Tagged FRONT

(JTA) — All day Monday, volunteers trickled in and out of the Mary McLeod Bethune Life Center in Jersey City’s Greenville neighborhood, lining up boxes upon boxes of pretzel challah, soup mix, hummus, turkey and chocolate. Trucks backed up to the community center to unload pallets of food and… Read more »

After finishing her acclaimed first anthology, “The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic” (CCAR Press, 2011), Rabbi Mary Zamore realized that over time, in much of her teaching about food, “I was speaking more about the intersection of food and money.” “I was talking about SNAP — food… Read more »

Stuart Mellan, who has been president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona since December 1995, will retire at the end of May. At that time, Graham Hoffman, who joined the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona in September 2018 as president and CEO, will take on… Read more »

It was a “hung jury” at a free public forum Temple Emanu-El hosted Dec. 4. The forum explored the death penalty in what event organizer, moderator, and former attorney Bob Schwartz called “the start of a much bigger conversation” he hopes will continue. The “Forum on the Death Penalty… Read more »

Stuart Tobin, 85, was called to the Torah to celebrate his second bar mitzvah last month at Beth Shalom Temple Center in Green Valley, surrounded by family and friends. The custom of a second bar mitzvah ceremony, which has grown in popularity, is based on Psalm 90:10, which says… Read more »

Over its 15-year history, the Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition has changed the lives of 176 teens from Southern Arizona’s Jewish and Latino communities. The nationally recognized youth leadership program fosters political advocacy and cultural awareness in both the Tucson community and the nation. The group will celebrate its 15th anniversary… Read more »

Sienna Miller and Paul Rudd in a scene from ‘The Catcher Was a Spy’ (Courtesy Tucson International Jewish Film Festival)

The 2020 Tucson International Jewish Film Festival will live up to its global billing, with 20 films that will transport viewers from the United States to Austria, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, England, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Mexico, and Poland. The Tucson Jewish Community Center is the venue for most… Read more »

William Flesch

Hollywood has been known as the “dream factory” since at least the 1930s, when, with the coming of sound, movie makers figured out how to create worlds as realistic and unrealistic as dreams. When we dream or when we watch a movie, we go into another world.  What makes… Read more »

Maxwell Greenberg

Maxwell Ezra Greenberg will be the inaugural scholar-in-residence at the Jewish History Museum, beginning in January. “Greenberg’s work, which focuses on Jewish encounters and intersections with what he calls Latinidad, has drawn him to Southern Arizona, the Jewish History Museum, and the Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives at the University… Read more »

Hila Plitmann

The Tucson Desert Song Festival celebrates ‘The American Voice’ in its eighth annual fest, Jan. 15-Feb. 16. This year marks the first in TDSF’s series of composer commissions. Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann will premiere “Songs of Love and Loss,” commissioned for this festival and written by American composer Richard… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Growing up in a Modern Orthodox community in South Africa, Sara Hurwitz never imagined that she would one day become a clergy member. The Conservative and Reform movements have been ordaining female rabbis for decades. But in the Orthodox world, women are barred from many… Read more »

CHICAGO (JTA) — Josh Nelson sat onstage in front of 5,000 people, accompanied by eight other musicians and perched next to a ginormous video screen bearing the words to one of Judaism’s central prayers, the Shema. It was the largest Shabbat service in America and the apex of the… Read more »

(JTA) — “The Song of Names” is a heartwarming film about a Jewish violin virtuoso who renounces his faith in the aftermath of the Holocaust, only to rediscover it when he hears a song of remembrance. The violinist, Dovidl Rapaport, is shown in three stages of his life, the… Read more »

(JTA) — Jews in Colombia preparing for Hanukkah saw something earlier this month that no doubt looked very familiar. On the night of Dec. 7, streets, plazas, windows and porches across the country were lit by thousands of candles in honor of Dia de las Velitas (Day of the… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — A few years ago, Southern California-based jazz guitarist Peter Curtis was rehearsing for a Christmas concert that involved a choir, but he needed to find a song to play by himself for a solo interlude. Curtis is Jewish and was far from a Christmas song… Read more »

Critics have long called out “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” co-creator Amy Sherman-Palladino for the lack of diversity in her shows about pushy, fast-talking white ladies. This outcry probably motivated Sherman-Palladino to set “Maisel” in the 1950s, when its sheer whiteness could be blamed on historical accuracy.… Read more »

(JTA) — A major German industry family will donate tens of millions of dollars to support Holocaust survivors and former forced laborers in the Nazi era. In addition to one-time donations to the Claims Conference and individual laborers, the Reimann family’s JAB firm has created a foundation designed to… Read more »

BEIT EL, West Bank (JTA) — I watched the news of the terrible Jersey City shooting last week with both horror and a sense of deja vu. Sadly, violent attacks against Jews, wherever we live, have become all too common. We can no longer assume our communal spaces and houses… Read more »

LONDON (JTA) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has defeated Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party by a large margin in Britain’s general elections on Thursday, exit polls indicate. The Conservatives received 368 seats out of 650 according to the polls by BBC, ITV and Sky News, with Labour lagging… Read more »

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (JTA) — One opened a grocery store that became a hub for a growing community. Another was a young student who stood out for his charitable work. Another was an exemplary cop who tried to make the streets safer. Another was a worker who was always… Read more »