The border fence separating Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Mexico (Michael Zaccaria)
Twenty-seven people joined the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona for a tour of Arizona’s border with Mexico on May 3. The day included a visit to the site of a Humane Borders water station in Arivaca, a speaker’s session at the Fresh Produce… Read more »
Young women rally against child marriage, dowry and domestic violence in a protest organized by an American Jewish World Service grantee, the Masum Foundation, in Mavadi, India, March 31, 2015. (Jonathan Torgovnik/AJWS)
NEW YORK (JTA) — This week, President Donald Trump proposed radical and cruel cuts to U.S. foreign aid. If his budget for 2018 is approved by Congress and implemented, it would slash crucial aid and development programs and weaken key institutions upholding human rights worldwide. As the head… Read more »
The Tucson March of the Living delegation marches from Auschwitz to Birkenau on April 24. [Courtesy Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona)
It takes a special kind of courage to revisit your worst memories. When Holocaust survivor Pawel Lichter of Tucson accompanied a group of Jewish teens on the 29th annual March of the Living, April 19-May 3, he stepped back to 1939. In a basement on Warszawska Street, in his… Read more »
The Rooftop Restaurant at Mamilla Hotel, a modern eatery just outside Jerusalem's Old City, is leading the city's fine dining charge. (Courtesy of Mamilla Hotel)
JERUSALEM — There’s something delicious afoot in Jerusalem, a city long known not only for its interwoven layers of history and religion, but winding souks perfumed by fragrant spices, sun-ripened fruit and sizzling oil. Now more than ever, Jerusalem is attracting flavor-seeking innovators who see it at a culinary… Read more »
Ivanka Trump prays at the Western Wall, May 22, 2017. (Mendy Hechtman/Flash90)
(JTA) — Donald Trump and his staff may have left Israel feeling pretty friendly to the Jews, but man, we don’t make it easy for them. Flying with reporters from Saudi Arabia to Israel on Monday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that they were “nto the second… Read more »
Protesters in Paris demonstrating against a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank, April 1, 2017. (Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Shortly after the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, Ronny Naftaniel was soliciting donations on the street and putting a lot of money into a box emblazoned with the words “for Israel.” An Amsterdam Jew who was 19 that year, Naftaniel was one of… Read more »
Ariel Sharon, third from left, meets with his officers a week before the start of the Six-Day War, May 29, 1967. at their headquarters somewhere in southern Israel. (Micha Han/GPO via Getty Images)
Five days before the Six-Day War broke out in June 1967, the American reporter Abraham Rabinovich arrived in Jerusalem. When the war ended, he decided to remain and write an account of Israel’s lightning victory. Over the next two years he interviewed close to 300 soldiers and civilians. In this excerpt from the 50th… Read more »
Emergency responders arrive at the Manchester Arena following a bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert, May 22, 2017. (Dave Thompson/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Britain’s bloodiest terrorist attack in over a decade occurred Monday just two miles from Rabbi Yisroel Cohen’s synagogue. Yet one day after the deadly bombing in Manchester, Cohen told JTA he has no intention of changing security arrangements at his congregation. In fact Cohen, a Chabad… Read more »
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin guides President Donald Trump at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, May 22, 2017. (Avi Ohayon/GPO/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – President Donald Trump must have felt like he was back behind his desk at Trump Tower. During his whirlwind visit to Israel and the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday, the U.S. leader was treated with the deference befitting a CEO. His words were greeted with rapturous applause and… Read more »
Ester Goldstein, left and sister Margot lived in Berlin before they were separated in 1939. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Donald Trump will spend just 30 minutes at Yad Vashem on the second and last day of his visit to Israel, but the leadership of the Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem plans to use the brief time to deliver a powerful message. Rather than bombarding Trump with facts… Read more »
Mel Brooks, left, and Norman Lear, center, with Carl Reiner in “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.” (Courtesy of HBO)
(JTA) — The first thing Carl Reiner does every morning is pick up the paper and read the obituary section to check if he’s named there. “If I’m not, I’ll have my breakfast”— or so he says in the charming and appropriately titled HBO documentary “If You’re Not… Read more »
Hasidic Jews from the Strikov dynasty celebrate
the writing of a new Torah scroll in Bnei Brak, Israel, March 26, 2017. (Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Israel’s projected future looks a lot like a visit to the Jerusalem central bus station: crowded and very religious. According to a government report to be released in full next week, the Jewish state’s population will double in about 40 years. Some 29 percent —… Read more »
David Friedman, right, with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at a ceremony for new ambassadors at the president's residence in Jerusalem, May 16, 2017. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, presented his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem. During the ceremony Tuesday morning, Rivlin identified himself as a seventh-generation Jerusalemite and noted.”Next week, we will celebrate 50 years since Jerusalem was united, and the Jewish people were… Read more »
A simulation of cars using Autotalks' vehicle-to-vehicle communication system. (Screenshot from YouTube)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Israeli startups are revving their engines ahead of the country’s largest-ever “smart transportation” event. Over 200 local companies working in transportation technology will be at the EcoMotion Conference on Thursday at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa. The plan is to give auto industry… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Bill Clinton consulted with folks who came up with him in Arkansas, George W. Bush preferred Texan veterans of his family’s hard-fought political battles and Barack Obama had his Chicago peeps. Who does the first billionaire president go to when he wants real-deal advice? Other billionaires,… Read more »
President Donald Trump walks to a waiting limousine to greet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House, May 16, 2017. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — No one who has lived in Israel or even visited for an extended time can forget the top-of-the-hour news broadcasts on Kol Yisrael, or Israel Radio. Before its shutdown this week as part of a byzantine reform of public broadcasting, the government-run station preceded… Read more »
(Dafne Cholet/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
(JTA) — Only one religious group in the U.S. has a federally proclaimed month celebrating their history: the Jews. In 2006, President George W. Bush officially declared May as Jewish American Heritage Month. Yet Jewish American Heritage Month, or JAHM, hardly seems a priority — not in the government, not… Read more »
Alma Hernandez at her bat mitzvah party in the Holocaust History Center garden, April 8 (Courtesy Hernandez)
Alma Hernandez is passionate and strives every day to make a difference. People say her values and actions represent the core of Judaism, which is noteworthy because Hernandez didn’t grow up Jewish. At age 24, she has been active in the Jewish community for several years, even before she… Read more »
Immigration lawyer Alan Bennett speaks at the Tucson Jewish Community Center April 28. (Simon Rosenblatt)
The immigration crisis in Southern Arizona was the topic of a breakfast forum organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona on Friday, April 28. Opening the meeting, which was held at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, JCRC Chair Richard White explained that… Read more »
(L-R): Linda Behr, Congregation Bet Shalom Cantor Avraham Alpert, Eileen Weizenbaum and Andrea Siemens, LMSW, at the Tucson Jewish Community Center April 23. Behr and Weizenbaum are Jewish Family & Children's Services Shalom in Every Home Healthy Family program board members. (Korene Charnofsky Cohen)
Avraham “Avi” Alpert’s spiritual journey has led him from Judaism to atheism to being an observant Jew. Now he wants to help other Jews find their own path to Jewish traditions, values and celebrations that bring families closer together. His April 23 talk at the Tucson Jewish Community Center,… Read more »
