Tagged FRONT

Chabad Crime and Consequence course tackles hot topic of justice reform

Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin (left) consults with guest speakers Wendy A. Petersen and Terrance Cheung before Chabad Tucson’s March 12 class on crime prevention at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. (Photo: Korene Charnofsky Cohen)

A staggering 83 percent of more than 400,000 prisoners released in 2005 across 30 states were arrested at least once in the nine years following their release, according to a U. S. Department of Justice study released in 2018. Today many groups are talking about and researching justice reform.… Read more »

Council aims to build inclusive, interfaith Scout groups

Members of Cub Scout Pack 613 bring in the colors at the opening of the Tucson Jewish Community’s Israel at 70 Festival on April 22, 2018. These Cubs moved up to become Boy Scouts in Troop 613 in May 2018. [Courtesy Herbert Cohn)

Herbert Cohn, chair of the Catalina Council Jewish Committee on Scouting, is attempting to create a more inclusive environment by reminding all in the local scouting community of the intention by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the world scouting movement, that it should embrace all faiths. Cohn has been… Read more »

Hadassah brunch to feature two new authors

Anne Lowe, left, and Elizabeth L. Fox

Anne Lowe of Tucson and Elizabeth L. Fox of Boulder, Colorado, will present their recently published books at Hadassah Southern Arizona’s brunch on Sunday, May 5. In “A Touch of Torah,” Lowe shares reflections on being Jewish as she tries to grasp the intricacies of Torah. Inspired by the… Read more »

Jewish groups prepare for the next Pittsburgh

Police respond to the site of a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Oct. 27, 2018. (Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Editor’s note: The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona convenes a community-wide security meeting yearly with members of local law enforcement and representatives of synagogues and Jewish community organizations. JFSA, in conjunction with the Jewish Community Roundtable and the Tucson Jewish Community Center, recently hired a part-time Jewish community security… Read more »

Lecture to explore Iraqi Jews in Israel

Orit Bashkin

In the 1950s, 123,000 Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel. Harsh conditions and a shared background united them. Orit Bashkin, Ph.D., a University of Chicago associate professor of modern Middle Eastern history, will highlight this era in the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies’ 2019 Jeffrey Plevan Memorial Lecture, “Israeli Babylonians:… Read more »

More than a dozen right-wing groups want Trump to recognize an Israeli annexation of the West Bank

A Palestinian woman walks past a concrete barricade on the road that seperates an Israeli settlement and a Palestinian neighborhood inside the city of Hebron in the West Bank, Jan. 18, 2017. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

(JTA) — A coalition of more than a dozen conservative groups, most of them Jewish, sent a letter to President Donald Trump tacitly asking him to respect a potential Israeli annexation of West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is almost certainly headed to a fifth term after… Read more »

Meet the Korean-American woman who leads the Jewish Renewal movement

SooJi Min-Maranda is among the few people of color in visible leadership roles in the Jewish community. (J.D. Scott)

(JTA) — SooJi Min-Maranda rarely sees other Jewish people who look like her. “I often feel very isolated as a Jew of color living in the Midwest,” she said. Min-Maranda, who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and two children, was born in Korea but moved with… Read more »

Hookup culture? Not on the Birthright trips I’ve led.

Young Jewish adults who participated in Birthright Israel celebrate 10 years of the program at an event in Jerusalem. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — After I spoke to a group of people whose post-college-aged children would soon be going on a Birthright Israel trip, one father leaned in close to me, winked and whispered, “Just do what you have to to make sure my son finds a nice Jewish… Read more »

All the Jews who made the Time 100 most influential people list

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiles as he delivers a speech during the launch of his Likud party election campaign in Ramat Gan, Israel, March 4, 2019. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

(JTA) — One week after winning election to a fifth term as Israel’s head of state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. Other Jewish people on the list include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; Jennifer Hyman, whose $1 billion company… Read more »

A UNC-Duke conference on Gaza angered some campus officials and a House rep. But was it anti-Semitic?

Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian-Israeli rapper, is being accused of anti-Semitism for a performance at the University of North Carolina last month that defenders said was meant ironically. (Screenshot from YouTube)

(JTA) — “This is my anti-Semitic song,” Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian-Israeli rapper, said at the opening of a conference on Gaza last month at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “I know it might sound R&B stuff, but don’t think of Rihanna when you sing it,… Read more »

From 1600s Europe to a lesbian feminist seder, these 4 Haggadahs are a trip through Jewish history

A children's Haggadah from 1945 compares draws parallels between the Passover narrative and the Holocaust. (Yeshiva University Museum/Center for Jewish History)

NEW YORK (JTA) — From graphic novel Haggadahs to a Donald Trump-themed one, if you’re looking for a certain kind of guide to the Passover seder, chances are it’s out there. Recent years have seen a proliferation of political, environmental, family-friendly,  or just plain irreverent Haggadahs, but the urge to… Read more »

9 takeaways from Israel’s historic election

Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu greets supporters at his victory speech in Tel Aviv, April 10, 2019. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel’s election on Tuesday was contentious, historic, crazy — and somewhat predictable. With most of the vote counted — some 300,000 votes from soldiers, diplomats and other Israeli officials working abroad have yet to be tallied — Benjamin Netanyahu seems poised to become the longest-serving prime… Read more »

This Yiddish romance novel was a smash hit in 1877. It was just translated into English for the first time.

Jacob Dinezon's dramatic Yiddish romance novel "The Dark Young Man" was a surprise success in 1877. (Courtesy of the Jewish Storyteller Press)

BOSTON (JTA) — Hot off the Jewish press in Vilna in 1877, a dramatic Yiddish romance novel became a surprising success, selling out its first 10,000 copies in Jewish communities across Poland and Russia. It’s not hard to see why. Set in the mid-19th century in the outskirts of… Read more »

For Israelis, Election Day means hard choices — and sunbathing

Israelis and tourists enjoy the beach in Tel Aviv, April 7, 2019. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Even by Israeli standards, the country’s latest general elections have been exceptionally dirty, rife with personal attacks between candidates and fake news. But in an arid country where the blossoms and mild temperatures of spring are gone within a few weeks, the vote’s timing was… Read more »

The Passover kitniyot argument isn’t worth a hill of beans

Rice, lentils, chick peas, beans and other legumes shown in a produce market in Netanya, Israel. (David Silverman/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Israel held elections under the cloud of its leader’s possible indictment. The world’s far right and its far left have found common cause in their hatred of the Jews. There is a measles outbreak among the Orthodox. And friends want to kvetch about kitniyot. Every year around… Read more »

THA’s Kutler finds his personal grit in Ultraman Israel endurance challenge

Laurence Kutler competes in the 171-mile bicycling leg of the March 6-8 Ultraman Israel endurance challenge. (Courtesy Laurence Kutler)

As if completing a 320-mile race in three days isn’t enough, doing it in 36 hours is an enormous challenge. Included in that are a 6.2-mile swim through chilly mountain waters and cycling 171 miles across a desert at the lowest point on earth, not to mention running a… Read more »