Tagged FRONT

Partnership2Gether fellows celebrate the last night of Hanukkah with Jewish Federation of the Southwest staff at the Ruth and Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life in the Northwest. Back (L-R): Ariel Miklofsky, Adi Shacham, Ravit Gedanken, Alan Kendal, Phyllis Gold, Nili Cohen Hammer, Daniealla Cohen, Nesia Regev Livne. Front (L-R): Rotem Rappaport, Amir Eden, Ron Benecort. Not pictured: Avi Hadad and Ofra Gueta. (Courtesy Olson Center)

Visiting Tucson during the week of Hanukkah, four Israeli teachers and three school principals from the Partnership2Gether region were most surprised by the effort local community members invest in maintaining their Jewish identity. “It was a very powerful experience,” says Ravit Gedanken, a principal at Netzach Israel school in… Read more »

Daniel Breen, Ph.D., J.D.

Brandeis University lecturer Daniel Breen, Ph.D., J.D., will present “Stories of Privacy: The Legal Boundaries of Public and Private Life” on Wednesday, Jan. 9 as the Tucson Chapter of Brandeis National Committee’s annual University on Wheels program, in partnership with the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The talk will take… Read more »

The Southern Arizona Jewish Genealogy Society will host Richard Hallick, Sunday, Jan. 13, offering a comprehensive look at DNA testing and how it applies to genealogy today. Hallick will discuss how to understand and interpret DNA test results, including those with Jewish ancestors. Hallick is a retired University of… Read more »

Anti-Semitism past and present will be the focus of a two-day symposium hosted by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Ruth and Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life in the Northwest next month. “Anti-Semitism from the Spanish Inquisition On: Educating for Social Justice,” which will be held Jan. 6-7… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Eliot Engel, a Democrat who reviles President Donald Trump, and Lee Zeldin, a Republican who eagerly embraces the president, happen to have plenty in common. They are Jewish congressman from New York known for their pro-Israel leadership, and they share a distant relative. They were also… Read more »

LONDON (JTA) — Two and half years ago, Murray Lee voted in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. A Jewish real-estate agent from northern London, Murray shared the concerns of many in the leave camp over the United Kingdom’s perceived vulnerability to Europe’s immigration problems. If… Read more »

This article originally appeared on The Nosher. What a year — delis opened, delis closed, we talked about rainbow bagels, and reviewed the history of pickles in America. And now it’s time to look ahead to what will be happening in Jewish food for the coming year. Bread is Back For all of you… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Sick of eating Chinese food and taking in another modern blockbuster on Christmas, while your Christian friends party together with sweets and eggnog? Thanks to the imagination of Greg Laemmle, co-owner of a chain of eight art house cinemas bearing his family name in greater… Read more »

BROOKLINE, Massachusetts (JTA) — The well-worn books that fill the shelves in David Shrayer-Petrov’s living room reveal the remarkable literary life of the influential refusenik, who has left his mark both as a distinguished physician and as an acclaimed writer. Among the volumes are works by literary lights of… Read more »

(JTA) — Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker has come under intense criticism after endorsing a book by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke. In an interview with The New York Times Book Review, Walker — who is best known for her book “The Color Purple,” detailing the hardships of African-American women in… Read more »

Andrew Rehfeld will serve as HUC’s 13th president. (Courtesy of HUC)

NEW YORK (JTA) —The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has appointed Andrew Rehfeld, a political science professor who has led the Jewish Federation of St. Louis since 2012, to serve as its 13th president. On Tuesday, the Reform movement’s flagship seminary said Rehfeld would lead its four campuses in… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — Diversity and inclusion were among the hot topics at the 50th annual convention of the Association of Jewish Studies, where some 1,200 Jewish studies scholars gathered for a three-day conference that began here Sunday. Fifty years to the month after a handful of scholars in the… Read more »

(JTA) — Noah Klieger, who survived Auschwitz by pretending to be a boxer and went on to a storied career in journalism, died Thursday in Israel. He was 92. As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Klieger was selected for the gas chamber but managed to talk himself out of the… Read more »

(JTA) — Just like any other Santa Claus, Santa Rick will spend much of the next couple of weeks sitting children on his knee, asking whether they’ve been good and listening to their Christmas wishes. If it’s a Saturday, he may have slept overnight in the building. And he’ll… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The last time that a stranger directed an anti-Semitic insult at me, I was carrying supplies for my son’s birthday party. It was on a Sunday afternoon on Dam Square. Carrying Star of David party decorations in a see-through bag, I paused to snap some pictures… Read more »

MUNICH (JTA) — Weeks after they emigrated from Russia and moved to Germany, the Nedlin family sought to join the local Jewish community. Registering for membership in a Jewish community — a practice common in European countries — was a significant step for the Nedlins, who before emigrating in 1992… Read more »

Ruth and Irving Olson

In 2019 the Northwest Division will organize its activities as The Ruth and Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life in the Northwest,” says Alan Kendal, advisory council chair for the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Northwest Division. Stuart Mellan, JFSA president and CEO, made the formal announcement during the… Read more »

Tucson Firefighters Beyond Borders completed its third mission to Israel last month under an unexpected hail of missiles. That only added a new dimension to the multi-faceted, cross-cultural and cross-technology educational exchanges that began in 2013, according to the six participants. The delegation left Tucson on Nov. 6, spending… Read more »

Visiting counselor Anjulie Pfeifer’s office is like visiting grandma’s house. Or going to a hipster coffee shop. Or seeing Smokey Bear’s cabin. At least that is what her clients at Jewish Family & Children’s Services say when they walk across the threshold of her office. Scenic paintings line the… Read more »

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of four articles on how the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona allocates funds. The first, in the Oct. 12 issue, focused on youth and family education programs at synagogues. The second, in the Nov. 23 issue, focused on national and… Read more »