Residents of southern Israel survey the damage to their home by a rocket fired from Gaza on May 4, 2019. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Despite Monday morning’s ceasefire, which ended two days of intense fighting between Israel and Hamas, the “campaign is not over,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Over the last two days we struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad with great force,” Netanyahu said. “We hit… Read more »
The Tucson community's abundant generosity is evidenced at this drop location at the old Benedictine Monastery. Donations also are being collected at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. (Photo: Debe Campbell/AJP)
Updated May 6 The Jewish and greater Tucson communities routinely step up and volunteer to meet the needs of migrant families passing through the Old Pueblo. In the past eight months, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish Community Relations Council has provided roughly 750 hot meals at shelters housing… Read more »
The panel of speakers at the April 12 annual local leaders’ forum, which focused on immigration, (L-R): Enrique Gómez Montiel, Peris Lopez, Fernando Najera, Rebecca Curtiss, Antar Davidson, and moderator Nancy Montoya. (Photo: Debe Campbell/AJP)
As Tucson grapples with a continuing influx of Central American migrants seeking asylum, and the community responds with shelter, food, and clothing, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish History Museum focused their annual local leaders’ forum on the immigration issue. The event… Read more »
Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona serves the whole community and all ages. (Photo courtesy Jewish Family & Children’s Services)
Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona is hosting a free, family-friendly event, “Celebration of Caring for Tucson’s Children” on Sunday, May 19, from 12-3 p.m. at the Scottish Rite, 160 S. Scott Ave. Children of all ages are welcome. There will be food and music for parents… Read more »
Amelia Bande, Jeanne Vaccaro
In the past year, the Jewish History Museum has continued conversations started by its “Invisibility & Resistance: Violence Against LGBTQIA+ People” exhibit, which was on display in the Holocaust History Center’s Contemporary Human Rights space from September 2017 through May 2018. Along with continuing to highlight violence, JHM programs… Read more »
Hundreds gather in Poway, Calif., for a vigil for the victims of the synagogue shooting there, April 28, 2019. (Gabrielle Birkner)
POWAY, Calif. (JTA)— With hundreds gathered to show support for the victims of a shooting inside his synagogue, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein recounted the moment when he came face to face with the gunman and what happened next: He described watching a congregant’s husband, a doctor, faint as he attempted… Read more »
Students argue with police officers during a rally in support of opposition leader Juan Guaido and against Nicolas Maduro at Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela, May 2, 2019. (Edilzon Gamez/Getty Images)
(JTA) — One night years ago, when a Jewish man was driving to his parents’ house in Caracas, Venezuela, two cars blocked off the street he was on and held him up at gunpoint. He got into their car and began answering questions: who he was, where he lived,… Read more »
An original barrack from Monowitz, a labor and concentration camp that was part of the Auschwitz complex, is featured in the exhibit "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away" at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City. (Josefin Dolsten)
NEW YORK (JTA) — As a teenager, whenever my mother would suggest watching a Holocaust film, I would groan. I always felt that the Shoah already was close enough. My father had shown me the letters my great-grandfather wrote from a concentration camp in Poland to his daughter, who… Read more »
Elan Carr, second from left, the U.S. special anti-Semitism envoy, stands with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, second from right, and Israeli soldiers at the March of the Living at Auschwitz, May 2, 2019. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — President Donald Trump’s appointee as special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism toured Auschwitz for the first time on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Elan Carr, who was named earlier this year, was part of the first official U.S. delegation to the March of the Living,… Read more »
A gate with the inscription "Work Sets You Free" at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial in Oranienburg, Germany, Jan. 25, 2019. (Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
(JTA) — On the Shabbat morning of April 27, Hadassah member Lori Gilbert-Kaye was murdered while celebrating Passover at the Chabad of Poway. The synagogue’s rabbi, a male congregant and an 8-year-old girl were wounded as well by the self-avowed white supremacist shooter. We know that anti-Semitism is on the… Read more »
Beate and Serge Klarsfeld pose before receiving an award from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., April 29, 2019. (Ron Kampeas)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s not an unfamiliar frame for describing the rise of the new nationalism: There’s a bad wind blowing through the West, and nothing less than democracy is at stake. What makes it especially unsettling for Beate and Serge Klarsfeld is that they have lived through it… Read more »
The sundial of France's Palais de Justice in Paris reads "Hora fugit stat jus" (the hour passes, justice remains). (Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)
(JTA) — For most of his adult life, Sammy Ghozlan has worked with French authorities fighting crime. Ghozlan, 75, started as a police officer, ascending through the ranks to become a police commissioner in the Paris area. And since 2002 he has headed one of French Jewry’s most prominent… Read more »
A street of the Jewish area in Tunisia, 1880 (adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – One evening as a child in Petach Tikvah, I was in my room listening to the Iraqi Jewish singer Salima Mourad when a siren pierced the air. I rose from my bed and stood in silence. The siren marked the start of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust… Read more »
Edward Mosberg, holding a Torah scroll, during March of the Living in 2017 at the former death camp Auschwitz in Poland. (Courtesy of From the Depths)
KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — At the age of 93, Holocaust survivor Ed Mosberg is saying his goodbyes to the city of his birth. Flanked by two physicians who accompanied him all the way from New Jersey, Mosberg, who made his fortune in construction after surviving several Nazi concentration camps,… Read more »
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, attend a Hanukkah reception at the White House, Dec. 6, 2018. (Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – The terrorist attack at Chabad of Poway on April 27, which occurred on Shabbat and the last day of Passover, was horrific – and only the latest hate crime among the increasing number of anti-Semitic acts in recent years. The shooting left one dead and three injured.… Read more »
Sens. Mitt Romney, left, and Chris Murphy at the Capitol discuss their recent tour of the Middle East, April 30, 2019. (Ron Kampeas)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Mitt Romney returned from a Middle East tour saying that he saw no alternative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict other than the two-state solution. The Utah Republican, his party’s 2012 presidential nominee, has just assumed the chairmanship of the Middle East subcommittee in the Senate. Romney’s conclusion… Read more »
Phil Bregman, Leslie Glaze The second annual combined Jewish Community Awards Celebration and Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Annual Meeting will be held Thursday, May 9 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The event will include special recognition awards honoring lay or professional leaders from each of the Federation’s beneficiary and affiliated agencies.… Read more »
Kosher for Passover dairy products are displayed at a Tucson Albertsons supermarket on April 5. (Facebook)
Six months ago, Jesse Davis and his wife, Melissa, began keeping a kosher home. They were prompted by their two oldest daughters, pupils at Tucson Hebrew Academy, who took the school’s kosher cooking class and came home with “a million and one questions,” says Davis, a teacher at Temple… Read more »
The Szabason family in Kozienice, Poland, in 1937. (Photo courtesy Jewish History Museum)
This year’s community Yom HaShoah commemoration will mark 80 years since the outbreak of World War II by reflecting on the vibrant and diverse Jewish life that existed in Europe and North Africa before the Holocaust. “On the Eve: Jewish Life Before the Third Reich” will be held Sunday,… Read more »
Tucsonan Haya Gibly (kneeling, in grey pants) with other Naale Elite Academy students upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on Sept. 2. (Photo courtesy Raquel Gibly)
It’s usually college students who undertake the challenges of studying abroad, but ever since she was in fifth grade Haya Gibly was determined to go to high school in Israel. Haya, 14, recently started attending Mosenson high school in Israel, an opportunity she found through the Naale program. The… Read more »
