News

The 20th Annual Tucson International Jewish Film Festival, which will run Jan. 20-30, will open with “Who Do You Love,” a behind-the-scenes look at the brothers who started the legendary Chess Records, launching the careers of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Etta James, Churck Berry and others. It will be… Read more »

Steve Solomon

Sometimes being Jewish is not enough. Sometimes, you have to be Italian too, to really send you over the edge. To find out more, the AJP interviewed playwright Steve Solomon, author and star of the award-winning show “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, and I’m in Therapy.” The show… Read more »

Dan Terris

Professor Dan Terris, director of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University, will speak at the Brandeis National Committee Tucson chapter’s annual University on Wheels program on Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 10 a.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, which is co-sponsoring the program.… Read more »

Susan Gaeta

The Shaol Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series will present a unique event on Monday, Jan. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Susan Gaeta will meld a talk and performance in “A Sephardic Musical Journey.” Gaeta’s first solo CD, “From Her Nona’s Drawer” (2009), features traditional Sephardic… Read more »

Texas state Rep. Joe Strauss looks set to stay in the powerful speaker's role after a broad coalition repudiated challenges based on his Judaism. (Office of Rep. Joe Strauss)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In Texas, the Tea Party passed its first Jewish test even before its legislators had been sworn in. Deeply conservative forces in the Lone Star State firmly repudiated the effort by evangelical Christians to unseat the powerful Jewish speaker of the Texas House of Representatives because… Read more »

BUDAPEST (JTA) — The rise of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party has ratcheted up debate about anti-Semitism in this country and focused attention on the seeming paradoxes of Jewish life here. On the one hand, a recent article in Germany’s Der Spiegel described Budapest as “Europe’s capital of anti-Semitism,” where… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A slight majority of Jewish Israelis has negative views of President Obama, but his supporters are more numerous than previously reported, according to a poll. The Brookings Institution poll of Jewish Israelis showed 51 percent responding with negative views of the U.S. president to 41 percent… Read more »

Nancy Kaufman with Dean Jep Strait, left, Father Demetrios Tonias, Pastor Wesley Roberts and Bishop Gideon Thompson on a summer study tour in Israel in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Boston JCRC)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — With the prospect for the first American universal health care plan apparently dimming in Massachusetts because the three outsize personalities vital to its passage — the state’s governor, its House speaker and its Senate president — could not agree on the details, Nancy Kaufman came to… Read more »

The remains of a Jewish cemetary dating back to the 16th century in the Ukrainian village of Solotyvn. Dina Kraft

SOLOTVYN, Ukraine (JTA) — On a sloping green hill tucked between small farmsteads, the mottled graves of Jews buried here since the 1600s rise up like a forgotten forest. Trudging through the mud between the tilted stones, their chiseled Hebrew lettering and renderings of menorahs sometimes barely visible, Vladimer… Read more »

Rabbi Menachem Stern, with his baby, Esther, says serving in the Army is "my calling and mission." (Mendy Chanin)

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — Menachem Stern’s bushy black beard is at the center of a federal court case. Stern, 29, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi from Brooklyn, N.Y., filed suit recently against the U.S. Army saying that a no-beard restriction violates his religious freedom. In January 2009, Stern had applied… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — As far as the Nixon-Kissinger relationship goes, the March 1, 1973 tape is par for the course of their complicated relationship: hard-nosed considerations of policy leavened with Kissinger’s adoring appraisals of his boss’ genius punctuated by Nixon’s hearty encouragement of such obsequiousness. The conversation relates to… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, President Nixon (center) and Secretary of State Kissinger in a 1973 Oval Office meeting covered in newly released Nixon White House tapes. (White House Photo Office Collection)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It should have been ancient, if unsavory, news: A cavalier reference to gassing Jews, an aside in a conversation nearly 40 years old. But the aside was pronounced by Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jew who fled Nazi horrors as a child and who has been honored… Read more »

The Jewish History Museum is seeking ketubot (marriage contracts), wedding attire and wedding photos to be loaned to the museum for its third annual Ketubah Exhibit, which will be held in January 2011. The ketubot may be from any state or country and ‘need not be fancy’ to be… Read more »

EarthBox® with seedlings (Deborah Mayaan)

Even as the lights of Chanukah dwindle, we continue to connect to our ancestors and rededicate our land. It’s not too late to plant a winter garden and enjoy eating greens into the spring, including bitter herbs for the Passover Seder. While seeds have a low germination rate when… Read more »

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Young Leadership Cabinet will hold its inaugural party — the Hava Tequila Bash — on Saturday, Dec. 18, from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The JCC will cosponsor the event. Hava Tequila will offer a nightclub atmosphere… Read more »

Cirque Dreams founder Neil Goldberg

How did a nice Jewish boy — and Orthodox at that — create a theatrical circus? “Cirque Dreams: Illumination,” featuring swirling acrobatics, dazzling costumes and choreography, will run at UApresents for five shows at Centennial Hall Dec. 10-12. It all started on Broadway for Cirque Dreams creator and director… Read more »

Natasha Mozgovaya

International journalist Natasha Mozgovaya will deliver a lecture, “Israeli-Jewish Snapshot: Trends and Challenges in a Multi-Cultural Society,” on Thursday, Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The event is part of the Israel Center’s “Heartbeat of Israel” series. Mozgovaya was born in the Soviet Union… Read more »

Cantor Janece Cohen leads members of the Kol Shirah choir at the Tucson Jewish Food Festival on Nov. 7, 2010. (Photo courtesey of Linda Levine)

Cantor Janece Cohen of Congregation Or Chadash, started a new adult Jewish choir in August with her friend Karla Ember, cantorial soloist at Congregation Chaverim. A month later Ember was brutally murdered. Recently, Cohen was considering a name for the new choir. “I thought of Kol Shirah, which means… Read more »

From left to right, Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the director of American Friends of Lubavitch, hanging onot his hat, joins Jack Lew, the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and Rabbi Abraham Shemtov on a crane as Lew gets ready to light the National Menorah on the ellipse in front of the White House, Dec. 1, 2010.

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Chanukah is a story of a people standing alone to keep its lights aflame. This year in Washington, the message was of a people standing with friends — and even the not-so-friendly — to douse terrible flames. President Obama hosted the annual White House Chanukah party… Read more »

A costumed Maccabee stands at a Chanukah menorah-lighting ceremony at Berlin's Brandenberg Gate, Dec. 1, 2010. (Toby Axelrod)

BERLIN (JTA) — Icicles formed on Rabbi Yehudah Teichtal’s beard as he helped set up the towering menorah in the center of Berlin. It wasn’t just any menorah among the thousands that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement erects every Chanukah in public locations around the world. Teichtal, the Chabad rabbi in the… Read more »