News

(JTA) — In early June, as anti-racism protests swept the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, Wisconsin, signed onto an interfaith letter supporting peaceful protest and condemning “a broken societal system which disproportionately affects communities of color.” This week,… Read more »

(JTA) — Residents of Uman, Ukraine, scuffled with Orthodox Jews who were seeking to enter a building in the city that is the site of an annual Jewish pilgrimage. In a video posted to Facebook on Friday by Sergiy Alekseev, a city council member representing the far-right Svoboda… Read more »

(JTA) — El Al, Israel’s national airline, is scheduled to make its first publicly advertised flight to the United Arab Emirates. The flight, which appears to be reserved for dignitaries, is set to leave Ben Gurion Airport on Monday bound for Abu Dhabi, the Associated Press reported. The flight… Read more »

(JTA) — Only one person has ever officially fulfilled the traditional Jewish birthday blessing of living “until 120,” but Rosalie Wolpe from South Africa is well on her way. Wolpe celebrated her 111th birthday last week at her Cape Town retirement facility, Highlands House Home for Jewish Aged, with… Read more »

(JTA) — Four years ago, the Movement for Black Lives put out a platform that, among a long list of detailed policy recommendations, accused Israel of genocide. Several major Jewish organizations expressed their outrage and put out statements condemning the platform. On Friday, the Movement for Black Lives convened… Read more »

(J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Goyim TV, an anti-Semitic video-sharing website that was promoted with a “banner drop” from a Los Angeles freeway overpass on Saturday, has been taken down by its domain host under a flood of complaints. Jon Minadeo Jr., 37, was… Read more »

(JTA) — The Vatican both fought efforts efforts to reunite two Holocaust orphans with their relatives and urged Pope Pius XII not to protest the Nazi deportation of Italian Jews, Brown University historian David I. Kertzer has found. Kertzer published the results of his investigation into Vatican documents unsealed… Read more »

Gertrude A. Shankman, 105, died July 24, 2020. Gertrude was born Oct. 26, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. She was a longtime resident at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, where students from Tucson Hebrew Academy had visited to celebrate her birthday ever year since she turned 100. “As… Read more »

Chabad of Oro Valley will hold three socially-distanced Shofar blowing events outside its premises at 1171 E. Rancho Vistoso Blvd. #131 on Sunday, Sept. 20. The times are 9:15 a.m., 12:15 p.m. and 6 p.m. Each will include a 10-minute service in the parking lot. No registration is required.… Read more »

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, causing millions to lose their jobs and hunger levels to skyrocket, the Jewish environmental organization Hazon knew it had to dramatically reconfigure its priorities. Normally focused on running immersive Jewish environmental educational programs and promoting sustainable food and farming, the group suddenly shifted from… Read more »

Congregation Anshei Israel will give Tucsonans an opportunity to hear the Rabbi Sara Metz sound the Shofar live on Friday, Aug. 21 at 8:30 a.m., in the northwest parking lot (facing the sanctuary doors). Members also can pick up thei High Holy Days packages. Other LIVE Shofar blast opportunities… Read more »

The Tucson Festival of Books Authors In Conversation series will present Tucson native Alexander Boxer, now a data scientist in Washington, D.C., and author of “A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020), in… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Gabby Giffords, the Jewish former congresswoman who became a leader in the gun control movement after being shot by an assailant in the head in 2011, opened the third night of the Democratic convention with an appeal to elect Joe Biden president. “We can let the… Read more »

(JTA) — In the middle of her first speech as Joe Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris disclosed her favorite nickname. “My family means everything to me. And I’ve had a lot of titles over my career, and certainly, vice president will be great, but ‘momala’ will always be… Read more »

(JTA) — The Reform movement has received a $600,000 multi-year grant to support racial equity, inclusion and diversity work. The Union for Reform Judaism said Wednesday that it had received funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fight racism and back inclusion across its institutions. Reform is the largest… Read more »

(JTA) — The treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is a big deal. The agreement, announced Thursday in a joint statement from the White House and called the Abraham Accord, means that Israel will now have diplomatic and economic relations with a country that had not recognized… Read more »

(JTA) – The fact that New York state Assemblywoman Rebecca Seawright isn’t Jewish didn’t stop a vandal from leaving behind an anti-Semitic note after defacing her office. Seawright, a Democrat whose district includes part of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, called for a police investigation into the incident at a… Read more »

This story originally appeared on Alma. I received what I believe to be an average Jewish American Conservative synagogue education. I attended Jewish preschool, the full run of weekly, then biweekly Hebrew school, and completed “Hebrew high school” all the way through the rabbi’s confirmation class. This was all… Read more »

(JTA) — It’s official: Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s choice for vice president. The California senator, who made history Tuesday as the first Black woman to join a major party presidential ticket, is still in her first term. But during several years in public office, the 55-year-old lawmaker’s outspoken… Read more »

(JTA) – Less than two miles away from the Center for Disease Control’s campus in Atlanta, where doctors and researchers prepare guidance for the nation’s coronavirus response, an Orthodox rabbi is preparing a different set of plans. Rabbi Adam Starr’s task: how to accommodate hundreds of people for in-person… Read more »