Tagged FRONT

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 »

President Obama delivers the State of the Union address, Jan. 25, 2011. (The White House)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Civility? Check. Clean energy? Check. Health care?  Check. Immigration? Check. Education? You bet. Isolating Iran? That’s in there. Poverty, guns, reproductive rights? Israel? Ummm … President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night was as notable for what it excluded as what made it in.… Read more »

Volunteer Angie Goorman makes calls at the JFSA Super Sunday phone-a-thon on Jan. 31, 2010

On Sunday, Jan. 30, members of Southern Arizona’s Jewish community will have their annual opportunity to change the world with one phone call, as hundreds of volunteers with the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Super Sunday phone-a-thon call Tucsonans to raise funds for the JFSA 2011 Community Campaign. Super… Read more »

Hebrew High student Alyssa Silva with tzedekah box

Students from Tucson Hebrew High and six religious schools are participating in the “613 Coins and Counting!” campaign to raise funds for LEAF, the Local Emergency Assistance Fund, which helps local Jewish families in need with housing costs, food, job placement and more. Their efforts, which began Jan. 9,… Read more »

Tucsonans Evan and Michelle Glazer were screened through Scottsdale’s Jewish Genetic Diseases Center.

When Ted Glenn heard that his chances of being a carrier of a life-threatening genetic disease were one in six, he knew what he had to do: get tested. Like all Ashkenazi Jews (with origins in Eastern Europe), Glenn has a high probability of carrying one of 11 genetic… Read more »

JFCS LEAH program coordinator Ilana Markowitz (Sheila Wilensky)

Domestic abuse is still “a big secret” in the Jewish community, says Carol Sack, Jewish Family & Children’s Services vice president of financial resource development. Too many people still believe that “it’s such a shanda, or shame, for Jewish women to walk through our door,” she says, “and the… Read more »

Venezuelan Jews celebrate the opening of a new synagogue in Caracas, December 2010. (Jasmina Kelemen)

CARACAS, Venezuela (JTA) — On a balmy tropical evening in early December, a few hundred families, mostly of Moroccan descent, gathered to inaugurate the first phase of what eventually will be a grand, two-story marble shul located in a wealthy Caracas neighborhood. Among them, Claudio Benaim’s family beamed as… Read more »

Israeli ex-pats were among those who showed up in Los Angeles for an Israel Independence Day celebration. (Courtesy Israeli Leadership Council)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — The number of Israelis living in the United States grew by about 30 percent over the past decade, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau figures. Some 140,323 people living in the United States today were born in Israel, up from 109,720 in 2000. Of… Read more »

The album cover of Shlock Rock's "Shabbat in Liverpool," which features Beatles' songs set to Sabbath prayers and replicates the Fab Four's famed "Abbey Road" album, was released in December 2010. (Shlock Road)

STAMFORD, Conn. (JTA) — When is it kosher to listen to the Beatles on the Sabbath? When your chazan adapts the Kabbalat Shabbat Friday night service to the melodies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lenny Solomon, the founder of the song-parody group Shlock Rock, employed “nusach Liverpool” for… Read more »