News

  Food allergies among children have become more commonplace in recent years, and Tucson’s Jewish schools are paying attention. “Not only has there been an increase in allergies, but there’s been an increase in the severity” of allergies among students at Tucson Hebrew Academy, says Ronnie Sebold, the school’s… Read more »

The 2nd Annual Rainbow Keshet Awards committee is seeking nominations honoring individuals in Southern Arizona who have helped make the local community and the world a better place for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals and families. The awards ceremony will be held at the Tucson Jewish Community… Read more »

Esther Becker of Congregation Chofetz Chayim will hold a free pre-High Holiday women’s dinner and discussion of the book “A Daughter of Two Mothers” by Miriam Cohen on Wednesday, Sept. 21 at 6 p.m. “Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur offer a time for introspection, a time for renewal, and… Read more »

Israeli soldiers scuffle with Palestinians during a demonstration near the West Bank village of Beit Omar, Aug. 13. Some analysts warn that a U.N. vote on the Palestinian statehood could set off a new wave of Mideast violence. ( Najeh Hashlamoun/Flash 90)

On Sept. 20, when the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly opens, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to ask U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to present a Palestinian request for statehood recognition to the U.N. Security Council. The long-anticipated request will kick off a chain of events… Read more »

Alfred Schreier returned to Vienna in 2009 for the 100th anniversary of the Hakoah Sport Club (above), and again this summer for the first European Maccabi Games to be held in a German-speaking country since 1945.

Alfred Schreier was proud to be among the 2,000 athletes representing 37 nations at this year’s European Maccabi Games held July 5 to 13 in Vienna, Austria. A Sahuarita resident, Schreier, 82, was born in Vienna, where he returned after the Holocaust to become a successful teen athlete in… Read more »

Ben Louchheim (Photos courtesy Tucson Hebrew Academy)

At Tucson Hebrew Academy parents sometimes say “you keep them in a cocoon,” says Ronnie Sebold, director of admissions. But this cocoon also nurtures THA students as they embark on their high school years. “They get a lot of comfort here, learn skills and are academically so prepared and… Read more »

Israeli soldiers carry an injured person on a stretcher at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba following a Palestinian terrorist attack near the Egyptian border, Aug. 18, 2011. (Shay Levy/Flash 90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – After deadly terrorist attacks in southern Israel, officials in Jerusalem are on alert for how Egyptian instability may be opening up more avenues for terrorists intent on attacking Israel. Thursday’s coordinated attacks north of Eilat by terrorists who crossed over the border from Egypt left eight… Read more »

Michael Ripstein on patrol along the Egyptian border (courtesy Michael Ripstein)

MAZKERET BATYA, Israel (Tablet) — In 20 years of military service, I thought I’d seen all the crappy training camps the Israeli army had to offer. But there I was, early one morning last spring, walking from the glorified gravel pit that passed for a parking lot at the… Read more »

Hundreds of Israelis protesting against the country's soaring cost of living in front of the knesset in Jerusalem, Aug. 2, 2011. (Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — What began in Israel in June as a Facebook-driven rebellion against the rising cost of cottage cheese, then morphed in July into tent encampments protesting soaring real estate costs, has since turned into a full-scale Israeli social movement against the high cost of living in the… Read more »

The assembly line at Empire Kosher Poultry's plant in central Pennsylvania is the largest kosher one of its kind in America, with 240,000 chickens and 27,000 turkeys passing through every week. (Uriel Heilman)

MIFFLINTOWN, Pa. (JTA) – The end came swiftly for the chicken I’ll call Bob. Propelled into a trough of sorts by a machine that tips a crate’s worth of birds onto the assembly line — “They’re like children, sliding down,” the head kosher supervisor said — chicken Bob was… Read more »

Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, June 18, 2011. (Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — To some conservative Jews, Texas Gov. Rick Perry would make an excellent presidential candidate. He’s been to Israel more than any other candidate in the field and has said he loves it. Some conservative Jews say Perry creates jobs. But other Jewish conservatives seeking the anti-Obama… Read more »

Passers-by glancing at looted stores in a London neighborhood, Aug. 9, 2011. (Creative Commons)

(JTA) – While some Jews in London marked Tisha b’Av on Tuesday by lamenting the burning of the Holy Temples on that day some two millennia ago, other London Jews watched as their city burned amid widespread rioting. “Everyone is shocked,” Joel Braunold, a lifelong Londoner, told JTA in… Read more »

Tributes at the Oklahoma City bombing memorial on July 8, 2011. Federal authorities say concerns about Islamist extremists since then have not distracted them from right-wing extremism. (Kyle Monahan, Creative Commons)

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — With the Norway attacks fresh in mind and the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks fast approaching, are U.S. authorities paying attention to the right kinds of threats? The fear is that with polarization intensifying in America, extremists might mark the 10th anniversary of… Read more »

Sen. Joe Lieberman, right, shown visiting special operations forces in Afghanistan on July 4, 2011, says his strong Jewish faith leads him to forge an independent path, striking aliiances with both parties. [Sgt. Lizette Hart, U.s. Military Public Affairs, via Creative Commons]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Call Joe Lieberman the unlikely evangelical. The Independent senator from Connecticut — and the best-known Orthodox Jew in American politics — is probably more cognizant than most of his Jewish congressional colleagues about rabbinical interdictions against encouraging non-Jews to mimic Jewish ritual. Yet here he is,… Read more »

Shay Shem Tobi, left, and Levy Forchheimer enjoying the cocktail party and comedy night thrown in honor of visiting Israeli soldiers by the Manhattan Jewish Experience, July 2011. (JTA)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Israel wanted to help its troops, it sent them to America. Last month, 15 former soldiers selected by the Israel Defense Forces traveled to New York for a weeklong program to treat lingering trauma from their combat during the 2006 Lebanon War with Hezbollah.… Read more »

Onlookers peer at the archeological dig and planned museum site on the Rathaus square in downtown Colgone. (Alex Weisler)

COLOGNE, Germany (JTA) — This city in western Germany is banking its future on its Jewish past. But at present, the investment is exacting a heavy price: $52 million, to be exact. Following a divisive decades-long battle, Cologne’s municipal government voted recently to allocate that sum toward the construction… Read more »

SHILOH, West Bank (JTA) — Yisrael Medad remembers when just eight families lived in the red-roofed homes in this Jewish settlement deep in the hills of the West Bank. Now some 2,500 Israelis live here, and Shiloh has playgrounds, schools and a yeshiva. The red-roofed homes sprawl over several… Read more »

VIENNA, Austria (JTA) — The symbolism was unmistakable. Four thousand Jews stood just a few hundred yards away from the spot where a quarter-million Austrians cheered Adolf Hitler in March 1938 as he announced Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. This time, however, the Jews had come to celebrate, as… Read more »

Luuk Koole, the manager of Holland’s only kosher butcher, says a proposed shechitah ban would make doing business more expensive. (Alex Weisler/JTA)

(Amsterdam) – A few streets over from the bookstore where Anne Frank bought her famous diary, the only kosher butcher shop in Holland is bustling. Two employees man the long counter at Slagerij Marcus, pausing from chopping meat to sell customers a bit of this or that for Shabbat… Read more »

A poster campaign sponsored in part by the Jewish community's Security Community Network urges Jews to keep an eye out for suspicious objects.

(Washington) – Focus on behaviors common to all extremists: That’s the advice security experts are offering in the wake of the recent attacks in Norway by a perpetrator who appeared to be anti-Muslim rather than an Islamist. In the United States, the attacks in Oslo and on the island… Read more »