Tagged FRONT

Spoilers alert: Six guys to watch the day after an Iran deal

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi speaks during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (unseen) in Berlin, Germany on June 3, 2015. (Adam Berry/Getty Images)
July 6, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – A nuclear deal between Iran and the major world powers is due to be finalized by Tuesday. Until now, critics of the emerging deal have argued that it’s bad, getting worse, but it could be improved. Once negotiators on both sides come up with a final deal,… Read more »

When Nicholas Winton, the British rescuer of Jews, was rebuffed by the U.S.

Nicholas Winton at a London event honoring him in September 2009. (Peter Maciarmid/Getty Images)
July 5, 2015 / Rafael Medoff, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last week’s passing of Nicholas Winton, the London stockbroker who rescued more than 600 Jewish children from the Nazis on the eve of World War II, has drawn attention to the phenomenon of ordinary individuals who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust. Winton‘s… Read more »

‘A Borrowed Identity’ depicts divided hearts in a land divided

Naomi (Daniel Kitsis) & Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom) in the streets of Jerusalem
July 5, 2015 / Tom Tugend, JTA

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — It is one of the paradoxes of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel that some of the best movies depicting Palestinians as society’s outsiders are made by Jewish directors. Similarly, Palestinian directors often draw more balanced pictures of their Jewish “occupiers” than do some self-lacerating Jewish-Israeli filmmakers.… Read more »

Jewish Community Foundation grants more than $360K to aid programs in Tucson, Israel

Therapist Zehava Baruch counsels Ethiopian immigrants Fanta (left) and Weinishe at the welfare department in Kiryat Malachi, Israel. A 2015 grant from the Jewish Community Foundation and Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona to the Kiryat Malachi welfare department will focus on preventing Ethiopian family violence. (AJP file photo)
June 25, 2015 /

The Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona recently awarded 24 grants totaling $369,817 through its community grants program. These grants are made in three impact areas: Tucson Jewish community, Israel and global Jewry, and Tucson general community. The local Jewish and Israel grants are administered in alignment with the… Read more »

Counselors bring Israeli fun, culture to Camp J

Dar Katz (left) and Shachaf Shahar with Camp J campers at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. (Julie Zorn/TJCC)
June 25, 2015 / Nancy Ben-Asher Ozeri, Special to the AJP

As Camp J shlichot (Israeli emissaries), Shachaf Shahar and Dar Katz are here to share their love and knowledge of Israel and Jewish culture with the campers at the Tucson Jewish Community Center this summer. Shahar, 22, is from Yad Morde­chai, a kibbutz in Tucson’s Partner­ship2Gether region in southern… Read more »

On Migrant Trail, connecting Jewish history with modern desert crossers

Eve Rosenberg at the Bureau of Land Management campsite at Ajo Way and San Joaquin Road, before setting out for the final day of the Migrant Trail, May 31. (Deborah Mayaan)
June 25, 2015 / Deborah Mayaan, Special to the AJP

When I joined the Migrant Trail for the last day of its 12th annual week-long solidarity walk from El Sásabe, Sonora, Mexico, to Tucson, we stepped single-file along Ajo Highway in a walking meditation. Periodically, we called out names of those who had died crossing our Sonoran Desert. Some… Read more »

In London’s Jewish heart, planned neo-Nazi rally provokes outrage

A view of a street in the Golders Green neighborhood of London, June 19, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
June 24, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

LONDON (JTA) — Like many European Jews, Stephen Lever has mostly stopped wearing his yarmulke on the street in recent years. A Londoner, Lever said he fears joining the hundreds of Jews accosted annually in his native United Kingdom, often by Muslim or Arab extremists seeking to exact retribution… Read more »

Throughout Hillary Clinton’s life and career, U.S. Jews have been close at hand

Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a U.S. senator from New York, with her husband, Bill Clinton, at a memorial dinner for Yitzhak Rabin at the center named for the slain Israeli leader in Tel Aviv, Nov. 14, 2005. (Pavel Wolberg/Pool/Getty Images)
June 23, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – From the man who married her grandmother to the man who married her daughter, from working a room full of bar mitzvah guests on behalf of her husband’s political career to headlining major pro-Israel events during her own, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s journey has never wandered far from Jews. Clinton’s Jewish encounters have… Read more »

For this U.N. report on Gaza War, Israel came prepared

A Palestinian child amid the rubble of buildings in Gaza City that were destroyed during the summer of 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, June 22, 2015. (Aaed Tayeh/Flash90)
June 23, 2015 / Ron Kampeas and Marcy Oster, JTA

(JTA) – This time, Israel and its supporters came prepared. Anticipating what they believed would be an unfair U.N. report on last summer’s Gaza War, the Israeli government and friendly groups in the United States were ready with at least three reports they say better reflects the reality of… Read more »

