Tagged FRONT

Jerry Silverman, right, president and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America, with Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, and Carol Karsch, executive director of the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona. “Jerry brings the future into every conversation about the present,” says Mellan.

“Change is the new normal and we need to embrace that concept,” Jewish Federations of North America president and CEO Jerry Silverman told a Tucson audience on Sept. 15. Making one of the dozens of community visits he’s become known for since taking the JFNA helm in September 2009,… Read more »

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and Palestinian President Abbas R) at Netanyahu residence in Jerusalem, Sept. 15, 2010. (Kobi Gideon / Flash90)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When the fat lady sings on Sept. 26, it may only be an intermission. That’s the word from an array of Mideast experts across the political spectrum. They are predicting that the seeming intractability between Israel and the Palestinians over whether Israel extends a settlement moratorium… Read more »

Mark and Michael Levkowitz of the Chicago Music Store

There’s an optimistic spirit in downtown Tucson. Whether it’s about food, the music scene or the arrival of artisanal coffee, many Tucsonans say it’s about time, while business people rejoice. Returning to downtown after 12 years, Janos Wilder will open Downtown Kitchen & Cocktails next month in the former… Read more »

Jonathan Rothschild, chair of Tucson’s Jewish Community Relations Council, left, with Pastor Keni Ashby (Teaneck, N.J.) and Larry Schooler (Austin, Texas). (Courtesy JCPA)

Some pundits have declared the historic black-Jewish alliance of the civil rights era over, dead, finished. Not so, say Tucsonans Jonathan Rothschild and Barbara Lewis, who in June took part in a Jewish Council on Public Affairs-sponsored African-American/Jewish Community Leaders Mission to Birmingham, Ala., to witness the still vibrant… Read more »

Inbal and Guy Gelbart with (L-R) Arbel, 5; Carmel, 7; and Clil, 3

As a teen growing up in Haifa, Guy Gelbart was active in the Israeli Scout Movement, the Tzofim. “It was about the coolest thing you could do,” Gelbart told the AJP. Now, at age 36, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s new Israel Center director and community shaliach, or… Read more »

Palm fronds are a favorite form of schach for sukkahs in the Los Angeles area. (Edmon Rodman)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — His 14-foot-long pole saw in hand, Paul Nisenbaum is ready to head out into the great urban forest in a search for schach. The Los Angeles teacher and small businessman is among the many Jews throughout North America who will search their neighborhoods, from wilderness… Read more »

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu were all smiles at their meeting in the Oval Office, July 6, 2010. (Amos BenGershom/GPO)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Heading into a period of intense diplomatic activity, Israel and the pro-Israel community are taking what may appear to be an atypical wait-and-see approach. That sentiment and the Jewish holidays explain the relatively muted tone. This week, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in the Egyptian resort… Read more »

Ariella Dadon, who obtained a divorce from her husband with the help of a private investigator after a four-year battle, sits outside the nursery school where she works in Netivot, Israel. (Dina Kraft)

NETIVOT, Israel (JTA) — Ariella Dadon still marvels at being free. For more than 2 1/2 years she was married to a man she describes as unfaithful, physically violent and emotionally abusive. For four years she struggled to get a divorce. But the rabbinical court ruled repeatedly that she… Read more »

Cantor Ivor Lichterman of Congregation Anshei Israel, right, and his brother, Cantor Joel Lichterman of Denver, Colo., sing at the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw, where their father was the last prewar cantor, in this still from “100 Voices: A Journey Home.”

