Klezmer Company Orchestra The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and the Tucson Jewish Community Center will present a benefit concert, “Beyond the Tribes: A Latin Jazz and Klezmer Extravaganza,” featuring the Miami-based Klezmer Company Orchestra on Tuesday, March 29 at the JCC. The evening will start at 6:45 p.m. with Latin dance… Read more »
Biblical scholar James Kugel speaking about his new book, "In the Valley of the Shadow," in Pasedena, Calif., Feb. 3, 2011. (Sue Fishkoff) PASADENA, Calif. (JTA) — When Jewish biblical scholar James Kugel was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer in 2000, he didn’t find religion. The world-renowned academic and author of numerous books, including the acclaimed “How to Read the Bible,” already was a practicing Orthodox Jew. Instead, Kugel… Read more »
Project Kesher activists Elena Kalnitskaya, Svetlana Yakimenko, Olga Krasko and Vlada Bystrova pose outside a U.N. workshop in New York on Feb. 25, 2011. (Project Kesher) (JTA) — When Elena Kalnitskaya of Ukraine talked about her organization’s women’s empowerment projects at a United Nations conference last month, she was presenting the face of social progress in her country. And she was doing it as a Jewish woman — not unusual, perhaps, for an American participant… Read more »
WALTHAM, Mass. (the Forward) — The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is upon us. April 12 is the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, the war’s opening shot. From then, through the sesquicentennial anniversary on April 9, 2015 of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House… Read more »
Demonstrator with an anti-Gadhafi sign outside the Libya Embassy in Cairo shows his solidarity for Libyans protesting their leader, Feb. 22, 2011. (Sierragoddess via Creative Commons) WASHINGTON (JTA) — They were the devils they knew. Though Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood, surrounded by countries whose leaders or people wish its destruction, over the years it had adjusted to the status quo, more or less figuring out how to get by while keeping an eye… Read more »
Ron and Diane Weintraub Ron and Diane Weintraub, who helped found Tucson’s Israel Center, have Israeli connections that run deep. Long before their daughter Beth made aliyah in 1986 with her future husband and gave them four Israeli grandchildren, Ron had relatives in Israel, including an aunt from Cleveland who made aliyah in… Read more »
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (JTA) — The day after Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak was ousted by a widespread public uprising, I found myself presenting a lecture about Solidarity, the mass trade union movement that convulsed Poland 30 years ago and paved the way for the collapse of the Iron Curtain… Read more »
This is an extraordinary time for the Middle East, an unprecedented one, a glorious one – and it’s passing Israel by. Since Mubarak’s fall, we’re trying to be good sports, good losers, trying to grin and bear it, saying mabruk, congratulations, and all that. This week we’re rooting for… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel changed Gabrielle Giffords’ life when the budding politician first visited the country in 2001 and it drew her close to Judaism. After the Arizona congresswoman was shot in the head a month ago, an Israeli innovation invented by an American immigrant to Israel may have… Read more »
Kathy Unger, chair of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona board, makes calls on Super Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011. The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona exceeded its Super Sunday phone-a-thon goal of $150,000 on Jan. 30, raising $194,967 toward its 2011 Campaign, with $17,295 of this total going to the Local Emergency Assistance Fund. Over 150 volunteers turned out for the event at the Tucson Jewish Community Center,… Read more »
In a scene from the film "Inside Hana's Suitcase," Hana arrives at Auschwitz in October 1944. Hallonot, Hebrew for windows, is an annual Coalition for Jewish Education program providing windows into different aspects of the Jewish world. CJE has partnered with the Tucson International Jewish Film Festival and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra to present this year’s Hallonot, “Voices and Views on the Holocaust,” which will… Read more »
Jonathan Rothschild Jonathan Rothschild’s earliest political memory is of JFK’s assassination in 1963. Following President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Rothschild, then a student at Kenyon College in Ohio, became an intern for the National Student Lobby in Washington, D.C. But Rothschild, now 55, didn’t jump into the political fray himself… Read more »
Jewish Community Foundation honoree Mel Zuckerman (right) chats with 8-year-old David Jurkowitz. The Jurkowitz family gave the Zuckermans a gift in appreciation of their support of the PJ Library program. Looking on is David Alberts. [Martha Lochert] The Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona presented Mel and Enid Zuckerman with more than a plaque to thank them for their lifelong philanthropy at JCF’s Jan. 18 “As The Tree Grows” luncheon. “We made a decision to make important contributions, financial contributions, in your name,” Executive Director Carol… Read more »
Avital Sharansky addresses the Prime Minister's Council at general Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans on her struggle to achieve the release of her husband, Natan Sharansky, right, from the Soviet gulag, Nov. 7, 2010. (The Jewish Agency for Israel) NEW YORK (JTA) — Feb. 11 marks 25 years since Natan Sharansky crossed the Glienicke Bridge from East to West Germany and became a free man. Countless stories have been told about Sharansky’s defiance of the Soviets and his courageous actions during his more than nine years of imprisonment.… Read more »
Rep. Jane Harmon, shown speaking at an October 2009 event of the Center for American Progress, hinted at her frustration with an increasingly polarized Congress in explaining her resignation to constituents. [Center for American Progress] WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jane Harman, a Jewish Democrat who made her reputation in Congress as a tough-talking advocate for carrying a big stick, is transitioning to the world of speaking softly. Harman, 65, a tireless advocate in Congress of both the U.S.-Israel relationship and of strengthening the intelligence community’s… Read more »
Gabe Zimmerman at Kinderland Camp in the summer of 2001. [Photo courtesy Maria Falconi-Sachs] It is, perhaps, only in America that a congresswoman named Gabrielle Giffords could reclaim the Jewish identity of her father’s family — originally named Hornstein — after living much of her life apart from the Jewish community. And it is no less of a tribute to American fluidity, however… Read more »
Joseph Regenstein You are what you eat. So what does that mean for your morality? Do the choices you make about food affect your ethics? And can food standards unite Jews and Muslims as nothing else does? These and other questions will be answered by scholar-in-residence Joseph Regenstein, who will explore… Read more »
Rabbi David Golinkin “Israel: From Dream to Reality” is the theme for Congregation Anshei Israel’s scholar-in-residence, Rabbi David Golinkin, who will give talks on Feb. 11 and 12. Golinkin is president and professor of Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. On Friday, Feb. 11 at 8 p.m.,… Read more »
William Link The Tucson chapter of the Brandeis National Committee will hold two Book and Author events next month, an evening soiree on Feb. 9 and a lunch program on Feb. 10. Featured authors — all with a mystery or history bent — are William Link, Douglas Starr, Rhys Bowen and… Read more »
Paulette Gootter [Photos by Martha Lochert] “If you want something done, your best bet is to ask a Jewish woman to do it,” Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said during her 2004 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. On Sunday, Jan. 9, the day after Giffords, 40, was gravely wounded in a Tucson shooting rampage, a… Read more »
