Tucsonan Alain Avigdor, right, visits with a Jewish woman at an assisted living facility in Casablanca, Morocco. (Larry Gellman) “Casablanca” brings to mind an almost mythical film in an exotic locale, conjuring up images of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman parting on a foggy airfield. But Casablanca is a real place where Jews have lived as far back as Roman times. Sixteen Tucsonans witnessed the vibrancy of Morocco’s… Read more »
Suzi Hileman After 22 months, Suzi Hileman finally got to step into a courtroom and confront Jared Lee Loughner, the man who killed six people and wounded her and 12 others who’d come to meet with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a Tucson Safeway on Jan. 8, 2011. “I have wanted to… Read more »
Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to Republican candidates, attending a Republican Jewish Coalition event at the party's convention in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 27, 2012. Jewish republicans say the party should expect to hear from donors about how to do better in the next election. (Ron Kampeas) WASHINGTON (JTA) – Think immigration through — again. Forget about gay marriage. And for heaven’s sake, when it comes to rape, shut up! The Republican Party as a whole is having the morning-afters, reconsidering how it might have done better in an election that saw the party fail to… Read more »
President Obama hugging his campaign manager, Jim Messina, during a stop at his campaign headquarters in Chicago, Nov. 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Obama’s Jewish numbers are down, but by how much and why? Expect four more years of tussling between Jewish Republicans and Democrats about the meaning of Obama’s dip from 78 percent Jewish support cited in 2008 exit polls to 69 percent this year in the… Read more »
Haredi Orthodox Jews watching the victory speech of President Obama at the American Center in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2012. (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) – Most Israelis were asleep as the polls closed in America and voters waited for the results, but on one rooftop in central Tel Aviv a party with loud classic rock music and flashing lights was going strong. It was the pro-Obama election-watching party of Israel’s… Read more »
Erica Fishbein volunteered with JDC's Entwine group in south Brooklyn following Hurricane Sandy. (Courtesy Cheryl Fishbein) NEW YORK—Hurricane Sandy stormed into New York and New Jersey with unmitigated force, carrying death and destruction, disrupting lives, and devastating neighborhoods in America’s most densely populated regions—which happen to be home to some of the country’s largest Jewish populations. In response, the Jewish community banded together to meet… Read more »
President Barack Obama, left, and challenger Mitt Romney differ on several issues of importance to the Jewish community. (Graphics by Uri Fintzy) NEW YORK (JTA) -- JTA reviews the positions of presidential candidates Barack Obama, the Democratic incumbent, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney on some issues of importance to the Jewish community.… Read more »
Mitt Romney speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition presidential candidates' forum, Dec. 7, 2011. (Republican Jewish Coalition) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Mitt Romney’s record as a moderate Republican governor would seem to have made him ideally suited to peel off Jewish votes from President Obama. The problem is that he spent much of the past half decade running from that past. Now, however, as the campaign draws… Read more »
President Obama addressing the biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism, Dec. 16, 2011. (URJ) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The moment in the final presidential debate when President Obama described his visit to Israel’s national Holocaust museum and to the rocket-battered town of Sderot seemed to be aimed right for the kishkes. The “kishkes question” — the persistent query about how Obama really feels about… Read more »
Itamar Rabinovich Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 1993 to 1996, will present “The U.S., Israel and the Challenge of Iran: Options and Constraints,” on Monday, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. A Weintraub Israel Center Heartbeat of Israel program, the free lecture… Read more »
Hannah Rosenthal, center, the anti-Semitism monitor for the United States, meeting with English language micro-scholarship students in Azerbaijan, March 2011. (U.S. Embassy Baku) WASHINGTON (JTA) – Anti-Semitism overseas is being noted with increasing frequency by U.S. State Department human rights reports, and Hannah Rosenthal says that’s a good thing. Rosenthal, the State Department’s second anti-Semitism monitor, says increased reporting reflects burgeoning awareness of the problem among U.S. diplomats. “The not-so-sexy part of… Read more »
Arlen Specter, shown speaking at the AFL-CIO convention in September 2009, represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for 30 years. (Steve Dietz/Sharp Image) WASHINGTON (JTA) — During his 30 years in the clubby confines of the U.S. Senate, Arlen Specter never lost his acerbic prosecutorial zeal, friends and associates say. The insistent questions, the commitment to independence that made the longtime Pennsylvania senator a critical player in recent U.S. history, ultimately did… Read more »
Gordon Steen, 66, of Baltimore has been looking for a full-time job for six years. (Neil Rubin) BALTIMORE (JTA) – After some 40 years in the business world, Gordon Steen never thought his morning would start outdoors with hyenas, elephants and monkeys. But that was more than six years ago, before he had closed his 17-year-old shipping and packing business. While contemplating his next career move,… Read more »
Joel Chasnoff Tucson Hebrew Academy will honor Tom Warne with its 2012 Tikkun Olam Award at a gala dinner featuring entertainment by comedian Joel Chasnoff on Oct. 28. Warne is known in the Jewish community as a lay leader and philanthropist. He is chair of the Tucson Jewish Community Center board… Read more »
Saul Kagan, founding executive direcor of the Claims Conference, right, talking to Nahum Goldmann, founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress, 1958. (Courtesy Claims Conference) NEW YORK (JTA) — As the founding executive director of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, I remember just how difficult the issue of negotiating with Germany was within the Jewish world 60 years ago. In Israel in particular, it was a subject of enormous controversy, political and… Read more »
Matt Bycer showing off an etrog from his farm in the backyard of his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., Sept. 20, 2012. (Chavie Lieber) (JTA) — Matt Bycer is like any other 33-year-old attorney who wakes up at the crack of dawn to exercise. Except that rather than sweating to a P90X regimen, Bycer, in a T-shirt, shorts and cowboy hat, lugs 170 buckets of water across his backyard in Scottsdale, Ariz., to… Read more »
Meryl Press Volunteers — defined as those “who perform a service willingly and without pay” — are the backbone of many organizations, helping them fulfill and sometimes expand upon their core missions. In this special “Volunteer Salute,” the AJP presents brief snapshots of volunteers from the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona… Read more »
Left to right, Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu and newly ordained Rabbis Dani Fabian, Reuven Konnik, Naftoly Surovtsev and Jonathan Konits, following their ordination ceremony at the Synagogue Community Center in Cologne, Germany, Sept. 13, 2012. (Photo by Uri Strauss) (JTA) — For four men in Germany, this Jewish New Year will be like no other. It will be their first year as ordained rabbis, working to help build Jewish life in the very country that nearly succeeded in wiping out European Jewry. In ceremonies held Thursday at the… Read more »
Palestinians demonstrating against the high costs of living in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sept. 11, 2012. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) – Could the Palestinian Authority’s budget woes end up costing Israel? Growing economic protests in the West Bank could lead to increased regional instability and perhaps even the end of the Palestinian Authority, experts are warning. At this point, however, they say the protests are unlikely… Read more »
Participants celebrating during services at the World Union for Progressive Judaism Conference of Jewish Communities in Buenos Aires, Argentina, August, 2012. (Diego Melamed) BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — When the Sao Paulo Hebraica Sports Club and Community Center in Brazil opened the Aleph School earlier this month, it welcomed 450 students and had 120 more on the waiting list for next year. Hebraica, which is similar to an American Jewish community center,… Read more »
