Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, arrive in New York, Sept. 29, 2013. (Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash 90) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Worried that he may be losing the biggest stick in his arsenal when it comes to Iran — the threat of a U.S. strike — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for a meeting Monday with President Obama prepared to speak out. But friends,… Read more »
David Sadker Congregation Or Chadash will hold a retreat, “Courage & Renewal: A Sabbath Dedicated to Our Hidden Wholeness” Friday, Oct. 18 through Sunday, Oct. 20 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center, 7101 W. Picture Rocks Road. “It is said that on the Sabbath we are given an extra soul — the… Read more »
Holocaust survivors Meyer and Susan Neuman with their children, Rosie (left) and Phillip upon arrival in Tucson. (Courtesy Rosie Eilat-Kahn) Although the mission of Tucson’s Jewish History Museum is to tell the stories of Jewish settlers in the American Southwest, the museum is about to highlight another imperative. After raising funds for expansion and purchasing the building on the adjoining Stone Avenue property four years ago, “we started doing… Read more »
Idan Raichel (Yeara Livny) On Oct. 9, the Idan Raichel Project, Israeli world music pioneers, will kick off their U.S. tour with a live concert at the Fox Tucson Theatre. Voted “Musical Group of the Decade” in an Israeli national media poll, the Project blends a range of cultures, languages and musical influences… Read more »
Dorothy Kret (Sheila Wilensky) Dorothy (Dot) Kret isn’t your typical matchmaker. For the past 25 years she’s been helping people with disabilities “become employable and employed,” as the DK Advocates mission statement puts it. “My mother always said what my company does is today’s version of a yenta,” she says, using the word… Read more »
Ryan Ballis, center, with award from the Wounded Warrior Project, is flanked by Quentin Irion, the group’s outreach coordinator (left) and Derek L. Duplisea, Wounded Warrior alumni director for the Western United States. (Courtesy Mark Ballis) Each year, caring and energetic 12- and 13-year-olds contribute immeasurably to the social action efforts of the Jewish community in Tucson and around the world. These B’nai Mitzvah students participate in a “mitzvah project,” as these endeavors have come to be known, adding another layer of meaning to the… Read more »
Stuart Milk The Tucson Jewish Community Center will host “A Conversation with Stuart Milk,”co-founder and board president of the Harvey Milk Foundation, on Sunday, Oct.13 at 6 p.m. Milk was instrumental in steering a bill through the California legislature in 2009 to make May 22 a state holiday honoring his uncle… Read more »
Dan Fellner Dan Fellner of the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the Arizona Humanities Council will present “Jews in Eastern Europe” at a Hadassah Southern Arizona luncheon on Sunday, Oct. 13. Fellner has more than 25 years of experience in corporate public relations, television news and university teaching in the United… Read more »
Robert A. Williams, Jr. Robert A. Williams, Jr., the E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law, will speak on “Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization,” the topic of his most recent book, at the fall opening luncheon of the Brandeis… Read more »
Esther Sternberg, M.D., will speak on “The Science of the Mind-Body Interaction in Illness and Healing” at a Tucson Maimonides Society dinner on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at Hacienda del Sol, 5501 N. Hacienda del Sol Road. The Tucson Maimonides Society is a program of the Jewish… Read more »
The University of Arizona School of Music will present “A Barber/Britten Music + Festival: Symposium, Concerts and Film,” directed by professor and composer Daniel Asia, on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12-13. American composer Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is a classical music standard that can be heard in several… Read more »
De’oujenai, age 9, with Linda Solomon (Sheila Wilensky/AJP) Drivers heading north on Alvernon Way pass a digital sign in front of Our Family Services, which runs a New Beginnings housing division for the homeless: “One-third of Tucson’s children live in poverty. Fifty-two percent live with a single parent.” Linda Solomon, an award-winning Jewish photojournalist, aims to change… Read more »
The CANDLES Holocaust museum in Terre Haute, Ind. NEW YORK (JTA) — No earth was moved at the groundbreaking of one of the nation’s newest Holocaust memorials in May. Instead, the gatherers stood silently, symbolic shovels in hand, on the immaculate lawn where the privately funded $400,000 monument will soon rise. A succession of speakers delivered somber homilies remembering one… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responds to President Obama's address in New York, Sept. 24. (Kobi Gideon/ via Getty Images) The good news for Israel in President Obama’s speech at the United Nations was his insistence that any steps Iran might take to solve the standoff over its nuclear program must be transparent and verifiable. The bad news was that Obama wasn’t clear about what those steps should be.… Read more »
Once a symbol of the promise of Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Oasis Casino in Jericho has been shuttered for 13 years. (David Silverman/Newsmakers) JERICHO, West Bank (JTA) — The Intercontinental Hotel Jericho’s towering brick palazzo, flanked by a row of palm trees leading to an ornate archway entrance, seems the very epitome of desert luxury. But inside, the hotel lobby — replete with marble floors and plush armchairs — stands empty on… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The story that this year’s J Street conference schedule tells is, typically enough, about getting Israel and the Palestinians to a two-state solution. Between the lines is another narrative as urgent as peacekeeping to the liberal pro-Israel group: getting J Street into the establishment. The second… Read more »
The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) — The photograph shows a lighthearted moment at the end of a war that four decades later still prompts analysis and evokes somber reflections. Snapped just after Israel and Egypt had signed an agreement ending… Read more »
Former Baptist Sunday school teacher designing for the frum fashionista. (JTA) — Just before Maria Patricia de Sousa set out for a yearlong stint at a seminary in Jerusalem seven years ago, she stopped by the house of an Orthodox Jewish woman in her home city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She wanted to find out about life in Jerusalem… Read more »
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, left, meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the presidential palace in Baku, June 28, 2009. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty Images) BAKU, Azerbaijan (JTA) — With less than a month to go until presidential elections, the moustachioed smile of Ilham Aliyev stares down at his countrymen from giant posters scattered around this bustling metropolis on the Caspian Sea. The Azerbaijani president has been in office since 2003 and is widely… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The reader opened with a recitation of Psalm 48 followed by a contemporary poem before yielding the floor to five male dancers, all wearing the standard haredi Orthodox uniform of black pants and white button-down shirt. One had bushy earlocks but no yarmulke. So began the… Read more »
