Robert Lopez-Hanshaw directs Tucson’s new Ha’Zamir choir branch. (Photo: Debe Campbell/AJP)
HaZamir Tucson is launching as a new branch of the International Jewish Teen Choir, a musical youth movement of 41 choral chapters across the United States and Israel. An inter-congregational group of local Jewish teens will cap their year of practice with a festival in New York where 450… Read more »
Fashions by LuLaRoe will be among those modeled by synagogue members at the Congregation Or Chadash/Temple Emanu-El high tea, Sept. 15. (Photo courtesy Congregation Or Chadash Sisterhood) Congregation Or Chadash Sisterhood and Temple Emanu-El Women of Reform Judaism will hold their first major collaboration, a fashion show high tea, on Sunday, Sept. 15, from 2-4 p.m. The event will be catered by L’Chaim Catering and fashions provided by Clique and LuLaRoe will be modeled by members… Read more »
With a cowboy as their logo for the 2019 JCC Maccabi Games, Team Tucson galloped out at the July 28 opening ceremonies in Atlanta to the song “Old Town Road.” From left: Grant Cohen (front), Gabe Green, Pasha Maher (basketball coach), Elijah Nogales,Josh Shenker (delegation head), and Gianna Miltenberger
Tucson’s team for the annual JCC Maccabi Games for Jewish teens, held July 28-Aug. 2 in Atlanta, was “small but mighty” with four athletes, says Josh Shenker, delegation head and director of children, youth and camping services at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. “Though we were the smallest delegation… Read more »
Cody Blumenthal (back row, center, in white) played point guard for Team USA at the July Maccabi Pan American games in Mexico City. Team USA won gold over Team Israel (in blue) by 20 points.
Cody Blumenthal brought home a gold medal from his participation on the age 18 and under Team USA basketball team at the 14th Pan American Maccabi Games in Mexico City, July 5-15. “Winning gold with my new best friends was the best feeling in the world,” he says. Every… Read more »
David Tannenbaum approaches the finish line at about 28 MPH at the Maccabi Pan American Games in Mexico City. (Michelle Rousnack@altiusevents)
David Tannenbaum of Hereford, Arizona, was the sole bicycling competitor in Team USA’s Master Division at the 2019 Maccabi Pan American Games in Mexico City, July 5-15. He finished in eighth-place in the 55-59 year age group, receiving a medal for completing all three races. “That makes me the… Read more »
Jackie Tohn recalls her family's Holocaust past in an extraordinary scene on her Netflix show. (Sela Shiloni)
This article originally appeared on Alma. In the sixth episode of the newly released third season of “GLOW,” there’s an unconventional seder in the Nevada desert. It’s led by Melrose — played by Jackie Tohn — the Jewish party girl who talks the group through the 10 plagues, the… Read more »
Agnes Keleti, in her mid-90s, performs a split in front of young Hungarian gymnasts in Budapest, Jan. 16, 2016. (Peter Kohalmi/AFP/Getty Images)
BUDAPEST (JTA) — When journalists ask Agnes Keleti about her health, she gently smiles and slowly extends her right hand in apparent gratitude for the question. Keleti yanks anyone who is foolish enough to grasp her hand with enough force to throw them off their balance. Then she replies:… Read more »
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger published “Judaism Unmasked,” one of the most noxious and highly influential anti-Semitic works ever written. (Wikimedia Commons/JTA Montage)
NEW YORK (JTA) — “Eisenmenger belonged to the class of insects which sucks poison even out of flowers,” the 19th-century Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz wrote. Graetz was referring to Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, a young 17th-century scholar from Mannheim, Germany, who dedicated some 19 years of his life to mastering… Read more »
A Palestinian shepherd uses a bucket to get water from a well in the village of Susya south of the West Bank city of Hebron on August 19, 2017. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) – Editor’s Note: In March, the the liberal Israel policy group J Street announced that it would be creating a 10-day free trip to Israel, designed to provide students with both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives on the conflict. Many interpreted the announcement as a move to compete with… Read more »
PJ Library events and activities, such as building model Seder plates with Legos, often draw large crowds. (Debe Campbell/AJP)
PJ Library is a national program that encourages local Jewish families with young children to explore Jewish values and culture through books. Coordinated by Mary Ellen Loebl at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, the free program sends an age-appropriate Jewish-content book monthly to 740 children between the ages… Read more »
