Ruben Amaro Jr., right, the general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, joins Mayor Michael Nutter and the team’s mascot at a pep rally in Philadelphia during the playoffs in 2009. (Darryl W. Moran) PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — The son and grandson of professional baseball players, Ruben Amaro Jr. was as good a candidate as any to become a baseball lifer. Yet soccer was actually his “first love” as a kid, and he was good enough at the sport to qualify for a youth… Read more »
Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda enlightened Tucson Hebrew Academy middle school students about the origins of modern spoken Hebrew in a lecture at the school on Monday, Oct. 4. “My grandfather wanted to teach Hebrew as a living language so you could go to the store and buy a Coke,” Ben-Yehuda,… Read more »
The used book section at the 1st-Rate 2nd-Hand Thrift Store The 1st-Rate 2nd-Hand Thrift Store has moved to new, bigger digs at 5851 E. Speedway Blvd., but the extra 2,000 square feet of space is only part of the improvement, says manager Amy Sandler-Stuchen. The interior of the new store, which is just a few blocks east of the… Read more »
The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has issued a position statement in opposition to Proposition 302 on the 2010 Arizona ballot. The statement notes that in 2009, the JCRC chose to focus its social justice efforts on the needs of local youth at… Read more »
In advance of the Nov. 2 elections, the Arizona Jewish Post sent questions to the Arizona candidates for U.S. Senate and the local candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Here are their unedited responses. U.S. Senate Rodney Glassman, Democrat Q: Given the controversy generated by Arizona SB 1070,… Read more »
An inservice workshop, “Teaching the Holocaust through Diaries, Personal Correspondence and Memoir,” with Harvard professor Susan R. Suleiman, will be held on Thursday, Oct. 28 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 E. Helen St. Suleiman is C. Douglas Dillon professor of the… Read more »
Clara Davidov, in traditional Bukharan costume, participated in last year’s “Israel Ethnic Epicurian Gala.” (Photo courtesy of Sue Schergin) The second annual “Israel Ethnic Epicurean Gala,” sponsored by the TIPS (Tucson, Israel, Phoenix and Seattle) partnership, will be held Nov. 3 with food prepared by nine ethnically diverse Israeli women from our Partnership 2000 region of Kiryat Malachi and Hof Ashkelon. The women, who will spend a week… Read more »
The place is the Warsaw Ghetto, the year 1942, and the black-and-white footage shows fashionably dressed men and women, with yellow Stars of David as accessories, having a high time at a champagne ball. Later we see emaciated kids rooting through mounds of garbage and excrement for scraps of… Read more »
"Man Adrift in Box" by Benjamin Levy A private collection of works by Israeli artist Benjamin Levy is on display through Monday, Oct. 18 at M.A.S.T., 299 S. Park Ave. The collection includes paintings, drawings, lithographs and prints from the 1960s to 1990s. Much of Levy’s art is rooted in mythic family tales and remembrances. Near… Read more »
WASHINGTON (Forward) — Holocaust survivors denouncing the Jewish establishment would be a spectacle in almost any venue — all the more so when it’s under the bright lights of a congressional hearing. The issue at hand recently before the U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on commercial and administrative law… Read more »
PARIS (JTA) — Nearly 70 years to the day since the passage of a pivotal anti-Semitic law in Vichy-occupied France, new evidence about who drafted the law is transforming some historians’ views of France’s wartime head of state, Philippe Petain. Until now the Oct. 3, 1940 law — dubbed… Read more »
A girl affiliated with the Westboro Baptist Church pickets the offices of the Anti-Defamation League in the Pacific Southwest region, June 19, 2009. Creative Commons/k763) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish defense organizations long — and proudly — have upheld a delicate principle in defending the First Amendment: Hate the speech, defend the speaker. But a Supreme Court case whose arguments were scheduled for Wednesday have put that precept to the test: A Maryland family is… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A day after Israel’s Cabinet announced that it would consider making a loyalty oath mandatory for non-Jewish immigrants, the question put to The Israel Project’s president and founder was simple enough. “How did your organization react?” Natasha Mozgovoya, the Washington correspondent for Israel’s daily Haaretz, asked… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For the first time in history, a U.S. Supreme Court convened last week with three Jewish justices. And Jewish defense organizations had their eyes on … Arizona. Two of the three cases on the docket this session attracting special attention from Jewish groups come from the… Read more »
This architectural rendering shows the interior of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. "Khumbula" is the Zulu word for remember. (Lewis Levin) CAPE TOWN, South Africa (JTA) — At a South African Holocaust museum that plans to open late next year in Johannesburg, the Holocaust will be featured beside a more local genocide: the Rwandan violence of 1994. The inclusion of the African mass murder is not a mere gesture toward… Read more »
Rahm Emanuel, seen here at a Chanukah lighting in Washington on Dec. 13, 2009, left the White House to run for mayor of Chicago. (Israel Bardugo for American Friends of Lubavitch) WASHINGTON (JTA) — They were two Jewish aides who had offices within shouting distance of the Oval Office. But the Oct. 1 resignation of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff and the imminent departure of David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, is raising the question of what… Read more »
On Sept. 17, State Treasurer candidate Andrei Cherny announced his plan to lead an effort to divest Arizona’s stock holdings from companies that do business with Iran and other state sponsors of terrorism. According to Cherny, Arizona owns stock in about two dozen companies that are listed on the… Read more »
Zev Garber will present “Shoah at the University: New Considerations in Holocaust Education” as part of the Shaol Pozez Memorial Lecture Series on Monday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Garber, emeritus professor and chair of Jewish studies and philosophy at Los Angeles Valley… Read more »
Stephen Stone (Sheila Wilensky/AJP) Tucsonan Stephen Stone, 70, conducted what may have been one of the first studies of obesity in American children, a precursor to First Lady Michelle Obama’s current childhood health mission. “Childhood Obesity: Identification, Management and Prevention,” his research project that began in 1985 at the University of Maryland, identified… Read more »
Sharon Glassberg Sharon Glassberg, director of the Coalition for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, and Guy Gelbart, director of the Israel Center, will present talks at Pima Community College Downtown Campus during Ethnic Studies Week, Oct. 1-7. Glassberg will discuss Jewish identity from a historical and modern… Read more »
