News

Conservative rabbis vote in favor of same-sex weddings

The Conservative movement — affirming that same-sex marriages have “the same sense of holiness and joy as that expressed in heterosexual marriages” — last month established rituals for same-sex wedding ceremonies. The landmark vote by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly follows… Read more »

Paul Ash, community leader, weighlifting champ, dies

Paul Ash in 1957, when he won the U.S. national weightlifting championship (Courtesy Bruce Ash)

Real estate executive, world-class athlete and Tucson community leader Paul Ash, 81, died in Encinitas, Calif., on June 24, 2012. “When the term ‘the greatest generation’ was coined, Paul Ash could very well have been the prototype,” says Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern… Read more »

Germany’s Jewish patriots find a home in the military

Michael Fuerst enlisted in the Bundeswehr, West Germany’s armed forces paratroopers unit, in 1966. (Photo courtesy Michael Fuerst)

In an office amid a labyrinth of hallways in Germany’s Ministry of Defense, a short jaunt from where Claus von Stauffenberg was executed in 1944 for trying to kill Adolf Hitler, sits Bernhard Fischer, lieutenant colonel and Jew. What’s a nice Jewish guy doing in a place like this?… Read more »

Congregation Bet Shalom adds full-time cantor to staff

Cantor Avraham Alpert

  Congregation Bet Shalom has hired Cantor Avraham Alpert as its full-time clergy, starting July 14. An Arizona native, Alpert was most recently cantor at Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas and had previously served as cantor of the Mosaic Law Congregation in Sacramento, Calif. He holds a bachelor’s… Read more »

CAI Siyum HaShas to celebrate rabbi’s Talmud study

Rabbi Robert Eisen

Congregation Anshei Israel will hold a Siyum HaShas celebration on Thursday, Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. to mark Rabbi Robert Eisen’s completion of studying the entire Talmud. In the early part of the 20th century, the practice called Daf Yomi (page-a-day) of reading one two-side page of the Talmud… Read more »

Young men exhilarated by JFSA Israel mission

(L-R) Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Young Men’s Leadership Mission participants Ed Baruch, Andrew Isaac, Jeff Wortzel, Guy Gelbart (JFSA staff), Michael Wexler, Daniel Nadowo (Ethiopian National Project staff), Nadav Kersh (tour guide), Todd Sadow and Adisu Tzahai (ENP staff) in the Alma Cave in Israel’s Naphtali Mountains. Not pictured: David Plotkin, Grace Rodnitzki (ENP staff), Larry Tishkoff (Jewish Federations of North America staff)

A life changing week — that’s how participants in Tucson’s first Young Men’s Leadership Mission described their eight days in Israel earlier this month. This mission, which was tailored to meet the interests of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Young Men’s Group, integrated Jewish history, visits to JFSA… Read more »

Spurred by a Shas lawmaker, abortion politics arrives in Israel

Shas lawmaker Nissim Zeev, shown during a plenum session in the Israeli Knesset on June 11, 2012, is demanding a public debate on abortion, which he has said publicly is akin to "murder." (Uri Lenz/FLASH90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s paradoxical approach to abortion — the procedure is illegal unless approved by a committee, which gives the go-ahead to 98 percent of the requests — could radically change if a Knesset member has his way. Nissim Zeev of the Sephardi Orthodox party Shas, who has… Read more »

Peter Singer: ‘World’s most dangerous man’ or hero of morality?

