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 »
Women demonstrating outside the Tel Aviv courtroom where former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was convicted of rape and other sex crimes, Dec. 30, 2010. (Roni Schutzer/Flash 90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — For years it was considered an open secret in Israeli political and media circles that Moshe Katsav had a habit of sexually harassing women who worked for him. In a nation at arms with a decidedly machismo bent, sexual encounters between powerful male politicians and… Read more »
Rabbi Yossi Kaplan of the Chabad Lubavitch Center, left, and Mohammed Aziz, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Valley Forge, before Friday Muslim prayers. (Jordan Cassway) PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — The cars slowly turn onto the long driveway, their wheels occasionally crunching the adjacent ground frozen from the night before and speckled with a light dusting of snow. Rabbi Yossi Kaplan and Mohammad Aziz walk side by side in the direction of the oncoming line… Read more »
In this 1920s family portrait, Tucsonan Al Paley is the boy in the second row, second from left, sitting on his father Max Paley’s lap. (Courtesy of Howard Paley) It was a miracle that inspired the Paley clan to gather in 1946. Eight cousins had fought in World War II and all returned home safely. It was a reason to rejoice and ever since, the Paleys have been meeting annually to celebrate their family and tell the stories… Read more »
Rachel Goodman and Zakhary Khazanovich (Sheila Wilensky) Before she left on Mayanot Israel’s 2010 Friendship Trip, a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip for young adults with special needs in late July, 20-year-old Tucsonan Rachel Goodman was satisfied with her professional life but not her personal life. “I was fretting about not having a future that I wanted,” she… Read more »
Evie Pozez Evelyn Shirley Whitebook Pozez was “always gracious and grateful to people around her,” says Stuart Mellan, CEO and president of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. “First and foremost, I’ll remember her shining spirit and ever-present smile.” Mrs. Pozez, 84, died on Friday, Dec. 17, 2010. Born in Iowa… Read more »
Steve Solomon Sometimes being Jewish is not enough. Sometimes, you have to be Italian too, to really send you over the edge. To find out more, the AJP interviewed playwright Steve Solomon, author and star of the award-winning show “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, and I’m in Therapy.” The show… Read more »
Texas state Rep. Joe Strauss looks set to stay in the powerful speaker's role after a broad coalition repudiated challenges based on his Judaism. (Office of Rep. Joe Strauss) WASHINGTON (JTA) — In Texas, the Tea Party passed its first Jewish test even before its legislators had been sworn in. Deeply conservative forces in the Lone Star State firmly repudiated the effort by evangelical Christians to unseat the powerful Jewish speaker of the Texas House of Representatives because… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama WASHINGTON (JTA) — A slight majority of Jewish Israelis has negative views of President Obama, but his supporters are more numerous than previously reported, according to a poll. The Brookings Institution poll of Jewish Israelis showed 51 percent responding with negative views of the U.S. president to 41 percent… Read more »
ASL interpreter Naomi Brunnlehrman, left, and Alexis Kashar are co-founders of the Jewish Deaf Resource Center. (Ava Kashar) WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (JTA) — Alexis Kashar was listening intently to the speaker at a recent Jewish federation event in this New York City suburb. A closer look revealed that her eyes were trained not on the podium but on Naomi Brunnlehrman, who was seated in front of the… Read more »
Rabbi Menachem Stern, with his baby, Esther, says serving in the Army is "my calling and mission." (Mendy Chanin) WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — Menachem Stern’s bushy black beard is at the center of a federal court case. Stern, 29, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi from Brooklyn, N.Y., filed suit recently against the U.S. Army saying that a no-beard restriction violates his religious freedom. In January 2009, Stern had applied… Read more »
At least 40 Israelis have been killed in a forest fire in northern Israel described as out of control, Dec. 2, 2010. (Flash 90) In the aftermath of the deadliest fire in Israel’s history, Israelis this week set to the task of burying the dead, cleaning up and figuring out what exactly went wrong — and who is to blame. Even before the blaze in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa came under control… Read more »
Gila Silverman’s husband, David, created this 10-foot dreidel the third year that the family lived in Winterhaven. I live in a neighborhood known for its Christmas displays. No one is more surprised about this than I am. And, to my even greater surprise, I have found living here to be a moving experience. The one thing I have known for certain my entire life is that… Read more »
