Tagged FRONT

WESTERBORK, Netherlands (JTA) — On a foggy Sunday, cheerful cabaret music pierces the silence that hangs over this former concentration camp, one of the largest facilities of its kind in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Blasting from the recorder of an Israeli visitor last month, the music draws disapproving looks and… Read more »

(JTA) — One year after Israel’s establishment, in the dead of night, three students ascended a tower at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and raised the Israeli flag. The next morning, the Conservative rabbinical school’s administration took it down. That act of surreptitious Zionist protest was one… Read more »

PARIS (JTA) – French Jews mourning a Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment welcomed the presence of France’s interior minister, Gérard Collomb, at a vigil in her memory. “We appreciate authorities’ swift action for justice and continued support,” Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistoire Jewish group, said… Read more »

(JTA) — Last April, Traore Kobili threw his Jewish neighbor to her death from her third-story home in Paris while calling her a demon and shouting about Allah. French authorities waited 170 days before they declared the killing of Sarah Halimi an anti-Semitic hate crime — and that was… Read more »

(JTA) — Lightning struck Zach Braff in 2001. The up-and-coming Jewish actor, who had appeared in a few films — perhaps most notably a small role in Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” — landed the lead role of John “J.D.” Dorian in the hospital-based sitcom “Scrubs.” Along the way… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The organizers of the March for Our Lives, almost all of them under 20, had a gun control agenda packed with specifics. They were able to get 800,000 people on and off of this city’s Pennsylvania Avenue in three hours. They attracted A-list celebrities. They turned… Read more »

Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D.

Eminent Holocaust historian, scholar and author Deborah Lipstadt, Ph.D., will be the keynote speaker at Jewish Family & Children’s Services 9th annual Celebration of Caring, Sunday, April 8. Lipstadt gained international recognition for defending the historical truth of the Holocaust in a precedent-setting lawsuit, tried in a British court.… Read more »

Tzuza Dance Company, which delighted the crowd at Tucson’s Israel festival in 2010, will return to perform at the Israel @ 70 Festival next month. The community-wide festival will be held Sunday, April 22, from 1-6 p.m. on the Jewish community campus at River and Dodge Roads. It is… Read more »

Rina Liebeskind

A decade as the director of education at Congregation Or Chadash has flown by for Rina Liebeskind. The congregation will honor her for her years of dedicated service with a “Flying Chai” tribute festival at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on April 15. “As the oldest of six children,… Read more »

At Tucson’s Israel @ 70 Festival next month, Tucsonans can try out a pair of smart glasses created by an Israeli company that enable blind or visually impaired people to read written words and recognize objects and faces. “Basically they point with their figure to a street sign or… Read more »

Alan Veingrad speaks at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Men’s Night Out event at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, March 6.

The journey from Pop Warner to the National Football League is a dream for many youngsters. It seemed an impossible dream for a lanky Jewish boy from Brooklyn in the ’70s. Alan Veingrad shared how mentors helped him make that dream come true — and how “community” ultimately intercepted… Read more »

Zikaron V’Tikvah.  Remembrance and hope. These are the words that best reflect the meaning of the The Butterfly Project. The Butterfly Project aims to remember the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust and the hope that through education, nothing this hateful will ever occur again. The Butterfly… Read more »

ENSCHEDE, Netherlands (JTA) — For most matzah bakeries, Passover is their lifeline and only claim to financial viability. After the weeklong holiday, during which Jews are commanded to consume matzah to commemorate their ancestors’ hurried flight out of Egypt, demand for the famously tasteless cracker drops sharply. Except, that is,… Read more »

A self-portrait by photographer Leo Goldschmidt

On Friday, March 16, the Jewish History Museum opened a new, original, temporary exhibition, “Subtle Apertures: Leo Goldschmidt’s Early Photographic Record of the Sonoran Borderlands.” Images and information for the exhibition are drawn from the collections of the Jewish History Museum and the Bloom Jewish Southwest Archives at the… Read more »

(JTA) —The editor in chief of National Geographic Magazine made waves when she admitted that the magazine’s past coverage was tinged with racism. “For decades, our coverage was racist. To rise above our past, we must acknowledge it,” Susan Goldberg wrote in a letter for the magazine’s April issue, which marks the… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Malcolm Hoenlein, the professional head of one of American Jewry’s most influential organizations and a board member of a large Israeli energy company, told JTA that he sees no conflict between those roles. Hoenlein is executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Dr. Stephen Hawking was a rare and inspirational man whose deep insights into the mysteries of the physical universe were matched only by his courage in the face of a cruel, debilitating illness, which he met with good spirit and a unique sense of humor. In the wake… Read more »

MADRID (JTA) — Every Passover, Danielle Elliott joins her parents in Chicago. She helps prepare haroset, delights in her mom’s elaborate Passover decorations and enjoys spending the holiday with her family. But this year Elliott will be recounting the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt several thousand miles… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) — Raed Saleh, a Palestinian born in the West Bank, wants to rebuild a synagogue in the German capital. Now the dream of this Berlin politician is a bit closer to reality. Standing in front of the Fraenkelufer Synagogue on a chilly March morning, the senator and… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Torah tells how God created the earth and the heavens, although the stories that follow tell us more about the former than the latter. A new exhibit doesn’t quite answer theological questions about space, but it does show the ways in which Jews have looked… Read more »