News

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, launched a gun control initiative on the second anniversary of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson. “I was shot in the head while meeting with constituents two years ago today,” Giffords wrote with Kelly, an ex-astronaut, in… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – “Ooh, aah, look who’s coming!” the crowd of young people chants. “It’s the next prime minister!” Hundreds of voices rise from a packed dance floor Sunday as Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, enters the room grinning, singing along with the pounding music overhead and leaning… Read more »

Jewish Czech presidential candidate Jan Fischer, right, attending the Terezin memorial ceremonies to honor the victims of Nazi persecution, May 2012. (Courtesy Jan Fischer campaign)

If the pundits are correct, the Czech Republic may become the first country other than Israel to elect a Jewish president. Jan Fischer, 62, an understated former prime minister who led a caretaker government following a coalition collapse in 2009, is neck and neck in the polls with another… Read more »

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, left, and potential successor Chuck Hagel listening as President Obama announces at the White House that he is nominating Hagel for the defense post, Jan. 7, 2013. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Now that Chuck Hagel is officially President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, Jewish groups concerned about Hagel’s record on Israel and Iran are faced with a choice. Do they fight hard to derail his nomination, joining common cause with Republican opponents? Or do they… Read more »

Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, is tasked with finding a solution to the growing battle over women’s prayer restrictions at the Western Wall. (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — He brought unprecedented attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry. He stood up to the KGB. He survived nine years in Siberia. He served in Israel’s fractious government. Now, Natan Sharansky is facing his next challenge: finding a solution to the growing battle over women’s… Read more »

California filmmaker Roberta Grossman, who was inspired to make "Hava Nagila (The Movie)" by cherished memories of dancing to the tune at family affairs, spent three years researching the song's history. (Courtesy "Hava Nagila The Movie")

NEW YORK (JTA) — You’re at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah, mingling at the bar or catching up with a distant relative, when you hear it — the opening notes of a familiar tune that as if by some invisible force carries you and other guests to the dance… Read more »

Dr. Essam el-Erian, a senior Muslim Brotherhood official and adviser to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, has called on Jews who left Egypt to return, as “Israel will be destroyed within a decade.” Speaking to the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat from Cairo, El-Erian called on Egypt’s Jews “to leave historic… Read more »

Jerusalemite Shlomo Achituv hopes to find the sister or some family of Sara Kucikwocz, pictured here, who was his student in their native Luniniec, Poland, but was killed in the Holocaust.. (Courtesy Shlomo Achituv)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. “The Cruel Winter” How awful is winter, how awful is frost To far-off lands the sparrow has fled The animals have hidden, too, in the caves Beneath the hills and in the forest valleys The trees wrap… Read more »

Reform leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs, shown speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Jerusalem in November 2012, co-authored a letter to President Obama on eschewing action against the Palestinians that would damage efforts to renew peace talks. (Robert A. Cumins/JFNA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two major Jewish groups are at odds over the prospect of penalties for the Palestinians in the wake of their enhanced U.N. status. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in recent weeks has backed two congressional bids to at least shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization… Read more »

MARSEILLE, France (JTA) — As a soccer fan and treasurer of Maccabi France, Jean-Marc Krief is more preoccupied with his team’s legwork than with God’s work. So Krief was dismayed to learn that government officials in southern France were stripping the Marseille branch of the Jewish sports association of… Read more »

A man taking target practice at a shooting range in Arizona. (Courtesy STA Training)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The day Eric Schaefer learned that a .233 caliber semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle — a type of weapon he owned — was used to kill 26 people in Newtown, Conn., he sold his rifle to local law enforcement near his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Schaefer, a… Read more »

Ron Dermer, the senior advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at a convention for Jewish bloggers in Jerusalem, 2009. (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Like many Israeli politicians, Ron Dermer is an unapologetic defender of Israel’s actions, even if it might mean being undiplomatic. But like a seasoned diplomat, Dermer — senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — knows his way through Washington’s backchannels and has cultivated… Read more »

The fate of three of the 15 students in the first graduating class of Grodno's Tarbut Gymnasium in 1930 (pictured with three of their teachers and the principal) remains a mystery. The three students, shown in the inserts, are Velvel Poliak, Yitzhak Levin/Levine and Max Margolis. (Courtesy Ruth Marcus)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) — In 2008, Ruth Marcus began looking ahead to 2010: the centennial of the birth of her late father, Yitzhak Eliasberg, and 80 years since Grodno’s Tarbut Gymnasium graduated its first class, Eliasberg included. Marcus,… Read more »

A woman holding a Torah scroll outside a police station in Jerusalem's Old City where four women from the Women of the Wall organization were detained, Aug. 19, 2012. (Miriam Alster/Flash 90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Few American tourists to Israel forget their first visit to the Western Wall. They put notes in the cracks, whisper prayers and take photos against the backdrop of Judaism’s holiest site. But Kobi Bachar of Tel Aviv can’t remember the last time he visited. “I… Read more »

Congressional Democrats join Bend the Arc to lobby on Capitol Hill for a tax hike on those with annual incomes of $250,000 or more, Dec. 20, 2012. (Courtesy Bend the Arc)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — What will be cut? And who will pay? These are the two facets of the “fiscal cliff” debate in Washington, as President Obama and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives wrangle over what mix of cuts and revenue increases should be part of a deficit reduction… Read more »

Sharon Megdal (third from left) toasts “L’Chaim”with desalinated seawater with her colleagues at a desalination plant in Hadera, Israel.

University of Arizona Distinguished Outreach Professor Sharon Megdal grew up in Irvington, N.J., where scarcity of water wasn’t a problem. After she settled in Tucson in the late 1970s, her perspective began to change. “I lived here a dozen years before becoming immersed in water,” says Megdal, who started… Read more »

A family reunites outside the New Jersey home of Elise and Hal Hirshberg, parents of Tucsonan Amy Lederman. Front row: (L-R) Sylvia Boris, Lederman, Lynn Pollan, Carol Lewis, Farida Deske, Elise Hirshberg, Myriam Nahmani. Back: Shelley Hirshberg, Bella Bernard, Jeff Hirshberg (Robert D. DeCuir)

Since the beginning of time, in every culture, across every continent, one thing connects us all: the deeply human need to convey what is important to us from one generation to the next. The telling and retelling of the stories of our lives is essential to the creation of… Read more »

One of the oldest gowns in the Jewish History Museum exhibit was worn in 1702. The gown was shown in the museum’s first ketubah exhibit and was so fragile it was kept behind glass. It has since been restored at the Costume and Textile Study Center in Norfolk, England, and has been donated to the JHM permanent collection.

Three dark-colored wedding gowns will be spotlighted in the Jewish History Museum’s Fifth Annual Ketubah exhibit, which opens Jan. 1, including a Virginia widow’s gown of black satin with a collar trim of white lace. The bride who wore it, Elizabeth Rachel Richardson, was a wealthy confederate widow, says… Read more »

Jeannie OpDyke Smith

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Northwest Division will hold a campaign event on Wednesday, Jan. 16 at 7 p.m., featuring Jeannie OpDyke Smith, the daughter of Polish rescuer Irene Gut OpDyke, who died in 2003. OpDyke received international recognition for her actions during the Holocaust while working for… Read more »

Dmitri Shostakovich

The University of Arizona’s Center for Judaic Studies, School of Music and Center for the Study of American Ideals and Culture will present a free symposium and concert, “The Jewish Experience in Classical Music: Shostakovich and Asia,” on Sunday, Jan. 13. The symposium will look at the influence of… Read more »