News

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 »

Hadassah Southern Arizona will hold an ice cream social and book swap/sale on Sunday, April 3 at 2 p.m. at Congregation Young Israel. Two local Jewish authors, Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford and Sheldon Sid Brodkin, will read from their works. Rivera-Ashford is the author of two bilingual books for children,… Read more »

The Weintraub Israel Center and the Tucson Jewish Community Library will present “Israel to Go,” an event designed to help participants plan a trip to Israel, on Sunday, March 27 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the library, located in the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Guy Gelbart, director of… Read more »

Former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Price will speak on “Change in the Arab World: Opportunity or Menace?” at a meeting of the Tucson chapter of Parents of North American Israelis on Sunday, April 10 at 10 a.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Price, a visiting scholar at the Arizona… Read more »

Chabad on River will welcome its first Sefer Torah on Sunday, April 10 at 10 a.m. with a processional from the Tucson Jewish Community Center to Chabad on River, followed by a celebratory brunch. The Torah, says Rabbi Ram Bigelman, was originally written for a yeshiva in Tiberias, Israel,… Read more »

In an effort to ensure that every Jew in Southern Arizona has a seat at a seder table for Passover, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and local synagogues are joining forces for Operation Elijah, which pairs seder guests and hosts. All who are new to the community, single,… Read more »

Learning to read is part of any school curriculum but loving to read is another story. For the past two years, Tucson Hebrew Academy has been using the Great Books Foundation K-12 program from the University of Chicago, an established literature curriculum that promotes outstanding reading choices and shared-inquiry… Read more »

“A Small Act,” an award-winning documentary about a Holocaust survivor’s $15 a month contribution to educate a child in Kenya, will be screened Sunday, April 10 at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. In the 1930s, Hilde Back’s parents sent her from Germany to Sweden to escape… Read more »

Rain Borchardt, CUFI at UA president, with Irving Roth

Holocaust survivor Irving Roth will be the keynote speaker when Christians United for Israel at the University of Arizona hosts its second Night to Honor Israel. The dinner event will take place on Monday, April 11, the 66th anniversary of Roth’s liberation from the Buchenwald concentration camp. It will… Read more »

The Jewish History Museum will exhibit “Discrimination Yesterday & Today: A Look at the Cause of the Holocaust,” April 3 through May 14. The exhibit will feature the FBI’s “Enduring Eyes” Holocaust posters and anti-Semitic literature and artifacts from the JHM permanent collection, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the… Read more »

Hadar Susskind

J Street, a pro-peace, pro-Israel lobbying group and political action committee, is often presented in the media as a left-wing counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But that’s not J Street’s mission, Hadar Susskind, J Street policy and strategic planning director, told a lunch crowd of about… Read more »