President George Bush poses for photographers following his Oval Office address to the nation, Sept. 27, 1991. (Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — George H.W. Bush was a man of uncommon decency. He also was a man of uncommon integrity. I worked for him for over 10 years, while he was the vice president and then president. My memories could fill a book (or at least a chapter of… Read more »
Don Was attends the 56th Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Jan. 26, 2014.(Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
Three years ago, Don Was walked into a Jewish service in Los Angeles without high expectations. Was, born Don Fagenson in Detroit, is a producer who has worked with musicians like John Mayer, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt. Since 2012, he has also been the president of Blue Note… Read more »
JTA illustration
(JTA) — Do you go to shul, temple, synagogue, minyan or just services? Let me ask it another way: That synagogue you won’t set foot in — Do you call it a shul, temple, synagogue, minyan or services? I’m not being judgy. It’s a question about language. Working at a… Read more »
Johan Huibers and his Noah's Ark in Dorderecht, the Netherlands, October 2013. (Courtesy of Arv van Noach)
KRIMPEN AAN DE IJSSEL, Netherlands (JTA) — For two years, the world’s only seaworthy life-size replica of Noah’s Ark has been wowing passengers traveling along Holland’s Maas River. Built according to the specifications detailed in the Hebrew Bible, the 390-foot-long vessel towers to a height of 75 feet. It… Read more »
Robert Alter in his natural habitat, the home office where he does most of his translating. (David A.M. Wilensky)
SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — “When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was… Read more »
Robert Lopez-Hanshaw is the organizer of the Chanukah Cantata (Debe Campbell)
The Tucson Jewish Community Center is hosting a Chanukah Cantata on Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. that will feature cantors and other vocalists from multiple congregations across Tucson and the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra in a special telling of the Hanukkah story. Robert Lopez-Hanshaw, musical director at Temple Emanu-El,… Read more »
First place winner Alex Erbst, age 6
Congratulations to the winners of the 2018 Arizona Jewish Post Hanukkah art contest. All of the submissions were outstanding and conveyed the symbols of the holiday with warmth and love. First place winners Alex Erbst (age 6, Tucson Hebrew Academy), Luke and Hunter Meislin (twins, age 7, Manzanita Elementary… Read more »
THA fourth-graders, Tucson J preschoolers bond in Madrichim program (Gabby Erbst)
A new program coordinated by the Tucson Hebrew Academy and the Tucson Jewish Community Center is crafting leaders out of fourth- grade students. In the Madrichim (leaders) program, the THA students visit the Tucson J to teach preschoolers about the importance of upcoming holidays. Gabby Erbst, THA director of admissions… Read more »
Tucsonans Ron and Jacquelyn Feller at the Path to Peace wall in Netiv Ha’asara, Oct. 21 (Debe Campbell)
Netiv Ha’asara, a moshav (cooperative farming community) northwest of Israel’s Negev, in the Hof Ashkelon region, is part of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona partnership area. With pastoral charm and fragrant lemon trees, lush gardens hug its 250 cozy homes near the Mediterranean coast. In the shadow of… Read more »
(L-R) Oshrat Barel, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona vice president; Shneor Katash, Partnership2Gether representative in Kiryat Malachi; Hila Yogev Keren, P2G director; and Hila Kordana, P2G representative in Kiryat Malachi, at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Tel Aviv, Oct. 24. (Courtesy Jewish Agency for Israel)
Editor’s note: This is the second 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. Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona applies a Planning and Allocation process… Read more »
Kiryat Malachi youth perform in an Art City production. (Jewish Agency for Israel)
Each year, Art City provides more than 200 youth in Kiryat Malachi and Hof Ashkelon, Israel, an opportunity for professional development in the performing arts. The program contributes to the community and region with cultural and social activities, empowering youth with a sense of belonging, and using creativity to… Read more »
(L-R): Chava, Isaac, Jacob, Maria, Rachel, Elisaveta, and Raya Sher in 1931 in Kirensk, a village in Siberia. (Shore Family)
The recent Weintraub Israel Center annual mission to Israel did not only build community bridges; it also mended a bridge between a local family and long-lost family members with origins in Russia. Bonnie Shore-Dombrowski, a Tucson attorney, was joined on the October trip by her two sisters, Debby Shore… Read more »
Jeanette Kern, left, receiving one of the two commendations she earned for her work during World War II as a clerk in the Army Signal Corps, July 27, 1944. (Orn Hayon)
After my grandmother Jeannette died in December 1996, the process of settling her estate worked in the same way it does in most families: There was a house to be sold and possessions to be distributed. The surviving family members were left with a few souvenirs of my grandparents’… Read more »
Rohingya men wait in line for food dispersal from aid agencies. (Andrew Stanbridge)
The Jewish History Museum is currently showing “Call Me Rohingya,” an exhibition that illuminates the persecution of Rohingya people, an ethnic minority in Burma, through the photographic works of Andrew Stanbridge. Staged in the Allen and Marianne Langer Contemporary Human Rights Gallery in the Gould Family Holocaust History Center… Read more »
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman (Courtesy of Zimmerman)
Editor’s note: Last week, students at Baraboo High School in Wisconsin were seen in a photograph taken last spring in which they appeared to be giving the “Heil Hitler” salute. Although the photographer who took the photo on the steps of a county courthouse said the camera caught the boys… Read more »
Deborah Lipstadt, author of the forthcoming book "Antisemitism Here and Now," says the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting reaffirmed her warnings. (Osnat Perelshtein)
NEW YORK (JTA) — The advance copies of Deborah Lipstadt’s new book, “Antisemitism Here and Now,” display a cover photo of white supremacist carrying a tiki torch. But that iconic image of the August 2017 white power rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, could now be replaced by another one: Police… Read more »
Lazar Wall, left, wrote a song for Holocaust survivor Freddy Glatt. (Marcus Gilban)
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) – Freddy was 5 years old when he saw a paving stone shatter his dad’s storefront in Berlin. Later, while his family watched, Nazis beat up his father. In 1933, Adolf Hitler had already made life unbearable for the Glatts, forcing them to scramble to… Read more »
A view of the Ilan Ramon Day School in Agoura, Calif., after the fire. (Courtesy of Yuri Hronsky)
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Woolsey Fire, which began two weeks ago and engulfed a massive swath of Southern California, has killed at least two people, burned nearly 100,000 acres and ravaged hundreds of structures — including several touchstones of Jewish life in this city. Three historic Jewish sleepaway… Read more »
Lior Gross, a student at the University of Colorado Boulder, created a Hebrew grammar that lets speakers avoid identifying as male or female. (Patrick Campbell)
(JTA) — Some college students who think about becoming rabbis aren’t sure whether they will want to work in a synagogue or school. Others get hung up on which seminary to attend or denomination to join. Lior Gross had a different dilemma: How to speak Hebrew in the first… Read more »
Moshe Holtzberg with his nanny Sandra Samuel in 2010. She rescued the boy from the Chabad House attack in Mumbai and followed him to Israel. (Abir Sultan/Flash 90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — “Everything is good.” Sandra Samuel is riding on a bus from Afula in northern Israel to the city apartment in Jerusalem that she shares with four other women from India and has agreed to talk to a reporter. She is coming from a weekly visit with… Read more »