Peter Singer speaking at a Veritas Forum event on the Massachusetts Institute of technology campus, March 2009. (Joel Travis Sage via CC)

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — He’s been brandished “the most dangerous man on earth,” accused of being a “public advocate of genocide” and likened to Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi “Angel of Death.” Yet he’s also been hailed as “one of the world’s 100 most influential people” and “among the… Read more »

German plans for ‘Mein Kampf’ excerpts in schools seen as a way to demystify Hitler tome

Students from the St. Ursula-Schule, a Catholic high school in Germany, view facsimiles of ads for Hitler's "Mein Kampf" at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Potsdam, site of the planning of the Final Solution. (Toby Axelrod)

BERLIN (JTA) –- Does “Mein Kampf” belong in German high schools? With Adolf Hitler’s book due to come out of wraps here in 2015, freed after decades under copyright protection that prevented its publication in Germany, it’s a question that is being debated in classrooms and on German TV… Read more »

With Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendancy, Mubarak’s legacy is upended

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt less than three weeks before the protests there led to Mubarak's downfall in January 2011. (Moshe Milner/GPO/Flash90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi is the declared winner of Egypt’s presidential race and his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, reportedly continues to lie near death in a coma — just like the legacy he tried to craft for himself and his country. Mubarak, 84, once the entrenched… Read more »

GOP hopes N.Y. rematch puts second Jewish Republican in the U.S. House

Randy Altschuler, right, a Republican candidate in the race for New York's first congressional district, campaigning with Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader and the only Republican Jewish lawmaker in Congress, during Altshuler's losing 2010 race against Rep. Tim Bishop. (Courtesy Randy Altschuler for Congress)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish Republicans nationwide are hoping that a heated congressional race rematch in the New York suburbs puts a second Jewish Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. Following a narrow 593-vote defeat two years ago to Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.), Jewish businessman Randy Altschuler again is… Read more »

Israeli tour guide and Holocaust survivor Eliezer Ayalon dies

Eliezer Ayalon

Eliezer Ayalon, a veteran tour guide for Jewish Federation missions, died late last month. Born in Radom, Poland in 1928, Ayalon was the only child from his family to survive the Holocaust. He spent a year in the Radom Ghetto and then three years in five different concentration camps… Read more »

UA gets graduate certificate program in Judaic studies

The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona recently launched a stand-alone graduate certificate program. Students in the program may be enrolled concurrently in a graduate degree program in another department, but they are not required to do so. Students in the Judaic studies graduate certificate… Read more »

Secular Humanists to explore medical ethics

Robert Beren, M.D.

Robert Beren, M.D., will lead “A Jewish Secular Humanist Conversation about Medical Ethics” for the Secular Humanist Jewish Circle on Saturday, June 23, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. at the Dusenberry-River Branch Library. Beren will discuss who owns your body and how that correlates with living wills, advanced directives,… Read more »

Barber wins Giffords’ seat in CD8 special election

Ron Barber, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, won her seat in a special election. Barber, who decided to run after Giffords resigned her seat earlier this year to recover from a shooting in January 2011, defeated Jesse Kelly, a Republican who suffered a narrow defeat to… Read more »

Local day camps promote science, fitness, leadership — and love of Judaism

Jane Hiller (left) enjoys a creative movement class at Congregation Anshei Israel’s summer camp.

Seeking an enriching day camp environment for your kids this summer? Tucson offers several Jewish day camp options. Congregation Anshei Israel’s summer camp, which serves children ages 2-6, runs through July 27. Along with water play, arts and crafts, songs and stories, the camp offers two areas of special… Read more »

Romney, guarded about his Mormonism, faces the Lieberman challenge

Mitt Romney speaks to supporters at a rally in Tempe, Ariz., April 20, 2012. (Gage Skidmore via CC)

Mitt Romney’s Lacrosse moment awaits him. The Democratic convention in Los Angeles was where Joe Lieberman made history as the first Jewish candidate on a major ticket on Aug. 17, 2000. But two days later, history came to life in Lacrosse, Wis., the little college town where he walked… Read more »

AJP wins journalism awards

Sheila Wilensky

The Arizona Jewish Post is celebrating two journalism awards this spring. Associate Editor Sheila Wilensky received a first place 2011 Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism from the American Jewish Press Association for “Healing and hope for Tucsonans as Jan. 8 anniversary nears.” Published in the Dec.… Read more »