Tagged FRONT

Actor Ed Asner, center, led a Freedom Seder on April 21 cosponsored by Temple Emanu-El and Humane Borders. He is pictured with Dinah Bear, president of the board of Humane Borders, and Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El. (Simon Rosenblatt)

Singing the traditional Passover song Chad Gadya, leaving a cup of wine for the prophet Elijah, reciting poems by Marge Piercy and other secular poets, listening to reflections by members of Tucson’s Latino community — all marked the Freedom Seder held April 21 at Temple Emanu-El, cosponsored by Humane… Read more »

Miriam Furst (Sheila Wilensky)

Tucsonan Miriam Furst has been teaching in the field of gifted education for more than 30 years. She’s still at it, researching stimulating activities that illustrate concepts she’s trying to convey. But instead of K-8 or college students, students in Furst’s sharp mind classes are residents at Handmaker Jewish… Read more »

Australian protesters rallying against Dutch politician Geert Wilders in Sydney, Feb. 22, 2013. (Brendon Thomas/Getty Images)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Standing in front of a giant flag, a politician asks his excited followers whether their country should have greater or fewer Moroccans. When they are done chanting “fewer,” the speaker, Geert Wilders of the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom, promises his listeners that he… Read more »

Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild talks with Bishop Gerald Kicanis of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson Rothschild at the Jewish Community Relations Council breakfast on April 11. (Simon Rosenblatt)

“We must work together” was the mantra at the “Border Communities: Issues, Ideas and Initiatives” breakfast and panel discussion on April 11. “No mayor, no rabbi, no priest can address border issues alone,” said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, as an introduction to… Read more »

Israeli singer-songwriter Lior Balavi will perform at Tucson’s Israel 66 celebration at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on the evening of May 14, which will cap almost two weeks of events.

Tucson Celebrates Israel 66, almost two weeks of community-wide celebrations and commemorations coordinated by the Weintraub Israel Center, will take place May 2-14. “This year, the community decided to put Israel in the center, to dedicate more than one day to celebrating and honoring Israel,” says Oshrat Barel, community… Read more »

Ghada Zoabi, founder of Bokra, an Arabic Israeli news site, says the best way to improve the lives of Israeli Arabs is to make them better informed about their government's actions. (Courtesy of Bokra.net).

NAZARETH, Israel (JTA) — After Israel’s 2006 war with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah devastated the country’s northern region, most Israelis focused on rebuilding their towns and creating better defense infrastructure. Arab-Israeli journalist Ghada Zoabi turned her focus to the media. Though Israel has well-established protocols for civil defense… Read more »

A policewoman and police car are seen at the entrance of the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kan., following the fatal shootings there, April 13, 2014. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The suspect in deadly shootings at two Jewish institutions in suburban Kansas City made no secret of his hateful views, but nobody anticipated the attack that claimed three lives on Sunday. The shooter was identified as Frazier Glenn Miller, a 73-year-old white supremacist. The attack illustrates… Read more »

Gilberto Bosques

The 2014 community Yom HaShoah Commemoration, “Diplomatic Acts of Conscience and Courage,” will honor Tucson’s Holocaust survivors and Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques. The event will take place on Sunday, April 27 at 2 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El, and will begin with a procession and candlelighting ceremony by local Holocaust… Read more »

Jonathan Ben-Asher

The Tucson Hebrew Academy board of trustees has appointed Jonathan Ben-Asher as interim head of school. To establish a strong transition, Ben-Asher started last week and will assume full leadership of the school in July. Arthur Yavelberg, the cur­rent head of school, is leaving to take a position in… Read more »

Manuel Valls, then the interior minister of France, arriving at a state dinner with his wife, Anne Gravoin, Sept. 3, 2013. (Antoine Antoniol/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Even among those who anticipated it, the intensity of anti-Semitic violence that hit France in 2002 was shocking. That year — the height of the second Palestinian intifada — synagogues and schools were torched, previously rare anti-Semitic beatings occurred in Paris and elsewhere, and a new generation… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — Growing up in Bosnia, Merima Kljuco was familiar with the Sarajevo Haggadah. The medieval, illuminated manuscript was considered a treasure of the Bosnian National Museum for more than a century. Its 600-year journey from Spain through Italy and then Sarajevo, and its survival through persecution and… Read more »

Demonstrators rally ouside of the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby March 25, 2014. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — For 20 or so minutes last week, the issue of religious freedom was cast as a struggle between working women and Muslim and Jewish butchers. The pointed questions posed March 25 to the Obama administration’s chief lawyer by three U.S. Supreme Court justices got to the… Read more »

If you are looking for a community Passover Seder to attend this year, Tucson’s got you covered. There are first, second, third and seventh night Seders, several chocolate-based festivities and a chance to start the celebrating more than a week before the holiday officially begins. The 18 events below… Read more »

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub

Depression may often seem like an epidemic in today’s so­­­ciety. Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, a rabbi and licensed therapist, will deliver the first keynote address, “The Dark Night of the Soul: Some Jewish Perspectives on Depression,” at the Interfaith Community Services “Faith Com­munities and Mental Illness” conference on April… Read more »

New auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl engulfed by adoring fans upon arriving at the Auburn University Regional Airport on his 54th birthday, March 18, 2014. (Courtesy Auburn University/Zach Bland)

BALTIMORE (JTA) — Shortly after assembling the players trying out for the American squad he’d be coaching at the 2009 Maccabiah Games, Bruce Pearl brought them to Sabbath evening services at the Heska Amuna Synagogue in Knoxville, Tenn. The passionate and gregarious Pearl, a veteran of reading the haftarah… Read more »

Yuriy Yukhatsov has been trying to immigrate to Israel for three years, but has been denied due to what he says in an error he made filling out a form. (Ben Sales/JTA)

LOD, Israel (JTA) — Sitting in his sister’s living room in this town outside Tel Aviv, Yuriy Yukhatskov says he’s glad to be far from his home city of Kiev. Yukhatskov, 44, says that what he sees as the pervasive anti-Semitism in Ukraine’s capital would grow only worse with… Read more »

Dr. Pamela Hartzband and Dr. Jerome Groopman (Shelly Harrison Photography)

Understanding your patient and yourself as a physician — and a human being — is the path to the best medical treatment. So say Dr. Jerome Groopman and Dr. Pamela Hartzband, authors of “Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What is Right for You.” Both Harvard Medical School educators… Read more »

Nancy Cohen is a registered nurse and life coach.

All of our lives are marked by milestones and passages. For families who are dealing with acute or chronic medical conditions, these transitions can be especially challenging. Whether it’s the onset of Alzheimer’s for a spouse or the changes of adolescence for a child with type 1 diabetes, patients… Read more »

A man shoots a slingshot at national guard troops following one of the largest anti-government demonstrations yet on March 2, 2014 in Caracus, Venezuela. (John Moore/Getty Images)

 (JTA) — They left after Venezuelan secret police raided a Jewish club in 2007, and after the local synagogue was ransacked by unidentified thugs two years later. They left after President Hugo Chavez expelled Israel’s ambassador to Caracas, and when he called on Venezuela’s Jews to condemn Israel for… Read more »

Besides blotting out the name of Haman, would these groggers also wake one to the needs of the hungry? (Edmon J. Rodman)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Purim, can we really blot out the memory of an evil like Haman, who threatened our very existence, with a noisemaker? When in a popular Purim song we sing “Hava narishah-rash, rash, rash,” “Wind your noisemakers,” all that “rashing” does momentarily make the darkness… Read more »