French… Read more »

Who knows what Tucson’s energetic young Jewish leaders may accomplish in the next 30 years? Four of those leaders profiled here, Amy Beyer, Adam Goldstein, Ben Pozez and Sarah Heisler Singer, have already contributed a great deal to the future of Jewish Tucson, belying the stereotype of apathetic young… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Following a five-week landmark civil trial and two days of deliberation, a Brooklyn jury found Arab Bank liable of knowingly supporting terrorism in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to the U.S. District Court ruling on Monday, the Jordan-based bank provided material support… Read more »

Mark Wallace, CEO of the new Counter Extremism Project, is flanked by board members Fran Townsend and Joseph Lieberman in announcing the group's creation in New York, Sept. 22, 2014/ (Courtesy of Counter Extremism Project)

NEW YORK (JTA) – Imagine taking the 6-year-old nongovernmental organization United Against Nuclear Iran and swapping out the word Iran with “violent extremists.” That pretty much sums up the Counter Extremism Project, an NGO launched Monday that aims to expose the financial, ideological and recruitment architecture that supports violent… Read more »