MINSK, Belarus (JTA) — When Yiddish poet Avraham Sutzkever said that poetry saved his life, he meant it more literally than many of his listeners realized. In 1944, Sutzkever and his wife, Freydke, needed to walk through a minefield to reach the plane that would take them to freedom.… Read more »
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‘Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews?’ Malaysia’s leader asks at Columbia
NEW YORK (JTA) — The prime minister of Malaysia defended his past anti-Semitic statements and questioned the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in a speech at Columbia University. “I am exercising my right to free speech. Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews,… Read more »
What does ‘Jew down’ mean, and why do people find it offensive?
(JTA) – “Jew down” seems to be making a comeback — or maybe it never left the lexicon. In April, a City Council member uttered the term at a meeting in Jeffersonville, Indiana. This month, council members in two New Jersey cities — Paterson and Trenton — used it in… Read more »
Israel’s crackdown on foreign workers is driving some families into hiding
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The woman approached with trepidation, fidgeting and glancing nervously over her shoulder as she sat down in a coffee shop here. A Filipino caregiver who has been living in Israel without a visa for years, the woman said her home had been raided by Israeli… Read more »
By chilling out on Rosh Hashanah, I made my Judaism truly meaningful
MONTREAL (JTA) — Picking through gefilte fish in the kosher department, searching for the freshest packages, I think of my Grandma Fanny. She made her gefilte fish from scratch, lovingly combining the cod, whitefish, pike and whatever other secret ingredients she threw in that made it so good. “This… Read more »
My congregation prays at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. Here’s how we are coping this Rosh Hashanah.
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Our sages teach us that kol hatchalot kashot, all beginnings are difficult. This phrase feels especially resonant this Rosh Hashanah. The man who blew the shofar last year at my Pittsburgh synagogue, New Light, is not here to blow it now. He was murdered on Oct. 27… Read more »
Inspiring Jews who died in 5779
(JTA) — The close of every year brings with it bittersweet reminders of the incredible figures we lost in the year that was. This year the task of remembering the departed is particularly fraught as 12 people on the list were lost to acts of anti-Jewish violence in U.S.… Read more »
Ro Khanna, a rising star among progressive Democrats, navigates a careful pro-Israel line
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ro Khanna, a rising star among progressive Democrats, wants to make a point about how to be progressive and pro-Israel, so he quotes Alan Dershowitz. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz, the Fox News habitue who has accused the Democratic Party of “tolerating anti-Semitism.” “I don’t agree with… Read more »
Annual Project Isaiah food drive to help the hungry
Project Isaiah, the Jewish community’s annual High Holidays food drive benefiting the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, begins Sept. 15 and runs through Oct. 15. When asked why we fast on Yom Kippur, the prophet Isaiah responded, “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” (Isaiah… Read more »
THA Tikkun Olam dinner to celebrate co-founder Bertie Levkowitz
Tucson Hebrew Academy will honor one of its founders, Bertie Levkowitz, at its 2019 Tikkun Olam Celebration next month. Daniel Asia, president of THA’s board of trustees, remembers meeting her back in 1988. “When we first got to Tucson I met Bertie and her then-husband, Jack, and I went… Read more »
Israeli to bring intercultural storytelling power
Award-winning storyteller, author and educator Noa Baum returns to Tucson this month for several public events as well as workshops for high school students, college students and faculty, and nonprofit leaders, all aimed at fostering intercultural understanding. “We believe in the power of story to reach across the divides… Read more »
Shinshinim’s first weeks in Tucson end with road trip
Editor’s note: This is a new, occasional column to update the community on the activities of the Weintraub Israel Center’s shinshinim (Israeli teen emissaries). Tuson? Taksen? Tucson? And then we are told that we’re about to live a whole year, in the middle of the desert, with a complete… Read more »
In Israel’s south, English classes give kids a leg up
Leaving home is difficult, especially since I had lived nowhere else besides Tucson, except for sleepaway camp and teaching in Israel for short stints during the summers. A year ago, however, I traded in the Arizona desert for Mitzpe Ramon, a small southern Israeli desert town in the middle… Read more »
Chat on migration opens Jewish History Museum season
Tucson’s Jewish History Museum marked its reopening for the 2019-2020 season with a gallery chat by Scott Warren, Ph.D., a humanitarian aid worker and academic geographer. Focusing on the topographies of migration, Warren addressed the geographic sense of landscape and place and how memory and erasure can affect them.… Read more »
Israeli cannabis researcher to speak at UA symposium
Professor David “Dedi” Meiri of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming University of Arizona Inaugural Interdisciplinary Cannabis Symposium. The symposium, sponsored by the UA’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, BIO5 Institute, College of Medicine-Tucson, and College of Science,… Read more »
Nuclear expert will speak on Iran issues
Carolynn Scherer Katz will present “Iran Update: a Jewish Perspective” at a Hadassah Southern Arizona lunch later this month. Scherer Katz is a scientist and team leader of the nuclear nonproliferation and systems analysis team at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was instrumental in drafting Safeguards-by-Design documents for the… Read more »
A Guatemalan asylum seeker is being sheltered in a Washington state synagogue
(JTA) — In a few weeks, the congregants at Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia, Washington, will gather for Yom Kippur services, where a line in the traditional liturgy declares, “My house will be a house of prayer for all nations.” In this synagogue’s case, that will literally be true.… Read more »
How should Jews treat each other? Jewish thinkers have come up with a plan.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Despite our differences, Jews around the world have remained bound together by a shared history, by the Torah and by our core values, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told Jewish thinkers from around the world. The 30 scholars and activists met this week in Jerusalem to hammer… Read more »
Here we go again: A beginner’s guide to Israel’s 2nd election in 2019
(JTA) — Trying to understand next week’s Israeli elections can get confusing. Especially since we’re talking about the second election in one year. Longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is mired in a series of corruption scandals and again facing a serious challenge from former military chief of staff Benny… Read more »
Persian Upside-Down Cake with Dates and Cardamom: A sweet tribute to a Rosh Hashanah tradition
This recipe appeared originally on The Nosher. As a kid in Hebrew school, I learned that my classmates would have apples and honey and round challah at Rosh Hashanah to bring in the Jewish New Year, and that was pretty much it when it came to food traditions. But… Read more »