News

Brandeis to welcome Canyon Ranch doctor

Nicola Finley, M.D., of Canyon Ranch will present “Wellness: The Integrative Way” at the opening luncheon for Brandeis National Committee Tucson chapter’s 2019-2020 program year, Thursday, Oct. 17.    Finley worked for more than 10 years at El Rio Community Health Center and St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson before… Read more »

Finkel to lead teens on March of the Living

Tucson Holocaust survivor  Sidney Finkel will lead Southern Arizona teens on the 2020 March of the Living. Participants will retrace his steps through his childhood home of Piotrkow, Poland, including the first Nazi decreed ghetto in occupied Poland, where he and his family were forced to live. Finkel is… Read more »

Four gorgeous Rosh Hashanah recipes from some of Israel’s top chefs

Sea Bass with Roasted Peppers and Herb Crème Filling. (Photo: The Edge Partners PR/JTA Photo Service)

Rosh Hashanah menus, while traditional and delicious, can also get a little stale year after year. With Israeli food trending across the globe, now is a perfect time to add some authentic Israeli flavors to your holiday. We have gathered four exclusive recipes from some of Israel’s top chefs:… Read more »

Documents about Holocaust survivors online

After Hitler’s regime was defeated, many Holocaust survivors and liberated forced laborers wanted to leave Europe. Along with the United States, the most desirable emigration destinations included Canada and Australia. Most of the emigrants were carried by nearly 400 ships the Allies supplied for this mass migration movement; some… Read more »

Thank you and l’hitraot to Barel family

Oshrat Barel, left, and Deborah Oseran, chair of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona boar. Polaroid photos from the event were made into an instant scrapbook for Barel and her family to take home to Israel. Roman Urias/AJP)

More than 100 colleagues and friends turned out Sept. 12 to say thank you and l’hitraot (until we meet again) to Oshrat Barel at a party in her honor at the Harvey and Deanna Evenchik Center for Jewish Philanthropy. Barel returned to Israel after six years in Tucson, four… Read more »

YWC fulfills mitzvah with Handmaker residents

Clockwise from left: Handmaker resident Gertrude Shankman, YWC co-chair Kathy Gerst, Miriam Emerson, and Trihn Tofel (back to the camera). Shankman will turn 105 on Oct. 26. Community members are welcome to join Handmaker for a celebration with Tucson Hebrew Academy students on Oct. 25 at 9:45 a.m., or Shabbat services and more birthday celebration on Oct. 26, 9:30-noon. (Nanci Levy/Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging)

Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Young Women’s Cabinet members visited Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging on Wednesday, Sept. 11 for a brief tour of the building, and the opportunity to get to know some Handmaker residents during a Rosh Hashanah card-making activity. Their visit was part of their… Read more »

Project Isaiah high holiday food drive underway

Committee members and synagogue social action leaders, L-R: Judith Weiser, Rabbi Batsheva Appel, Marc Sbar, Susan Kasle, Beverly Sandock, Nanci Levy, Steve Slaff, Mary Ellen Loebl, Carol Fabrizio, Rabbi Ruven Barkan, Lisa Schachter-Brooks, and Diane Katz. (Debe Campbell/AJP)

The annual community-wide Project Isaiah High Holy Days hunger project kicked off Sept. 15. It is coordinated by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish Community Relations Council, with monetary and food donations benefiting the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. Synagogues and Jewish agencies will collect donations. The… Read more »

Interfaith agency presents token of appreciation

Photo Debe Campbell/AJP

Jill Rich, social action chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, presented Federation CEO & President Stuart Mellan with a token of appreciation from Catholic Community Services Casa Alitas program on Sept. 13. JFSA has supported Casa Alitas over the past six… Read more »

People in the news 9.27.19

Hon. John Peck

At its annual conference and meeting of 130 judges, magistrates, and court officers earlier this month in Prescott, the Arizona Justice of the Peace Association elected the Hon. John Peck president. Peck is the presiding judge of the Ajo Justice Court, elected to a second term in 2018, and… Read more »

Business briefs 9.27.19

Julia Berg

Rabbinical student Julia Berg will join Congregation Or Chadash for the High Holy Days and monthly for Shabbat services through May. Berg is a second-year student at Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Berg spent her undergraduate career at the University of Michigan where she… Read more »

Homeless man pleads guilty to burning down Minnesota synagogue

A homeless man pleaded guilty to burning down a historic Minnesota synagogue earlier this month. Prosecutors have indicated that they intend to ask for probation for Matthew James Amiot, 36, The Associated Press reported. He could have faced a maximum of three years in prison. Amiot pleaded guilty to… Read more »

Jewish and Arab astronauts head to space together

The first Arab to visit the International Space Station launched there on Wednesday with the daughter of an Israeli father. Hazzaa al-Mansoori, 35, of the United Arab Emirates and Jessica Meir, an American, took off on the historic trip from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz rocket. They will remain… Read more »

How the late French president Jacques Chirac started France’s reckoning with the Holocaust

PARIS - MARCH 11: French President Jacques Chirac attends a media conference for Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei (not shown) in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace March 11, 2004 in Paris, France. Prime Minister Qurei is on an official visit to Paris. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

VIENNA, Austria (JTA) — Jacques Chirac, the former French president who died on September 26 at age 86, had only been in office two months when, on July 16, 1995, he delivered a speech that began a vital reckoning with one of the darkest aspects of France’s recent history.… Read more »

Israeli minister: Promoters of the Israel boycott movement are anti-Semitic

Israel’s public security minister presented a report at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday that includes 80 examples of what he called anti-Semitism by key European promoters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. In one example from April, Jenny Tonge, a lawmaker in the upper chamber… Read more »

Amar’e Stoudemire is now an undergrad, goes to his campus Hillel and wants to boost black-Jewish relations

Amar'e Stoudemire is leading an initiative to connect Jewish and African-American students at Florida International University. (Courtesy of FIU Hillel)

(JTA) — Despite his serious thoughts about an NBA comeback, Amar’e Stoudemire is taking a little break from basketball to go to school. The former six-time NBA All-Star, who had never attended college, started this fall as a freshman at Florida International University in Miami. Though the semester just… Read more »

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on why she did not retire during Obama’s term

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participates in a discussion during the Library of Congress National Book Festival at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Aug. 31, 2019. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — It was a blunt statement in the midst of a cordial conversation: “I’m wondering why you’re here.” That was Nina Totenberg, the NPR legal affairs correspondent, to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Sept. 18 Moment magazine awards dinner, where the justice had… Read more »

Netanyahu didn’t win Israel’s election. So why is he getting the chance to form a government?

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin presents Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with the mandate to form a new government, at the President's Residence in Jerusalem, Sept. 25, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

(JTA) — As votes were counted following last week’s election in Israel, many saw the results as a loss for longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After all, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party won fewer seats than the Blue and White party of his main competitor Benny Gantz. So it came… Read more »

‘Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews?’ Malaysia’s leader asks at Columbia

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Aug. 31, 2019. (Chris Jung/NurPhoto/Getty Images/JTA Photo Service)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The prime minister of Malaysia defended his past anti-Semitic statements and questioned the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in a speech at Columbia University. “I am exercising my right to free speech. Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews,… Read more »