Jewish religious law and customs require that mezuzahs be affixed to doorframes. (Zeevveez/Flickr)
SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — A bill to ensure the right of Californians bill to hang mezuzahs on their door frames is moving through the state legislature, and is on its way to the desk of Governor Gavin Newsom. SB 652 bars landlords and… Read more »
(JTA) — The usual bio for Mariano Rivera includes retired New York Yankees relief pitcher, all-time saves leader, first player voted unanimously into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 13-time All-Star, five-time World Series champion. Add that he’s a staunch supporter of Israel. Rivera, 49, spoke this week at the… Read more »
A Jewish woman holding a candle, with a "We Will Outlive Them" banner in the background, at a New York vigil for the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. (Gili Getz)
NEW YORK (JTA) – In 2019, there are more haters than lovers of the Jewish Left. Especially in the United States, the mainstream Jewish community reviles left-wing Jews who embrace anti-Zionism. Meanwhile, the Jewish Left itself is split. On one side are the “Left Zionists” who support a two-state… Read more »
Hands reach out to touch the casket of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson as his funeral procession prepares to leave the world headquarters of the Lubavitch Hasidim in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, June 12, 1994. (Mark Phillips/AFP/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) –Twenty-five years ago, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the 92-year-old Lubavitcher Rebbe, succumbed to his many ailments and died, to the horror of his Hasidim. Since suffering the first of several devastating strokes on March 2, 1992, while visiting the grave of his late father-in-law and predecessor Rabbi Yosef… Read more »
Young Jewish adults from all over the world participate in the Birthright Israel program in Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2015. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (JTA) – The year was 2000, and Michael Steinhardt had just dropped a bombshell that nearly brought an otherwise dignified conference to blows. “I tend, in my dourest moments, to consider both the Reform and Conservative Jews as historic accidents in the 21st century and suspect,… Read more »
Avi Abraham, a Krav Maga instructor who teaches self-defense classes to synagogue-goers, shows how to combat an attacker in a promotional video. (Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — When the ushers locked the door to the sanctuary, and the congregants prepared to flee the synagogue in preparation for a mass shooting, Rabbi Neil Cooper made sure it all happened before they had to take the Torahs out of the ark. Ten minutes later the worshippers… Read more »
Hundreds attend the funeral of former Israeli army's chief rabbi, Avihai Ronsky, in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, April 1, 2018. In Jewish tradition, the body must undergo a series of rituals after death and before burial known as tahara, performed by a chevra kadisha, a holy society of volunteers. (Miriam Alster/Flash 90)
(JTA) — In Jewish communities around the world, there is a little known group of men and women dedicated to performing the mitzvah of preparing a body for burial, a ritual called tahara. The group is called the chevra kadisha, the holy society. The chevra kadisha isn’t a secret… Read more »
Jason Greenblatt, the top White House Middle East peace negotiator, second from left, organizes shacharit services at Bahrain's synagogue on June 26, 2019. (Jason Greenblatt Twitter feed)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s top Middle East negotiator, led Jewish prayer services at a synagogue in Bahrain this week, during the conference there that rolled out the economic portion of the Trump administration’s peace plan. Greenblatt mustered an Orthodox minyan — a quorum of 10 adult… Read more »
(JTA) — A large Orthodox synagogue in Atlanta is breaking away from the Young Israel synagogue movement. The exit comes months after its rabbi protested the movement’s right-wing political positions. In a statement provided Wednesday afternoon to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Young Israel of Toco Hills announced that… Read more »
(JTA) — Ryan Braun now holds the record for most home runs by a Jewish baseball player. The 35-year-old outfielder passed Hank Greenberg on Friday when he hit his 332nd career homer in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Braun, who has spent his entire career with the Milwaukee… Read more »
