Tagged FRONT

(JTA) — President Donald Trump’s decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital drew wide international criticism, with 128 countries including the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada voting in favor of a United Nations resolution condemning it. But several countries saw Trump’s decision in a different light: as an example to follow.… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When war broke out on Israel’s northern border in 2006, Avigdor Guy remained calm. He lived in the northern port city of Haifa, but he didn’t think the war would hit home — until, that is, it did. “Twelve years ago, they asked me if… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal, is bad policy and calls into question America’s international credibility. Mr. Trump has now set the international community on a slippery slope, imperiling the national security… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When President Donald Trump teased and then announced he would be pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, the next obvious question was, what next? What was Plan B? “Congress has heard nothing about an alternative,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rod Rosenstein came to the annual conference of the Anti-Defamation League with plaudits for Donald Trump despite being at the center of the president’s contentious relationship with his Justice Department. He extolled Trump’s call for unity in the wake of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally in… Read more »

Alba Jaramillo, J.D., has worked for almost two decades in the field of human rights, particularly immigrant and women’s rights. She’s an expert on domestic and sexual violence, both as a professional and as a survivor herself. Yet none of that prevented her from being terrorized by a serial… Read more »

“I don’t know what path I would be on right now without JLTC . . . everything has changed,” says Catalina Foothills High School junior and student body president Peris Lopez. The Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition is life-changing for the sophomores and juniors it brings together annually from high schools across Tucson.… Read more »

After six years of dedicated service as the president and CEO of the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, Tracy Salkowitz is moving on. Salkowitz and her husband, Rick Edwards, are heading to Mendocino, California, where the climate is kinder on her lungs. But her hands-on approach to community… Read more »

Leslie Glaze

Leslie Glaze, Ph.D., furthers the critical work of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona in both traditional and novel ways. That’s why the selection committee tapped her as the recipient of the JFSA’s 2018 Special Recognition Award. She will be honored next week at the 2018 Jewish Community Awards… Read more »

Works by Ann Lapidus and Jeanne Hartmann will be on display at the Fine Art Gallery of the Tucson Jewish Community Center through May 17. Ann Marcus Lapidus creates abstract painting with a vivid palette. She has a B.A. in art from Pomona College and a semestrial degree from… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Donniel Hartman had some bad news for his audience on the largely liberal Upper West Side: The two-state solution might not be dead, but it’s not imminent either, and most Israelis don’t believe the two-state solution is “implementable in their lifetime.” It’s not a… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Holocaust historians ask what Americans knew at the time, the focus often is on the politicians and lawmakers whose votes and initiatives may have mitigated the Nazi genocide against the Jews. An exhibit opening this month at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here asks the… Read more »

(JTA) — When Bryan Stevenson set out to build a memorial to the thousands of black people lynched in the United States, he thought about Germany and Poland. Those countries, where millions of Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, have made sure to preserve the memories of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s like finding out that the White House has a mikvah in its basement and no one knows about it. Up an elegant stairway next to the concert hall at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the “Concert Lounge dedicated by the… Read more »

Bertha Reynolds was born Bertha Hurwitz in Poland. (Courtesy of Shirley Thaler)

(JTA) — When Eleanor Roosevelt or Bess Truman sent a formal invitation to one particular White House staff member, they often addressed it in the customary form of days gone by: “To Mrs. William Reynolds,” the envelope would read. Mrs. Reynolds, a dark-haired beauty who handled presidential correspondence, lived… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — As Senate Republicans worked to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last summer, the American Jewish establishment sent an unequivocal message: Kill the bill. “The Senate’s ‘Better Care Reconciliation Act’ would be devastating for millions of Americans and irreparably harmful to Jewish social service… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The debate about wearing a kippah in Western Europe returned only a decade or so ago, but it has nonetheless come to follow a rigid pattern even in that short period of time. The cycle – there have been dozens of such cases — begins with… Read more »

Natalie Portman speaking at the Environmental Media Association's 27th Annual EMA Awards in Santa Monica, Calif., Sept. 23, 2017. (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Environmental Media Association)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Natalie Portman’s statement explaining why she declined to attend an award ceremony in Israel in her honor was a pointed rebuke, and of a particular individual. “I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu,” she said of the Israeli prime minister. But it also… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Sebastian Lelio, the director who recently won the Academy Award for best foreign film for “A Fantastic Woman,” grew up Catholic in Chile knowing almost nothing about observant Jews. So when the Jewish actress Rachel Weisz approached him a couple of years ago and suggested… Read more »

MONTREAL (JTA) — Just inside the gate of the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue off Boulevard du Mont Royal, a gravestone bears an unusual Star of David, the sharp angles of its two opposing triangles — one reaching heavenward, the other aimed at the earth — softened into the shape of… Read more »