News

Baseball legend Sandy Koufax greets fans at the Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at the White House on May 27. (The Jewish Channel/JTA Photo Service)

The athletes, the astronauts, the alternative music, the black rabbi, the white dress uniforms and, above all, the left-handed baseball immortal: Welcome to Barack Obama’s Jewish America. The inaugural Jewish America Heritage Month celebration at the White House, held May 27, underscored the Obama administration’s determination not to be… Read more »

Diane Katz

The key to changing an organization or workplace is not to ascribe blame, says Diane Katz, organizational psychologist and author of the newly published “Win at Work! The Everybody Wins Approach to Conflict Resolution.” Katz founded her consulting company, The Working Circle, in 1995, the same year she moved… Read more »

The Israeli Navy, seen here approaching one of a flotilla of Gaza-bound ships, clashed with Turkish activists aboard one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara. (Moti Milrod/Pool/Flash90/JTA).

ASHDOD, Israel (JTA) — The blurry black-and-white video footage was not what any Israeli wanted to see: elite navy commandos armed with paint ball guns (the pistols were only to be used as a last resort) dangling by a rope onto a boat filled with activists wielding metal bars… Read more »

MOSCOW (JTA) — It took them five days and nights in four hotels through three countries to deliver two vans from London to the Jews of Latvia and Lithuania. Eight British volunteers went on a “Mission Impossible,” a program of the British charity World Jewish Relief, to aid Jewish… Read more »

Republican Jews are trying to figure out what to make of Rand Paul, a self-described Tea Party backer and son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul. (Gage skidmore/flickr)

WASHINGTON (N.Y. Jewish Week) — Rand Paul, the Tea Party insurgent who was the upset victor in last month’s Kentucky Republican Senate primary, could be the biggest headache yet for a Republican Party that hopes to capitalize on the populist surge without being tainted by the movement’s extremists. While… Read more »

MOSCOW (JTA) – After decades of community-building from the top down, often with the aid of donors from overseas, can Russia’s Jewish communities build themselves from the bottom up? That’s the question that a group of, well, donors from overseas are trying to determine with a new educational program… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Peter Beinart attends an Orthodox synagogue, once edited The New Republic (the closest thing to a smicha for Jewish policy wonks) and backed Sen. Joe Lieberman’s quixotic 2004 bid to become the first Jewish president. Which is why he’s always been counted among the Washington pundits… Read more »

“The world is changing so fast, that none of us feels completely prepared for leadership. Engaging with very bright thinkers helps position us,” Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, said during the 5th Saul Tobin Jewish Community Leadership Institute, held in April and… Read more »

WADI FUKIN, West Bank (JTA) — Mohammed Mansara, a 70-year-old farmer who goes by the name Abu Mazen, indicates with a sweep of his arm the fruit trees and vegetables he grows on his small plot of land in this Palestinian village in the West Bank, population 1,200. Then… Read more »

NEW YORK-In the same manner that she shops for locally grown produce, Abigail Weinberg chose to sidestep the bank behemoths and instead open an account at a small, local bank that invests in her Ann Arbor, Mich., community. “I consider myself someone who wants to be socially and environmentally… Read more »

WASHINGTON Depending on your view of the Middle East and the Obama administration, Aaron David Miller is either a hero or a turncoat. Miller, a peace process functionary under both Bush administrations and the Clinton administration, published a declaration of independence last month from what he called the “religion”… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA)-Two weeks after pro-Israel groups in South Africa withdrew threats to picket Richard Goldstone at his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah, Israeli critics are charging that the former judge “mercilessly” sentenced dozens of blacks to death on behalf of the apartheid- era regime during his judicial tenure. The charges, aired… Read more »

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has launched “What’s Your #ish?”, an online campaign that encourages young Jews of all stripes to share what being Jewish means to them — their “ish” — while raising awareness of the work of Jewish federations. The project, launched in partnership with The… Read more »

Debris from home interiors fills the lawns at River Plantation in the Bellevue area of Nashville. (JTA Photo Service)

NASHVILLE, TENN. (JTA)-Ruth Klar and Alicia Safdie knew they Jewish community recovering, pitching in following floods in Tennessee were lucky, safe and healthy amid the flood’s muddy wreckage. But the little things made them cry. “My cookbooks are gone,” Klar said in her den at River Plantation, a large… Read more »

The Jewish Community Relations Council, the public affairs and social justice arm of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, has adopted a position statement in response to Gov. Jan Brewer’s recent signing into law of SB 1070, Immigration:  Law Enforcement; Safe Neighborhoods Act and its potential impact on human… Read more »

Passage of SB1070, the state law that requires local police to enforce federal immigration law, has prompted boycotts of Arizona because of possibilities for racial profiling and civil rights violations. The law has not yet gone into effect, but its reach is already being felt at the University of… Read more »

“When Doris and Bill Rubin thought about what their legacy would be, they realized that they wanted to help those in need move towards self-sufficiency,” says Jewish Community Foundation Executive Director Carol Karsch. Since 2003, the Rubins’ vision has resulted in 76 grants totaling $788,870 through their endowment fund… Read more »

As more than 200 major funders of Jewish nonprofits gathered here last month, signs of the economic carnage of the past 18 months appeared to be waning. The funders were in Phoenix for the annual conference of the Jewish Funders Network, held April 11-13 at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.… Read more »

    NEW YORK (JTA) – The U.S. Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements are warning that a proposed Israeli conversion bill is “disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”   Knesset members from the Yisrael Beiteinu party were in the United States this week trying to marshal support for a… Read more »

 WASHINGTON (JTA) — A top adviser to President Obama said talks on Jerusalem should be left for last. “The president agrees that Jerusalem as an issue can’t be the first issue for negotiations,” David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, told a small group of journalists working for Jewish media.… Read more »