A documentary based on the historic visit of 100 cantors to Poland last year, “100 Voices: A Journey Home,” will be shown at three movie theatres in Tucson, for one night only, on Tuesday, Sept. 21. The film explores the rich history of Jewish culture in Poland, which is… Read more »

Louis E. Newman (Courtesy of Jewish Lights Publishing)

NORTHFIELD, Minn. (JTA) — In the past several months I have had some version of the following exchange several times. I tell a friend that I’ve just finished a book on repentance, and they respond that they find the subject of forgiveness very interesting. It’s psychologically so much healthier… Read more »

Rumors surrounded a trip by a delegation of U.S. Muslim leaders to Auschwitz and Dachau in mid-August 2010 (no credit)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Eight imams bowed in prayer before a sculpture at Dachau vividly representing the Jewish dead of Europe. It’s a picture worth a thousand words of reconciliation and understanding. Yet even before its appearance in the Jewish media — on the front page of the Forward for… Read more »

This Roma camp in Pantin, north of Paris, received an eviction notice at the end of July as part of the french president's crackdown on illegal Gypsy shantytowns (Devorah Lauter).

PARIS (JTA) — With a preponderance of voices from the international media, human rights groups, the French clergy and some politicians denouncing French President Nicolas Sarkozy for fueling negative ethnic stereotypes with his new immigrant-focused security crackdown, many Jewish community representatives in France are taking a more measured stance.… Read more »

Ella Starobinska [Sheila Wilensky/AJP]

Ella Starobinska is an enthusiastic 20-year-old college student at the University of Arizona, but her path to the Tucson campus took a different route than most. On March 1, 2005, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society brought Starobinska and her parents from Kiev, Ukraine, to Tucson to join her brother,… Read more »

Guide with Holocaust educators on Centropa trip outside the entrance to Theresienstadt, a former concentration camp outside of Prague, July 2010 (Centropa)

PRAGUE (JTA) — Educators who teach Holocaust history face the same challenge every year: how to get students interested in one of history’s greatest tragedies more than 65 years removed from World War II. In the old days, the formula was straightforward. “You show kids horrifying pictures, scare them,… Read more »

Conservative blogger Andrew Schlafly says Albert Einstein's scientific theories are bad science and part of a "liberal conspiracy." (JTA graphic/Library of Congress)

BALTIMORE (JTA) — More than a half-century ago, the Nazis dismissed Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking theories as “Jewish science”; in recent years Holocaust revisionists have taken up the anti-Einstein cause. Now, the legendary physicist is facing a new wave of attacks — this time from conservative bloggers who say that… Read more »

Larry Lokey has pledged to give away all of his $700 million, with the next $60 million going to Israel. (Photo courtesy The Giving Pledge)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The philanthropic world got a happy jolt when 40 members of the world’s wealthy elite — including 13 Jews — announced that they would give away more than half their money before they died. The participating philanthropists were responding to a challenge issued earlier this… Read more »

Plans for a mosque at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have generated controversy. (Creative Commons/Special KRB)

Plans for a mosque at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have generated controversy. WASHINGTON (JTA) – More often than not, Jewish and Muslim groups come down on the same side of battles over religious liberties. Jewish organizations often file amicus briefs supporting Muslim religious rights in… Read more »

Ari Ginsburg, a member of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona's LGBT Jewish Inclusion Project steering committee, left, with Marc Paley, project coordinator, in Berkeley at the 2010 LGBT Jewish Movement-Building Convening(Bynna Fish)

Who are we? Where did we come from? How do we get started? Where do we want to go and how are we a part of our Jewish community? While these questions ring true for everyone, they’re especially true for members of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender community looking… Read more »

Moshe Zohar, who grew these pomegrante trees on his farm in the Negev, is facing eviction from the same government agencies that granted him the land. (Sue Fishkoff)

BEERSHEBA, Israel (JTA) — Moshe Zohar’s hands are rough and callused, his face lined with the dust of the desert he farms half an hour outside this southern Israeli city. Eleven years ago Zohar, his wife, Hilda, and their three children settled on this harsh land to build Nahal… Read more »

Daniel Schorr

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It took about seven years for Daniel Schorr to tire of being a journalist for Jewish media. The distaste of digesting for JTA’s readers the news of the emerging Holocaust, combined with what he saw as the blinkered parochialism of Jewish news, led him to quit… Read more »