News

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… 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 »

Yael Schwob

Yael Schwob, 21, of Rekhasim, Israel, suffers from arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a rare congenital disease that can cause severe bleeding episodes. The condition is difficult to treat and can be fatal. Yael’s AVM has manifested on her face, disfiguring her extensively. She and her father, Rabbi Yaakov Schwob, are… Read more »

Sarah Ashford

The following is taken from a talk Sarah L. Ashford gave in September when she accepted the Daniel Moreno Recovery Award from the Aurora Foundation on behalf of her family. Her parents, Daniel Ashford and Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford, are both natives of Nogales, Ariz. Sarah is a descendant of… Read more »

Susan and Alan Kendal at milepost marker in the Golan Heights

In November, 33 Tucsonans traveled to Israel under the auspices of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona — some for the first time, some for the 35th time, and everything in between. The mission was personalized to accommodate these varying degrees of experience, with optional side trips to Petra… Read more »

Eileen Warshaw

Eileen Warshaw is stepping down at the end of January as executive director of the Jewish History Museum, an institution she helped create. “I am retiring because a decade of commitment here has laid a great foundation. Now it’s time for new energy, new thoughts, new programming to come… Read more »

Building on the success of the Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition, a program founded almost 10 years ago by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and the office of U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, the JCRC is seeking new ways to strengthen relations between the Jewish… Read more »

Deborah Dash Moore

The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies’ Shaol and Louis Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series will present “Walkers in the City: Young Jewish Women with Cameras” with Deborah Dash Moore on Monday, Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Beginning in the 1930s, Jewish photographers established a… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish Community Center is taking part in the JCC Association’s stationary bike event, Cycle for Good, on Sunday, Dec. 8. Thanks to staggered start times, participants in Cycle for Good will be riding bikes at the same time in JCCs across North America. Every year, Cycle for… Read more »

Joe Pasternack (University of Arizona)

The University of Arizona Hillel Foundation will hold its annual alumni and friends dinner on Thursday, Jan. 2 at 5:45 p.m. at the Meyer Agron Center for Jewish Life on the Harvey and Deanna Evenchik Campus, 1245 E. Second St. UA basketball associate head coach Joe Pasternack, now in… Read more »

EFRAT, West Bank (JTA) — The reputable car dealer’s advertisement in the local paper screams “Brand New Mercedes — Only $500!” You get excited but think it sounds too good to be true. Upon closer inspection, it is: The car dealer is offering only the hubcaps of the Mercedes… Read more »

Activists at a 20111 rally in Tel Aviv gather under a banner that reads, "We requested refuge, we received prison." (Dima Vazinovich/Flash90)

SAHARONIM, Israel (JTA) — A long chain-link fence with barbed wire seems to rise up out of the desert at the new Sadot facility in Israel for African migrants. Situated along Israel’s barren border with Egypt and across the street from the notorious Ketziot Prison, which houses thousands of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — There’s the six-month interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program that trades some sanctions relief for a freeze on Iran’s nuclear program. And then there’s the interim before the interim begins. Little noticed in the wake of the historic pact reached last month by Iran and the… Read more »

Rabbi Eliezer Berland, seen at a prayer service at the Western Wall on Jan. 25, 2012, fled to Morocco after being accused of sex abuse. (Uri Lenz/FLASH90)

(JTA) — Surrounded by dozens of adoring followers at his grandson’s wedding this summer, Eliezer Berland looked like any other Hasidic rebbe marking a family celebration. But Berland is not like most rabbis. The founder of the Shuvu Bonim religious seminary in Israel, Berland, 76, fled to Morocco earlier… Read more »

Campers at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, N.Y., participating in a pilot Hebrew immersion program. (Ramah Day Camp)

NEW YORK (JTA) — For the first 3 1/2 weeks of the summer, one group of 5-year-olds at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, N.Y., was “very quiet” as the children went about the typical camp activities, according to Amy Skopp Cooper, the camp’s director. But in the fourth week,… Read more »