News

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 »

 PETIT-GOAVE, Haiti (JTA) — Not a single Jew lives among the 170,000 inhabitants of Petit-Goâve, nor among the 20,000 refugees from Port-au-Prince who have crowded into this town since a magnitude-7.0 earthquake leveled Haiti’s capital in January.  But Jews are among those helping bring Petit-Goâve back to life.  “After… Read more »

Israeli choreographer Shlomi Elimelech, center, rehearses with Tzuza Dance Troupe members

Israeli choreographer Shlomi Elimelech, 21, started Tzuza Dance Troupe, which performed to a standing-room-only crowd at Tucson’s Israel Festival on April 25, when he was just 16. Tzuza now has schools in two cities with more than 500 students and recently took second place in an Israeli dance competition… Read more »

BIL’IN, West Bank (JTA) – Rami Burnat sits in his wheelchair toward the back of a sprawling courtyard where Palestinian speakers take turns championing the cause of nonviolent resistance. Burnat, 29, has been disabled ever since a bullet pierced his neck in clashes in late 2000, shortly after the… Read more »

Herb Cohn reads from Or Chadash's new Czech Torah scroll.

When Congregation Or Chadash formally received a Czechoslovakian Holocaust Scroll in December 2009, a once vital Czech Jewish community “was brought back to life,” says Rabbi Thomas Louchheim. Scroll MST-1408, an orphan scroll that survived World War II, is on long-term loan to Or Chadash from the Memorial Scrolls… Read more »

Wounded Israeli soldier Aharon Karov lights the memorial torch at the Israel Center's Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) ceremony April 18.

The morning after his wedding on Dec. 25, 2008, Aharon Karov, a 2nd Lt. in the Israel Defense Forces Paratroopers Brigade, was called up for service in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Twelve days later, the 22-year-old platoon leader was critically wounded as his unit entered a booby-trapped building.… Read more »

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070, the Safe Neighborhoods; Immigration; Law Enforcement Act on April 23, opening the floodgates to torrents of criticism and discussion of state vs. federal immigration policy. The debate has ranged from outrage about potential racial profiling, to legal opinions about the new… Read more »

“We want to have SMART boards in every classroom,” says Ronnie Sebold, director of admissions at Tucson Hebrew Academy, which currently has two such devices. The big whiteboard in front of the 6th grade literature class, taught by Jordan Hill, takes the place of a traditional blackboard. But its… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish groups are slamming Arizona’s stringent new immigration-enforcement law, but hope outrage over the measure will reignite efforts to push comprehensive immigration reform on a national level. “I believe that it has absolutely ignited a movement across this country for comprehensive immigration reform,” said U.S. Rep.… Read more »

NEW YORK (New York Jewish Week) — As the rain came down and a crowd estimated at about 1,000 listened to speeches, the organizers of a rally opposed to President Obama’s policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fielded a request from U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner. Weiner (D-N.Y.), who represents a… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Walking along the dimly lit corridors of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the liberators peered at black-and-white photographs and listened to tour guides detail events that many had witnessed as young men in the armed forces.  The relative quiet was a sharp contrast to the flurry… Read more »

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (JTA) — Amir Kashi, a 34-year-old social worker from Ma’ale Adumim, and Yehonatan Abraham, a 30-year-old medic from Beersheva, knew nothing about Haiti before the earthquake in January.  But both Israelis felt compelled to act after the disaster struck.  “I felt impotent in Israel, sitting in front… Read more »

 By Ben Harris TEL AVIV (JTA) — Gidi Grunberg at 16 fell in love with a boy at his Orthodox high school near Tel Aviv.  Consumed by guilt, he transferred to a high school that was more strictly religious, hopeful that with more rigorous Torah study his attraction to… Read more »

By Ron Kampeas/Jan. 5, 2010  WASHINGTON (JTA) — A new poll suggests that American Jews are more conflicted about the challenges of immigration than their communal leaders — but that’s to be expected, the Jewish leaders say.  The poll, commissioned by the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies, shows that… Read more »

CARTAGENA, Colombia (JTA) -- Luis Alberto Prieto Vargas appears to be a Jew. He wears a kipah, he introduces himself as Jewish and two years ago Vargas, a Christian by birth, underwent a conversion ceremony to Judaism following several years of religious study. But Vargas’ conversion hit a key… Read more »