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 »
Simferopol Reform Synagogue Ner Tamid on Feb. 28, 2014. (Courtesy Simferopol Reform Synagogue Ner Tamid) Shortly after Russian soldiers occupied the Crimean city of Sevastopol last week, Leah Cyrlikova took her two children out for an afternoon stroll in a city park. When they passed a group of soldiers, they stopped to have a friendly chat and pose with them for photos. While many… Read more »
Hundreds of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews protesting a measure to draft them into the Israeli military, March 2, 2014. (Yaakov Naumi/FLASH90) JERUSALEM (JTA) — Beneath banners invoking historic calamities from the Egyptian enslavement to the Holocaust, hundreds of thousand of haredi Orthodox men gathered on the streets of Jerusalem to recite psalms and penitential prayers as they inveighed against an enemy they consider on par with Hitler and the ancient… Read more »
Philip Caputo It’s time to celebrate books. The Brandeis National Committee/Tucson Chapter will hold its 18th annual Book & Author Day luncheon on Thursday, March 13 from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Skyline Country Club, and its evening soirée March 12 at the same venue. The four featured authors… Read more »
Stella Inger Stella Inger believes in the American dream. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Inger was 6 years old when her family immigrated to the United States in 1989, following the fall of Soviet communism. “We came as refugees,” says Inger, in her office at KGUN9 television, where she’s a news anchor.… Read more »
(L-R) Shailah, Alexandra and Jordan Lowe, granddaughters of Tucsonans Anne and David Lowe, at Camp Young Judaea Midwest. All three of my children went to Camp Young Judaea Midwest in Waupaca, Wis., where Young Judaeans from Tucson still go. At the time we lived in Milwaukee, so the camp was about a two and a half hour drive from our home. Jonathan, Caren and Ethan loved the… Read more »
(L-R): Sharon Glassberg, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona vice president; Rabbi David Wolpe; Brenda Landau, JFSA senior vice president; and Stuart Mellan, JFSA president and CEO, at “Together” event Feb. 12. (Martha Lochert) A haimish (homey, folksy) Rabbi David Wolpe used humor and storytelling to entertain and enlighten a crowd of more than 500 at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s “Together” event on Feb. 12 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. “When I grew up Jewish schools were called parochial. I… Read more »
Alice Herz-Sommer, pictured here on her 107th birthday, is the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary. She died at age 110 on Feb. 23. (Polly Hancock) LOS ANGELES (JTA) — In her 110 years, Alice Herz-Sommer was an accomplished concert pianist and teacher, a wife and mother — and a prisoner in Theresienstadt. Herz-Sommer died on Feb. 23. She is the star of an Oscar-nominated documentary showing her indomitable optimism, cheerfulness and vitality despite all… Read more »
Rita Rudner Rita Rudner is your typical housewife. She washes dishes, makes beds, folds laundry … then she dashes off to her sold-out show in Las Vegas. “Actually I am making the beds right now,” said Rudner, from her beach home in Dana Point, Calif., which is currently for sale. “We… Read more »
Jeannie Smith “From Darkness to Light,” the theme of the 2014 Connections brunch, raises the question of individual responsibility to others — a Jewish value — regardless of the risk. Jeannie Smith, the daughter of Polish Righteous Among the Nations rescuer Irene Gut OpDyke, will be the keynote speaker at this… Read more »
Rabbi Eric Yoffie Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, supports what he calls “passionate pluralism” in the Jewish world — not one right way of being Jewish. He’s coming to Tucson as Temple Emanu-El’s scholar-in-residence from Thursday, Feb. 27 to Saturday, March 1 “to combat stereotypes that… Read more »
Kristen Fabry as Tzeitel and Damian Garcia as Motel in “Fiddler on the Roof” at Pima Community College (Carol Carder/PCC) Working on Pima Community College’s upcoming production of “Fiddler on the Roof” has been “an absolute joy,” says director Todd Poelstra. “More than anything we’ve done, this event, from the first moment we announced it — it’s just been a positive response. ‘Oh, that’s one of my favorite shows… Read more »
Eran Levin, Ph.D., examines a bat in Nimrod Castle on the Golan Heights What do the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and the Israel Defense Forces have in common? Bats. Yes, that’s right. A dozen species of these nocturnal flying mammals have made their summer home in a collection of abandoned army bunkers along the border with Jordan. And… Read more »
