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 »
MyEye 2.0 by OrCam makes it possible for the blind or visually impaired to read texts and recognize objects and faces.
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 »
Strings of paired butterflies welcome visitors to the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation. (Photograph by Sara Harelson)
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 »
A shopper browses for matzah at the Amsterdam Noord branch of the Jumbo supermarket chain, March 17, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
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 »
Susan Goldberg is National Geographic Magazine’s first female and Jewish editor-in-chief. (Courtesy of National Geographic)
(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 »
Malcolm Hoenlein, center, with Ronald Lauder, left, at the Apollo Theater in New York, March 16, 2011. (Shahar Azran/WireImage/Getty Images)
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 »
Stephen Hawking meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem, Dec. 10, 2006. (Moshe Milner/GPO via Getty Images)
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 »
Fulbright scholars McCall Wells, left, and Danielle Elliott are organizing an interfaith seder at the Universidad Camilo José Sela in Villafranca del Castillo, Spain. (Melissa Marazas)
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 »
Raed Saleh, left, a Berlin senator, and the Berlin Jewish Community's president, Gideon Joffe, hold an architect's rendering of a planned reconstruction of the Frankeluefer Synagogue. (Toby Axelrod)
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 »
This book from 1907 contains horoscopes in Yiddish. (Josefin Dolsten)
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 »
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant at a press conference with Israeli officials at the Homeland Defense and Security Summit in Biloxi, March 13, 2018. (Ben Sales)
BILOXI, Miss. (JTA) – A homeland security conference took place in a southern Mississippi town with an Air Force base and a shipbuilding yard. Among those in attendance were the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard; a general from India, the world’s second-largest country; and representatives from Taiwan and… Read more »
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information about a Tucson Hebrew Academy memorial service. NEW YORK (JTA) — Students at Jewish day schools offered prayers, lit candles and demanded change as part of a nationwide student walkout calling for gun reform in the wake of last… Read more »
Dr. Kenneth Offit says a new study on BRCA mutations in Ashkenazi Jews will help save lives and contribute lessons for future medical testing. (Courtesy of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)
NEW YORK (JTA) — A new study will provide free testing for three mutations that substantially increase the risk for developing breast, ovarian and prostate cancer among people with Eastern European Jewish ancestry. The BRCA Founder Outreach Study (BFOR), which was launched last week, will test 4,000 men and women in… Read more »
Mike Pompeo at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jan. 12, 2017. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Like the rest of the world, Rex Tillerson got the news of his firing on Twitter. “Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service!” was the only reference to the now-outgoing secretary of state in a tweet President Donald Trump posted at 8:44 a.m. that also… Read more »
Itzhak Perlman, shown in a scene from the documentary "Itzhak," has endured hardships to become arguably the most famous violinist in the world. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)
(JTA) — Itzhak Perlman, arguably the most famous violinist in the world, has heard plenty of questions in his 50-year career. But when asked if his religious heritage has affected his playing, he sounds stumped. “I’m a violinist. I’m Jewish, so that makes me a Jewish musician,” he tells… Read more »
Rachel Laser is the new executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. (Rick Reinhard)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Though Rachel Laser is the new executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, she prefers a different term for the cause for which she now advocates: separation of religion and government. That difference may be subtle, but it speaks to the… Read more »
