Chefs Mike Felde (left) and Alan Sanchez outside of Fuison'z Cafe at the University of Arizona's Hillel Foundation.
Fusion’z Café is offering a new take on kosher favorites, from dressing up falafel with wild mushrooms and caramelized onions to offering five variations on avocado toast. This is not your grandma’s spread. Fusion’z is the new installment inside the University of Arizona Hillel, replacing the Oy Vey Café,… Read more »
The Sparks cheer team practices a pyramid formation, with Peter Ruiz at the center, at the Tucson Jewish Community Center.
In August, Allison Wexler, Tucson’s Jewish community special abilities coordinator, was exploring athletic programming ideas for individuals with special needs. When she learned the Tucson Jewish Community Center would be forming a flag football league, she thought, “What does football need? Cheerleaders.” Wexler created a new program at the… Read more »
Neva Small, right, as Chava in 'Fiddler on the Roof,' with, from left, Rosalind Harris, as Tzeitel and Michele Marsh as Hodel.
“Tradition, tradition, tradition!” sings out the cast in the opening number of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Neva Small, the woman who played Tevye’s third daughter, Chava, in the film version of the beloved musical, has always taken this entreaty to heart. Now Small, who has created her own traditions… Read more »
Roza Simkhovich
Roza Simkhovich is proud to say that she has been an American for nearly 39 years. She and her family came from Latvia, a Baltic country formerly part of the Soviet Union, to the United States looking for relief from anti-Semitism. As an educator for nearly 30 years, she… Read more »
Judge John Peck with his “St. Notorious” at Art Under the Arches Gallery, January 2018. A long, winding and unexpected road took Tucson native John Peck from the Old Pueblo to Ajo, a small Arizona community of 3,300 people, just 40 miles from the Mexican border. From editor, to economic developer, community activist and nonprofit leader, he now finds himself sitting on the justice court… Read more »
Metal silhouettes of soldiers positioned as if they were protecting an abandoned Israeli outpost overlooking the border with Syria.
Driving up the mountainous road to Mt. Bental, I feel the temperature drop and the wind pick up as we reach the 3,800-foot peak where an abandoned Israeli army outpost, complete with bombed-out bunkers, sits. Anyone willing to ascend this mountain will be treated to a better understanding of… Read more »
Enthusiastic participation in celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays helps residents of senior living communities stay connected to Judaism. Sometimes, they even teach the non-Jewish staff about Jewish traditions and food. Atria Campana del Rio “I have been with Atria for 14 years, and when I started I knew nothing… Read more »
A view of the border between Lebanon, left, and Israel near the village of Kfar Kila, Feb. 7, 2018. (Ali Dia/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a simple, straightforward message this week when he toured Israel’s border with Syria and Lebanon with top security officials. “Our face is turned toward peace, we are ready for any eventuality, and I don’t suggest anyone test us,” he said… Read more »
Elaine Luria, running for Congress, speaking at a Democratic committee meeting in Norfolk, Va., Feb. 3, 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
NORFOLK, Va. (JTA) — The Norfolk Democratic Party Committee is meeting on a Saturday and Picadilly, a breakfast joint propped along a highway in this scrubbed-clean hardscrabble town perched on the Chesapeake Bay, is loud with the clatter of dishes, cutlery and politics. Until, that is, Elaine Luria is… Read more »
Eva Lavi, who was 2 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland, addressing the United Nations last week. (Courtesy of the Israeli mission to the U.N.)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Eva Lavi’s earliest memories are of the Holocaust. She remembers how her mother made her hide outside in below-zero weather, clutching a standing pipe, as Nazis searched her home in Poland. She remembers her father telling her to swallow a spoonful of cyanide — better… Read more »
Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking with the Forward's editor-in-chief, Jane Eisner, at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., Feb. 1, 2018. (Ron Sachs/CNP)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a Jewish audience that she would serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as long as she felt up to it. Ginsburg, appearing Thursday at a Forward event at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C., appeared to confirm recent reports that she… Read more »
Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer, left, and Nancy Pelosi at the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jan. 30, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel made it into his State of the Union speech. “Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the Senate just months before: I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” he said to applause, mostly from… Read more »
TVP, the state-owned television station in Poland, apologized to an Israeli ambassador for a tweet accusing Israel of ulterior motives in objecting to a new law regulating how Poles may discuss the Holocaust. (Flickr Commons/Piotr Drabik)
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Debate over a Polish law that proposes to outlaw rhetoric blaming Poland for Nazi crimes has prompted a wave of anti-Semitic comments in the Polish media. RMF, one of the largest Polish commercial radio stations, suspended a journalist who wrote about the “war with the Jews.”… Read more »
Brittan Heller
Brittan Heller will bring personal experience as a victim along with extensive professional international law and cybercrime experience to her Tucson presentation, “Pulling the Plug on Online Anti-Semitism & Bigotry,” on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. at the Harvey & Deanna Evenchik Center for Jewish Philanthropy, 3718 E.… Read more »
Kenneth Marcus (Screenshot from YouTube)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — If there’s overlap between Hillel and the National Council of Jewish Women, it’s in two areas: defending Israel and combating violence against women on campus. Leaders of the campus Jewish organization took a look at the record of Kenneth Marcus, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run… Read more »
The Orthodox Union is allowing Maharat Ruth Friedman, left, shown at her graduation from Yeshivat Maharat in 2013, and three other Orthodox women clergy to remain in their positions without their synagogues facing a penalty. (Joe Winkler)
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Orthodox Union will not penalize its member synagogues that already employ women as clergy, but it has reaffirmed a policy that prohibits other synagogues from hiring women in rabbinic positions. A statement adopted at the umbrella Orthodox synagogue association’s board meeting last night and… Read more »
Short track speed skater Vladislav Bykanov, lower left, leading the Israeli Olympic team at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Feb. 7, 2014. (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
(JTA) — The world is about to revolve around Pyeongchang, a mountainous county in the northern half of South Korea, for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Jewish fans won’t have quite as many standout athletes to cheer for this year as they did in 2016, when multiple American members of the… Read more »
President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner in the Oval Office of the White House, July 25, 2017.(Zach Gibson/Pool/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Donald Trump is just the man to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal done. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was gushing last week about Trump’s negotiating team, which is led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “The thing the people don’t realize is that these people… Read more »
Former President Barack Obama speaking at a Newark rally for then-gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy, Oct. 19, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(JTA) — “Nothing matters.” You hear that a lot these days. You hear it when The Wall Street Journal reports that the president’s personal lawyer paid a porn actress $130,000, at the height of the presidential campaign, so she would stay silent about an alleged affair she’d had with Donald Trump. Or… Read more »
The Reconstructionist movement's new logo (Courtesy of Reconstructing Judaism)
The line is from a remarkably poignant scene in the 2004 film “Garden State,” in which Zach Braff’s character explains to his love interest, played by Natalie Portman, a few things that most non-Orthodox American Jews know about large suburban synagogues. “The Jews I know,” Braff continues, “they go… Read more »