In Britain, Jewish and Muslim women connect over Mitzvah Day

Muslim and Jewish participants in a new interfaith initiative during its launch at the Jewish Museum in the London Borough of Camden, June 9, 2015. (Yakir Zur)
June 22, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — Good deeds can be contagious. Just ask Laura Marks, a British Jew who is widely credited with creating one of her community’s most widely celebrated new traditions: an annual Mitzvah Day, now in its 11th consecutive year, in which thousands of British Jews perform charity work in retirement homes,… Read more »

Op-Ed: Don’t whitewash Charleston’s troubled racial history

A woman holds a sign during an interfaith candlelight vigil in solidarity with Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina outside Barclays Center on June 21, 2015 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Nine people were fatally shot inside the historic African American church on June 17. Suspect Dylann Roof, 21, has been arrested and charged in the killings, which were racially motivated. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
June 22, 2015 / Adam Mendelsohn JTA

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) — A prominent Jewish Charlestonian’s inspiring response to the massacre last week at the Emanuel AME Church has circulated widely in recent days. Robert N. Rosen’s essay points to the best traditions of life in the city: tolerance, an attentiveness to history, and a powerful sense… Read more »

What will the ADL lose when Foxman leaves?

Abraham Foxman holds a replica of his Hollywood Walk of Fame Star as he is honored by the ADL's 2014 Annual Meeting at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on November 7, 2014. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
June 20, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) – If there’s one thing that can be said of longtime Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman, who is stepping down this month after nearly 30 years at the helm, it’s that he never holds back from speaking his mind. In an age of canned, anodyne statements… Read more »

Michael Douglas: I ‘never felt accepted’ as a Jew

Michael Douglas speaking at the announcement of the Genesis Generation Challenge winners at the Bloomberg Philanthropies headquarters in New York City, April 28, 2015. (Flickr)
June 20, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Michael Douglas hadn’t heard of the Genesis Prize when he found out that he’d won it. In fact, the Oscar-winning actor was surprised to discover he was even in the running for an award designed for those who inspire fellow Jews. His father, actor Kirk Douglas,… Read more »

Expansion of local Holocaust museum garners broad support

A slideshow at the May 29 event to showcase plans for the Holocaust History Center expansion included this artist's rendering of an interactive testimonial wall (SBBL Architecture and Planning)
June 11, 2015 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor

Many local schoolchildren may never get the opportunity to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., or the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. But Tucson’s Holocaust History Center at the Jewish History Museum can put that kind of learning within reach, Bryan… Read more »

Domestic abuse takes many forms, affects all populations, say local experts
June 11, 2015 / Sheila Wilensky, AJP Associate Editor
Andrea Siemens

Even discussing domestic abuse can be controversial. Jewish women face cultural and religious stigmatization when they get out of their abusive relationships, said Andrea Siemens of Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona at a joint presentation with Robin Memel Fox of the Emerge! Center Against Domestic Abuse,… Read more »

CHAI Circle, local women’s cancer support group, entering bat mitzvah year
June 11, 2015 / Evelyn Varady, Special to the AJP
Evelyn Varady

On Sunday, March 8, 18 Jewish women gathered at the Tucson Jewish Community Center for brunch, inspiration and guided schmoozing. Most of the women were not strangers. Some have been meeting regularly for nearly 13 years; others have joined the group more recently; two were attending for the first… Read more »

At security confab, Israeli coalition members split on West Bank policy

Israeli Minister of Education Naftali Bennet speaks at the Herzliya Conference, June 7, 2015. (FLASH90)
June 11, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

HERZLIYA, Israel (JTA) — When Israel’s coalition government formed last month, its constituent parties all but ruled out establishing a Palestinian state in the near future. But that doesn’t mean they can agree on what to do instead. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference this week, Israel’s premier diplomatic and security policy gathering,… Read more »

A Russian chief rabbi stands by his strongman, aka Putin

Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, right, attending a brit milah at a Moscow synagogue, on April 28, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
June 11, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz

MOSCOW (JTA) – Rabbi Berel Lazar’s mother was eager for grandchildren. So she gave her 25-year-old son an ultimatum: He could return to his beloved Jewish outreach work in Russia if — and only if — he got married. His yeshiva classmates jokingly said he was already wed, “to the idea of… Read more »

Obama’s latest wooing of Jews not working, poll suggests

President Obama speaks at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., May 22, 2015. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
June 11, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – It’s early days for the White House’s latest charm offensive among American Jews, but a new poll suggests that the wooing effort is having little effect. The poll, published Wednesday by J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that generally backs President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies, shows… Read more »