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… 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… 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… 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
