News

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, right, with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, left, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand at a Capital Hill reception for Jewish American Heritage Month, May 19, 2009. (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s first day as a sophomore in the U.S. House of Representatives, on Jan. 8, 2007, was marked by a number of extraordinary achievements for a woman barely out of her first term. Named to the Democratic caucus leadership. Named to the all-powerful Appropriations… Read more »

Potential GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney (left) chats with Mel Sembler (center) and Sheldon Adelson, major backers of the Republican Jewish Coalition, at the RJC’s winter leadership conference at the Adelson-owned Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, April 2. (Ron Kampeas/JTA)

At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s winter leadership retreat here, it was the absence of certain likely candidates for president that had the crowd most excited. While names like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann generate enthusiasm at some conservative gatherings, their absence here had the Jewish crowd giddy that ahead… Read more »

Richard Goldstone, left, shown meeting on June 1, 2009 with Ghazi Hamad of Hamas at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, now says his report’s finding that Israel intentionally targeted civilians in the Gaza war was mistaken. (Rahim Khatiz/Flash 90/JTA)

Richard Goldstone’s original U.N. report on the Gaza war of 2008-09 landed like a bombshell in the PR war over Israel, damaging Israel’s reputation around the world with its finding that Israel potentially committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its three-week war against Hamas. Now that Goldstone… Read more »

Susan Claassen (left) and Molly McKasson, 1977

The Invisible Theatre is celebrating its 40th anniversary season on April 9 and 10 with “Painting the Town Red,” a “retro-spectacular ca­ba­ret”conceived, written and directed by Susan Claassen, the theatre’s managing artistic director. Hosted by Claassen and Molly McKasson, the show will include appearances by returning guest artists including… Read more »

(L-R) Josh Silvain (David), Bill Epstein (Murph), Tenoch Gomez (Pete) and Dan Colecchia (Mitch) in “Fronting the Order”

“Fronting the Order,” a new play by Warren G. Bodow, opens today at the Beowulf Alley Theatre, with 11 performances running through April 23. Set in a diner in a small upstate New York town on a summer evening in 1959, “Fronting the Order” follows the fortunes of four… Read more »

Painter and printmaker Sylvia Garland and photographer Edlynne Sillman will exhibit their work at the Tucson Jewish Community Center from April 14 to May 19. Garland’s exhibit, “Abstract Botanical Expressions,” features oil paintings and one of a kind prints on paper. Sillman is dedicating her “America the Beautiful” exhibition… Read more »

Sasha Farber

When Sasha Farber’s family emigrated from Belarus to Australia in 1991, becoming a dancer was probably the last thing on the 7-year-old’s mind. “We left because of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster,” Farber told the AJP, and also because “we had to keep it quiet that we were Jewish.” Farber,… Read more »

Alexander Oscar, 32, the president of Sofia’s Jewish community, speaks at a Holocaust day ceremony in the Bulgarian capital, March 10. (Ben Harris)

Under a cloudless blue sky, in a square wedged between the National Assembly and the Rectorate of the University of Sofia, Alexander Oscar, the young president of Sofia’s Jewish community, issued a blunt message to his countrymen. The occasion was Bulgaria’s Holocaust remembrance ceremony on March 10, a day… Read more »

We’ve added two new blogs to azjew ishpost.com. First, former Arizona Jewish Post assistant editor Jen Sonstein Maidenberg , who’d left Tucson for the charms of New Jersey, returns — sort of — with her blog “And Yadda Yadda Yadda, I Made Aliyah,” which also has been picked up… Read more »

Jewish Family & Children’s Services is joining with local synagogues and other agencies for its annual “Matza & More Passsover Project,” collecting food items for nearly 200 Passover baskets that volunteers will deliver to families in need on April 17. Since 1970, JFCS has helped to ensure that local… Read more »

The Weintraub Israel Center and Temple Emanu-El will present an Israeli-Moroccan Mimuna celebration on April 26. A traditional North African Jewish celebration held at the end of Passover, Mimuna marks the start of spring and the return to eating chametz (leavened goods), explains Guy Gelbart, director of the Weintraub… Read more »

Joel Chasnoff, author of "The 188th Crybaby Brigade"

Unlike aspiring doctors or lawyers, would-be artists have no set career path, says author and stand-up comedian Joel Chasnoff. But even by the free-wheeling standards of the arts, the former Ivy Leaguer’s path took an unusual detour — right through the Israel Defense Forces, an experience he chronicles in… Read more »

Ishmael Khaldi

Israel’s first Arab Bedo­uin diplomat, Ishmael Khaldi, will speak at a breakfast event hosted by the Weintraub Israel Center, the Israel Consulate in Los Angeles and the America-Israel Friendship League on Friday, April 15, 8:15-9:30 a.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Khaldi, who currently serves as an advisor… Read more »

Cindy Sadowsky with pre-school students at Temple Emanu-El

Temple Emanu-El’s Olga and Bob Strauss Early Childhood Education Center will add a full-day kindergarten class beginning in fall 2011. The kindergarten will include a fully integrated secular and Judaic curriculum, with an emphasis on emergent education, in which a teacher observes children’s natural interests and expands on them… Read more »

Max Rusinov, UA Hillel Israel Fellow, points to information about suicide bombings prevented by the Israeli-Palestinian border fence, posted on the mock border fence on the UA campus, March 23. (Sheila Wilensky)

If there’s a difference between the U.S.-Mexico border wall and the one dividing Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, you might not have known it by looking at the nearly 1,000-foot mock border fence on the University of Arizona campus last month. The fence was erected by student members… Read more »

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — From the highest elevation in Itamar you can see everything but the future. On a clear day, says Rabbi Moshe Goldsmith, Itamar’s mayor, “We can see the three seas”: the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean and the Kinneret (Galilee). To the west, “We can… Read more »

President Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres at their White House meeting talked about the Washington Post Op-Ed by U.N. investigator Richard Goldstone rescinding his conclusion that Israel had committed war crimes in the 2009 Gaza War, April 5, 2011. (Mark Neyman, Israel Government Press Office)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would launch an international campaign to cancel the Goldstone Report after its author, ex-South African Judge Richard Goldstone, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post that Israel did not intentionally target civilians as a policy during the Gaza War,… Read more »

Medical personnel clean the scene of where a bus exploded from a bomb, injuring 25 people, near the central bus station in Jerusalem, March 23, 2011. (Abir Sultan / Flash90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – It happens almost like clockwork: Something happens in the Middle East, and it reverberates across the Atlantic with new letters from the U.S. Congress. With so many relatively new members looking to establish their pro-Israel credentials, the reaction in Congress to the recent violence in Israel… Read more »

Marine Le Pen says she has made clear there is no room in the National Front for “extremist subgroups,” anti-Semitic or otherwise. (Ben Harris)

On the second floor of the town hall in Paris’ third Arrondissement, leaders of France’s major Jewish institutions gathered to denounce the leader of the far-right National Front party and to assert that she remains unworthy of dialogue with the Jewish community. Last week’s gathering was precipitated by two… Read more »

In preparation for an upcoming display at the Tucson Jewish Community Center celebrating the Allied victors of World War II and the liberation of Europe, volunteer Bill Kugelman and JCC communications specialist Marty Johnston are collecting historical artifacts. To date, Jeffrey A. Marks has donated a World War II… Read more »