Tagged FRONT

U.S. Olympic gymnast and gold medalist Aly Raisman lights the torch during the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games at Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium, July 19, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — U.S. Olympian Aly Raisman lit the torch at the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games, which features a record number of nearly 9,000 athletes. Thursday night’s ceremony at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem featured pyrotechnics and performances with hundreds of dancers and popular Israeli singers, as… Read more »

In Kenya, the home of this young HIAS client, the immigrant aid society has taken in refugees from conflicts in neighboring countries, among others. (Courtesy HIAS)

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA) — The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration — first in leading the resettlement of Jews… Read more »

Former Montreal Canadiens coach Jacques Demers embraces his one-time goalie Patrick Roy at Roy's 2008 retirement ceremony at the Bell Centre in Montreal. (Photo by Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Of all the compelling stories of athletic achievement and challenges overcome that could be told by the 9,000 participants gathering in Israel for the 19th Maccabiah Games, it might be hard to find one to top Jacques Demers. He’s a coaching legend, having led the iconic… Read more »

Romance blooms for Andrew West and Sophia Kerdoon in the Negev Desert.

Ask almost anyone who has been on Birthright Israel and they will tell you that the 10-day trip is a life-changing experience. This might sound cliché, but for many Tucsonans on the trip from June 10-20 — sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, local donors and the… Read more »

Egyptian protesters hold an anti-Morsi poster in Tahrir Square in Cairo shortly before the military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, July 3, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – For the second time in less than three years, Egypt is erupting in chaos, with a popular protest movement leading to a swift change in the country’s leadership. For Israelis, the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency last week is a cause… Read more »

A plaque engraved with names of the 19 fallen firefighters from the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew is mounted on a fence outside Station 7, their home base in Prescott, Ariz., July 3, 2013. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Yom Kippur, we ask “Who by fire?” Sadly, this year at Tisha b’Av we already know who — the 19 firefighters who perished in Arizona. “This is as dark a day as I can remember,” Gov. Jan Brewer said in a statement. Unknowingly, the… Read more »

Rabbi Joseph Weizenbaum

Rabbi Joseph Weizenbaum, who retired in 2002 after 44 years in the rabbinate — more than 30 of them in Tucson — died July 1, 2013. He was 80. Weizenbaum, who was senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El for 21 years beginning in 1972, and founded the now-defunct Congregation Ner Tamid… Read more »

L-R: Reps. Steny Hoyer, Eric Cantor and John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, singing "We Shall Overcome" at a memorial to martyrs of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Ala., March 2, 2013. (Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Reps. Eric Cantor and John Lewis stood together recently at a Montgomery, Ala., memorial to martyrs of the civil rights struggle, joining hands to sing “We Shall Overcome.” With last week’s Supreme Court decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act — one of the landmark pieces of… Read more »

Edith Windsor, left, embraces Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, June 28, 2013. (Hugo Fernandes)

NEW YORK (JTA) — At 5 p.m. last Friday, a line of visibly excited people — many decked out in rainbow regalia — gathered on the sidewalk outside Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the gay and lesbian synagogue in Manhattan. Worshipers don’t generally form lines down the block in advance… Read more »

L-R: Reps. Ed Royce, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Pete Roskam at a meeting with Dani Dayan, a leader of Israel's settlers movement, in Washington, June 27, 2013. (House Republican Conference)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s almost boilerplate: The American Jewish community asks a foreign leader with whom it has cultivated a close relationship to kindly tell firebrands in the leader’s government to pipe down and fall in with an established policy that happens to be embraced by the U.S. government.… Read more »

Tucsonan Joseph Schwartz at bat for the Maccabi USA team at a 2011 game in Brazil. (Courtesy Joseph Schwartz)

Laurence Kaye’s whole mishpocheh, from all over the United States and his native South Africa, will be heading to Israel for the Maccabiah Games this July — not necessarily to watch him compete in the Men’s Open Squash tournament, although that’s a bonus, but to be on hand as… Read more »

North Korea refugee and human rights activist Shin Dong-hyuk demonstrating for human rights in North Korea outside the White House, July 10, 2012. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

BRUSSELS (JTA) — When guards dragged Shin Dong-hyuk from his North Korean cell in 1995, he was pretty sure the end was near. Dong-hyuk, then just 13, was born in the prison known as Camp 14, not far from Pyongyang. Camp 14 is part of a network of political… Read more »

Barbra Streisand hugs Israeli President Shimon Peres after performing at his 90th birthday celebration in Jerusalem, June 18, 2013. (Kobi Gideon/GPO/FLASH90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — World leaders praised and serenaded Israeli President Shimon Peres in honor of his upcoming 90th birthday. The prime-time birthday celebration Tuesday night marked the start of the fifth annual Israeli Presidential Conference. Two of every three Israeli television viewers tuned in to the ceremony, which was… Read more »

Hassan Rohani, Iran's president-elect, is a former national security adviser and ex-nuclear negotiator. (Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Former national security adviser, former nuclear negotiator, a decades-old friendship with the supreme leader — Hassan Rohani is as Iranian establishment as it gets. Which is why, some Iran watchers say, he may be an invaluable asset in the quest to reduce tensions between the Islamic… Read more »

More than a dozen Americans and Israelis met recently in Israel to strategize plans for the TIPS (Tucson, Israel, Phoenix, Seattle) Partnership2Gether project for the coming year. Tucson volunteer Gail Ben-Jamin (known to her Israeli friends as Gila) and Oshrat Barel, the future shlicha or Israeli emissary to Tucson,… Read more »

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz (with binoculars) tours the Israeli border with Syria on May 21. (Tal Manor/IDF Spokesperson/Flash 90/JTA)

For much of the past two years, Israel has taken a singular approach to the Syrian civil war: Stay as far away as possible. But with a recent string of victories by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and the crumbling of the U.N. peacekeeping force that has kept… Read more »

Demonstrators in Berlin protesting the deaths of pro-Palestinian activists in a clash with Israeli commandos aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, June 2010. (Sean Gallup/Getty)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel’s settlement building is increasingly isolating the country in Europe, leading to European Union policies that could reinforce Israel’s delegitimization, according to the top EU representative to the peace process. Andreas Reinicke, the EU’s special envoy for the Middle East peace process, said increasing frustration with… Read more »

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who is to be named national security adviser, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, October 2009. (Moshe Milner/GPO/Getty)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Susan Rice has said that a “huge” portion of her work at the United Nations was defending Israel’s legitimacy. Her new job will likely be no less Israel-centric. President Obama plans Wednesday to name Rice his national security adviser and replace her at the U.N. with… Read more »

Holocaust survivor Bill Kugelman, a Tucson resident (right, in blue), and Bryan Davis, director of the Holocaust Education and Commemoration Project of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, speak to students at the Tucson High Magnet School gallery after they viewed a poster exhibit, “Echoes of the Holocaust.” (Photo: Michelle Fealk/Tucson High Magnet School Gallery)

Updated May 31, 2013 What’s not being told in posters depicting the Holocaust? That’s the question Bryan Davis, director of the Holocaust Education and Commemoration Project of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, asked students at the Tucson Magnet High School gallery on May 6 to ponder. The poster… Read more »

Fox News correspondent James Rosen, shown here interviewing Secretary of State John Kerry on March 5, 2013, was subject to a subpoena based on the same statute in the espionage act used to indict two former AIPAC staffers in 2005. (U.S. State Department)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – With its talk of signal books, sketches and photographic negatives, the Espionage Act suggests a period long ago consigned to Cold War-era thrillers. In fact, the law is even older, first drafted in 1917, at a time when secret orders were conveyed by telegraph and semaphore… Read more »