News

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are our holiest days of prayer and personal reflection — and a time to remember people in need. Each year, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona works with synagogues and local Jewish agencies on Project Isaiah, a food… Read more »

A Holocaust education teacher in-service, “Digital Literacies and Holocaust Education: Teaching the Holocaust with Video Testimonial,” will be held Thursday, Sept. 20 at the University of Arizona College of Education,1430 E. 2nd St., in the Kiva Auditorium. The program, which will feature Sheila Hansen, the lead trainer of the… Read more »

  The 2012-2013 Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra season will feature five local composers, including two world premieres by Tucson artists, “Running the Rim” by Jay Vosk, which opens the series in October, and “Landscapes” by Peter Fine, which will conclude the series in May. The Vosk premiere will be… Read more »

  American Physicians and Friends for Medicine in Israel will hold an Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Course, Nov. 3-8, in Israel. In conjunction with the Ministry of Health and the medical corps of the Israel Defense Forces, the course offers emergency and peacetime preparedness techniques. Local physician Ken Brandis,… Read more »

Rabbi Miriam S. Jerris

Rabbi Miriam S. Jerris of the Society for Humanistic Judaism will lead the Secular Humanist Jewish Circle’s third annual High Holiday “Celebration of Community and Connection” on Saturday, Sept. 22 at 9:30 a.m. The service will include moral and ethical teachings related to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as… Read more »

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

The start of the Jewish New Year, the month of Tishrei, is filled with holy days, among them four foundational celebrations: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah-Shemini Atzeret. They are quite different from one another. Yet we may also think of all four holidays as two pairs… Read more »

Rachel Meyer demonstrates an axe kick

The thrills of the summer Olympics are behind us, but Tucsonan Rachel Meyer, a 16-year-old Taekwondo champion, has a new international competition to look forward to: the 19th World Maccabiah Games in Israel next July. Meyer will turn 17 at the games in Jerusalem and will compete in the… Read more »

Martin Schultz, president of the European Parliament, speaking at the Great Synagogue of Europe in Brussels, March 2012. (Courtesy European Parliament)

BRUSSELS (JTA) — Under the gaze of a dozen police officers, a single file of Belgians forms outside the Great Synagogue of Europe. Waiting to enter the shul on its annual “open day” — when the synagogue throws open its doors to the public — many on this Sunday… Read more »

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — Republicans and Democrats may not have much common ground this election year, yet their national conventions shared one feature: Both gatherings were blessed from the podium by prominent American rabbis. The Democrats had Rabbi David Wolpe, a best-selling author and leader of a prominent (capital-c)… Read more »

President Obama speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012. (Donna Bise via flickr.com/photos/demconvention)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — It was the nuts-and-bolts convention that nearly broke down over the most ethereal of issues: Jerusalem and God. But by its third and final night, the Democratic National Convention had gotten back on message: jobs, jobs, staying on course with getting the economy back on… Read more »

Yafit Josephson as an Israeli army officer in "New Eyes" (Courtesy Invisible Theatre)

As a struggling young actress in Los Angeles, Yafit Josephson should have been glad to get parts — any parts. Yet Josephson, 30, who was born in L.A. but raised in Israel from age 2, who served proudly in the Israel Defense Forces before moving to California to study… Read more »

Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles and chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., introducing the platform amendment that affirms Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Sept. 5, 2012. (Camden Lee via flickr.com/photos/demconvention)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — At President Obama’s behest, and to boos from some delegates, Democrats on Wednesday night inserted a few lines into their party platform affirming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Two of the lines had appeared in the 2008 party platform but had been dropped for some reason… Read more »

Wim Kortenoeve, a pro-Israel Dutch lawmaker, in his office at the Dutch Parliament in The Hague. (Courtesy Wim Kortenoeve)

THE HAGUE (JTA) — With little time to prepare his next move in trying to get the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist group, Dutch lawmaker Wim Kortenoeven studies a copy of Lebanon’s trade agreement with Europe over a late-night dinner of Italian salad and German beer. The… Read more »

The remains of the Dar Bishi Synagogue in Tripoli, Libya. (Courtesy Meir Kahaolon)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Naim Reuven was only 8 when he left Baghdad more than 50 years ago, but he still remembers going with his father to catch fish in the Tigris River. His dad worked in a laundromat, a middle-class father of six and one of Iraq’s more… Read more »

David Harris, the president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, speaking to a British journalist outside the NJDC bus in Charlotte, N.C., the site of the Democratic National Convention, about reported tensions between President Obama and Jewish voters, Sept. 3, 2012. (Ron Kampeas)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — Jewish swing voters could make or break President Obama’s bid for reelection. At least that’s the case that Democratic Party leaders made in a training session that packed one of the larger halls at the convention center here on Monday, the day before the formal… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin apologized to Jamal Julany, one of the victims of a racist attack in Zion Square, during his visit to the 17-year-old. “We are sorry,” said Rivlin, a Likud Party leader. He went on to say, “It is hard to see you hospitalized… Read more »

Frisians in traditional garb celebrating Fisherman's Day in Harlingen, Aug. 31, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

LEEUWARDEN, Netherlands (JTA) – When Jacob Nathan de Leeuwe found himself returning nearly two decades ago from his home in a suburb of Amsterdam to this isolated idyll he calls “the end of the world,” it undoubtedly was the pull of his roots. De Leeuwe’s family had lived in… Read more »

Ann and Mitt Romney after his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2012. (Romney campaign)

TAMPA Fla. (JTA) — Republicans spent three evenings at their convention hammering home their message: After four years of leadership failures, Mitt Romney will restore America to a position of strength, confidence and unity — at home and abroad. In his Thursday night speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination,… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — On July 10th, dignitaries from the U.S., German, and Israeli governments attended a celebratory ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum marking the 60th anniversary of the first agreement between the West German and Israeli governments and the Jewish “Claims Conference” to grant modest financial… Read more »

A demonstrator outside the New Theatre in Budapest was part of a crowd of more than 1,000 protesting the appointment of the theater's new director, Gyorgy Dornerr, Oct. 22, 2011. (B. Molnar/latogato.blogspot.nl)

(JTA) – It’s a relieved Judit Csaki from Budapest that calls journalists with the anticlimactic news: The dramatic news conference on state-sponsored anti-Semitism that she had scheduled for next week is canceled, as Budapest Mayor Istvan Tarlos has just announced the scrapping of plans to stage an anti-Semitic play… Read more »