Arlene Barth with a few of the thousands of dolls in her collection (Renee Claire) Walk around Arlene Barth’s eastside Tucson home and you will find over 2,300 pairs of eyes looking your way. Barth, RN, MSN and captain (retired) from the U.S. Public Health Service began collecting dolls in 1996. They are present in every room of her home; organized on tables, spilling… Read more »
Friends of the Israel Defense Forces has closed its Arizona chapter, which was based in Phoenix. Administrative duties will be handled by the national office in New York, which will be in touch directly with FIDF supporters in Arizona. “We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the… Read more »
In an effort to combat the national obesity epidemic that also afflicts children and families locally, the Tucson Jewish Community Center is implementing Discover: CATCH® Early Childhood — a new wellness initiative. The program has already been instituted in 19 JCCs across the country. Starting this month, children enrolled… Read more »
Todd Rockoff Todd Rockoff, the new president and CEO of the Tucson Jewish Community Center, has worked for JCCs from Akron, Ohio, to Calgary, Alberta. He started out at age 16 as a camp counselor in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. “I’m honored to never have received a paycheck from anyone… Read more »
Left to right, Juice co-organizers Inna Yampolskaya and Igor Kozlovskiy, Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich and the American Joint Distribution Committee's Lilya Vendrova at a Juice event in Kiev, November 2012. (Courtesy Juice) KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Hours after assailants shot Rabbi Artur Ovadia Isakov on a street in the Russian republic of Dagestan last month, mainstream Russian media were still scrambling to ascertain his identity. But Isakov’s name and condition already were known to the readers of Jewishnet.ru, a growing social… Read more »
From left, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer and Bob Filner, three Jewish politicians seeking to move on after misdeeds. (U.S. Congress/Getty Images/City of San Diego) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The guy with the socks up. The guy with the pants down. The guy with the headlocks. The guy who tweets and deletes. What is it with these male politicos? And why are they all Jewish? The cloistered community that is Washington’s Jewish elite collectively choked… Read more »
Jewish communal attitudes toward interfaith marriages, like the wedding between Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan in 2012, have shifted considerably since 1990. (Allyson Magda/ Facebook) NEW YORK (JTA) — When the nation’s largest Jewish federation convened its first-ever conference recently on engaging interfaith families, perhaps the most notable thing about it was the utter lack of controversy that greeted the event. There was a time when the stereotypical Jewish approach to intermarriage was to… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The election for Massachusetts governor is still 16 months away — too soon to know what the issues are or who the viable candidates will be. But apparently it’s never too soon for tikkun olam. Four of the declared candidates are Jewish, and all are grounding… Read more »
Reflecting its new motto, "Protect the Refugee," HIAS is helping refugees in Chad. (Courtesy HIAS) TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA) — The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration — first in leading the resettlement of Jews… Read more »
Hadassa Margolese walking her daughter Naama to school in Beit Shemesh a few days after Naama was harassed by haredi Orthodox men, December 2011. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Two years ago, Hadassa Margolese became a symbol of resistance to haredi Orthodox domination after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter to tell an Israeli reporter how religious men had spit on her as she walked to school. The report made headlines around the world and… Read more »
Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, seen in a January 2011 photo, are among top-ranking House Democrats inclined to engage Iran's new president in talks on his country's nuclear program. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON (JTA) — In increasingly strident tones, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling his American friends that the purported moderation of Iran’s new president is a ploy aimed at relieving international pressure and buying the Islamic Republic more time to cross the nuclear threshold. But in ways… Read more »
Jewish participants of an interfaith conference in Sarajevo saying the Kaddish over the graves of 1985 Srebrenica massacre victims, July 2013. (Courtesy CMJ) SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (JTA) — Sarajevo is a city with a rich multicultural past, but it also bears the scars of war. Take a short walk through the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and you will see the many cemeteries and bullet-riddled walls, which are undergoing restoration. These lay side by side… Read more »
Hoogvliet was among four Dutch supermarket chains that distanced themselves from a boycott on Israeli settlements goods they were said to be enacting. (Creative Commons) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Two weeks ago, the Dutch public learned of what appeared to be an unprecedented victory for European advocates of boycotting Israeli products. Four major supermarket chains reportedly declared a boycott of products from the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But the… Read more »
Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, left, and Rabbi Menachem Margolin of the Chabad-affiliated Rabbinical Centre of Europe have been at odds publicly over Schudrich's handling of the kosher slaughter case in Poland. (Creative Commons/Facebook) (JTA) — A few weeks before Poland’s parliament voted last month on whether to overturn a ban on ritual slaughter, Rabbi Menachem Margolin was scheduled to meet the Polish president in an effort to find a solution to the problem. The ban had been imposed in January, when a Polish… Read more »
Dr. Mehmet Oz, right, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Aug. 2, 2013. (The Jewish Values Network) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Dr. Mehmet Oz sat down to talk with JTA on the Tel Aviv coast last week, but what he really wanted to do was go to the beach. Oz, the surgeon and well-known TV personality, was in Israel for the first time and had a… Read more »
Arizona freshman Rep. Matt Salmon, shown with wife Nancy at a June 2013 meeting with conservative television host Glenn Beck, drafted a letter asking the U.S. attorney general to hinder the release of Palestinian prisoners -- a move that Israel approved to help kick-start negotiations with the Palestinians. (Matt Salmon Facebook) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli settler leader Dani Dayan has made it his mission over the years to warn members of Congress, particularly Republicans, of the perils of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Dayan has been a regular visitor to Washington, his trips often coinciding with developments in the peace process. During… Read more »
Dave Blackburn, shown at center during last week's opening ceremony, is attending the Maccabiah as a paralympian in table tennis after six previous appearances as an able-bodied softball pitcher. (Courtesy Dave Blackburn) RAMAT GAN, Israel (JTA) — Dave Blackburn beamed triumphantly, surrounded by a crowd of American athletes and cheering spectators. It was like old times, the great pitcher basking in applause. But Blackburn wasn’t being ushered off the field with a championship trophy in hand as he was after leading… Read more »
(L-R): Israeli negotiators Yitzhak Molcho and Tzipi Livni, Vice President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama, and Palestinian negotiators Saeb Erekat and Mohammed Shtayyeh at an Oval Office meeting to discuss the formal resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, July 30, 2013. (U.S. State Department) WASHINGTON (JTA) — After 20 years of stops, starts and a bloody intifada in between, John Kerry believes he can pull out a final status Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in nine months. What clock is the U.S. secretary of state trying to beat? According to his aides, the one ticking… Read more »
An Orthodox woman blows a whistle in protest against efforts to promote women's prayer at Jerusalem's Western Wall, July 8, 2013. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — On the morning of July 8, at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Av, the Western Wall plaza was a cacophonous mess. Women of the Wall, the activist group that holds women’s prayer services each month at the site known as the Kotel, loudly sang… Read more »
When swimmer Garrett Weber-Gale heard his name announced last Wednesday as the U.S. flag bearer for the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games, he just about lost his breath. A two-time gold medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Weber-Gale had spoken with JTA earlier this week about the… Read more »
