Diane Turner Diane Turner, a life coach, psychotherapist and author of “Heart Wisdom: A Concise Companion for Creating a Life of Possibility,” will launch a three-part course at the Tucson Jewish Community Center starting Tuesday, Jan. 7 from 1 to 3 p.m. The sessions will continue on Jan. 14 and 21.… Read more »
Members of Firefighters Without Borders, the seven-man Arizona delegation that traveled to Israel in October, will discuss their trip at Hadassah Southern Arizona’s lunch program on Sunday, Jan. 5. The local firefighters conferred with Israeli firefighters and rescue workers to learn firsthand how to respond to mass casualties. Their… Read more »
Shalom Tucson will host a free bagel brunch for newcomers and anyone interested in the Tucson Jewish community on Sunday, Jan. 12, at 10 a.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Representatives from synagogues, agencies and organizations will provide “one stop shopping for our warm and vibrant Jewish community,”… Read more »
In Washington, D.C., for a 2011 lobbying trip are Jewish Latino Teen Coalition members (L-R) Maia Schneider, Rena Barber, Harrison Avigdor, Roberto Flores, Susan Keovongsa, Amanda Monroy, Brian Molina, Analiza Grabowski, Louie Sanders, Natalia Navarro and Lindsey Bressler. Many will attend the coalition’s anniversary celebration in Tucson on Jan. 5. More than 100 teens who otherwise may have never met have shared their cultures through the Jewish Latino Teen Coalition, a program founded by Rep. Raul Grijalva and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. The purpose of the coalition, which may be the… Read more »
The century’s largest winter storm in Israel is over, but it left an aftermath of icy roads. You can imagine what fearsome traffic jams materialized. So it was on the morning of Dec. 16 on Road 443, which leads from Modiin to Northern Jerusalem, including our Mount Scopus hospital. The road… Read more »
The House Budget Committe chair, Rep. Paul Ryan, and the Senate Budget Committee chair, Sen. Patty Murray, walk past the Senate chamber on their way to a press conference to announce a bipartisan budget deal, Dec. 10, 2013. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images) WASHINGTON (JTA) — For Jewish and pro-Israel groups, the congressional year is ending with an odd reversal: the prospect, however fragile, of bipartisan comity on budget issues coupled with a rare partisan disagreement on Middle Eastern policy. The groups that deal with social welfare and justice issues are heartened,… Read more »
Young people sit a cafe table set up amid the snow on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on Dec. 15, 2013. (Hadas Parush/Flash 90) Only about 20 minutes outside of the city did it begin to appear — patches of white on the rough hills abutting the road, sprinklings of flakes on the pines. By the time our bus reached Mevasseret Tzion, near Jerusalem, the snow was blanketing the ground, building up in… Read more »
The city of Rahat is the largest Bedouin settlement in Israel. (Yossi Zamir/Flash 90) WADI AL-NAAM, Israel (JTA) – In this unofficial Bedouin town of 14,000 not far from Beersheva in the Negev Desert, families live in clusters of shanties with intermittent electricity provided by generators or solar panels. A communal structure has soft plastic walls and dirt floors, with a small pit… Read more »
Ariel Kandel, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel's France operations, at his Paris office on Dec. 11, 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz) PARIS (JTA) — In an overcrowded conference room in the heart of Paris’ 14th arrondissement, a hundred French Jews are losing their patience. They have gathered at the Paris office of the Jewish Agency for Israel for a lecture on immigrating to Israel, but the agency staff is running… Read more »
The board at the Hillel chapter of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania is openly rejecting quidelines on Israel debate adopted by the international umbrella group. (Wikicommons) NEW YORK (JTA) — With an estimated Jewish population of 275 undergraduates, the Quaker-founded Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia is home to one of the smaller Hillel chapters in the country. But that hasn’t stopped student activists at the small suburban school from picking a fight of potentially epic proportions with… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry holding a joint news conference in Jerusalem, Dec. 5, 2013. (Kobi Gideon/GPO/FLASH90) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Amid simmering tensions over Iran policy, the Obama and Netanyahu governments appear to have quietly forged common ground in recent weeks on Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the United States accepting that a possible “framework” agreement might not address every outstanding issue in the negotiations. Such an agreement,… Read more »
Demonstrators gathered on Nov. 30, 2013 in the southern Israeli town of Hura during a protest against the government's plan to resettle some 30,000 Bedouin residents of the Negev. (David Buimovitch/Flash 90) (JTA) — They can’t agree on the project’s goal. They can’t agree on who supports it. They can’t even agree on its name. But when it comes to the Israeli government’s plan to relocate 30,000 Negev Bedouin, representatives and allies of the Bedouin community agree with the right wing… Read more »
Protesters against the Ukrainian government cheering a speaker in Kiev's Independence Square, Dec. 5, 2013. (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images) (JTA) — On the last evening in November, at least 31 protesters were taken into custody and dozens treated for injuries following a violent confrontation with Ukrainian police in Kiev’s Independence Square. But that wasn’t enough to intimidate the crowds who have occupied the main square of the capital… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When it comes to the deal between Iran and major powers, Israel and the pro-Israel community are retreating from a strategy of confrontation and working instead to influence the contours of a final agreement. In a conference call last week, Howard Kohr, the American Israel Public… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For 90 minutes in a packed hotel conference room in the heart of Washington, Israel was the colonizer, the settler state, the perpetuator of apartheid. As the annual meeting this weekend of the American Studies Association demonstrated, participants who favored boycotting Israeli universities far outnumbered those opposed.… Read more »
Crown Heights resident Pinchas Woolstone says the neighborhood is 'light years away" from the era of the riots. (Julie Wiener) NEW YORK (JTA) — Chava, a student at a Chabad seminary, has lived in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn for six years, but it’s only in the past few days that she started carrying pepper spray in her handbag. Her younger brother gave her the deterrent after news… Read more »
Renee Bailey When Renee Bailey was 10 years old her mother, a registered nurse, thought she was a picky eater. “My mom saw me in a play, I think it was Yankee Doodle Dandy, and I was way shorter than the other kids,” recalls Bailey, now 36. “We went to an… Read more »
Itzik Becher Itzik Becher, the new development director of UApresents, started singing in Israel when he was 17. He’s been singing about the arts ever since. After arriving at the University of Arizona in January, Becher discovered that “in Tucson people look at the arts like any other necessity. The arts… Read more »
The late philanthropist Mendel Kaplan showing late South African President Nelson Mandela around the South African Jewish Museum, which was opened by Mandela in 2000. (Shawn Benjamin/Ark Images) CAPE TOWN, South Africa (JTA) — In the early 1940s, at a time when it was virtually impossible for a South African of color to secure a professional apprenticeship, the Jewish law firm Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman gave a young black man a job as a clerk. It was… Read more »
Emily and Benjamin Ellentuck enjoy a craft project during the Global Day of Jewish Learning. (Renee Claire) As part of the Global Day of Jewish Learning on Sunday, Nov. 17, the PJ Library and the Tucson Jewish Community Center cosponsored an afternoon of young children’s events at the JCC. The focus was Shabbat family practice and there were plenty of hands-on activities to capture the attention… Read more »
