Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, says as his career began he realized creating a partnership between Jews and Evangelical Christian had huge potential. “I looked at it in terms of the Jewish people, and the need to have relationships between… Read more »
Mayor Rafael Ben-Sheetrit, left, and Rabbi Joseph Lasry unveil a sign that renames a Beit She’an street ‘Derech Hashisha’ or ‘Road of the Six.’ (Courtesy Oshrat Barel)
Oshrat Barel, who serves as director of the Weintraub Israel Center and Tucson’s community shlicha (Israeli emissary), visited her hometown of Beit She’an last month for a memorial ceremony marking 14 years since the murder of her father and five others in a terrorist attack on the Likud party… Read more »
Geza Rohrig in "Son of Saul" (Courtesy Jewish History Museum)
Despite receiving critical acclaim for masterfully portraying the lead role in the Academy Award-winning film “Son of Saul,” Hungarian-born Geza Rohrig does not identify as an actor. “I’m an accidental actor. I’m a writer, that’s what I do. It gives me much more freedom, because I can write whatever… Read more »
Joan B. Diamond, 87, philanthropist and Jewish community volunteer, died Dec. 28, 2016. Diamond was an early supporter of the University of Arizona Steele Children’s Research Center, which opened in 1992, and joined her husband, real estate developer Donald Diamond, in providing the lead gift to establish the Diamond… Read more »
Solomon I. “Sol” Littman, 96, a journalist, scholar, author and hunter of Nazi war criminals, died Jan. 2, 2017. Littman was born in Toronto and educated at the University of Toronto, State College of Washington and University of Wisconsin. After 14 years as a director of the Anti-Defamation League… Read more »
Saul Kaye has released four albums of Jewish blues. (Courtesy of Kaye)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Saul Kaye never wanted to be a “Jewish blues” player. In his opinion, the Jewish music he had heard growing up in Northern California’s Bay Area ranged from “really bad to horrible.” In 2009, he was touring as a rock musician, playing hundreds of… Read more »
President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, March 21, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
(JTA) — During his campaign for president in 2008, I wrote a column suggesting that Barack Obama was struggling to connect with Jews because they weren’t sure that he supported Israel’s cause in his gut — that is, in his kishkes. I may have been the first… Read more »
Sixth and I, a nondenominational synagogue, has planned a Shabbat of programming around the Women's March on Washington, including meals, lectures, meditation and yoga. (Courtesy of Sixth and I)
(JTA) — On Friday, the United States will inaugurate a new president and usher in an era of new policies and rhetoric. But at the Sixth and I synagogue in Washington, D.C., eyes are on the day after, when some 200,000 marchers will gather to reassert support for… Read more »
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini during the Middle East peace conference in Paris, Jan. 15, 2017. (Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Two days after delegates from more than 70 nations attended the Paris summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was wrong to label the meeting “useless.” Admittedly the France-initiated event, which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority attended, did… Read more »
Adas Israel Congregation's Rabbi Gil Steinlauf greets President Obama, May 22, 2015. (Ron Sachs)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Fraught record on issues of race and anti-Semitism? Check. Much-hyped meeting to get Benjamin Netanyahu’s hechsher? Check. Stirring speech at AIPAC to quiet the naysayers? Check. Jewish validators galore? Check. Administration top-loaded with Jewish staffers? Check. Welcome to Inauguration Day 2009. President-elect Barack Obama walked into… Read more »
Rabbi Marvin Hier speaking at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2015 National Tribute Dinner in Beverly Hills, Calif., March 24, 2015. (Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Rabbi Marvin Hier has known Charles and Seryl Kushner — Jared Kushner’s parents and Donald Trump’s in-laws — for decades. The Hiers and the Kushners have gone to the same kosher for Passover resort, the Arizona Biltmore, over the years. The Kushner family, prominent real estate… Read more »
Pawel Sawicki guiding journalists through the so-called central sauna of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dec. 1, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — Long before he moved here to become the spokesman for the Auschwitz museum and lead its social media effort, Pawel Sawicki’s life was intricately connected to this sleepy town near Krakow. A Warsaw-area radio journalist, Sawicki used to visit Oswiecim as a boy on… Read more »
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, right, meets with B'Noam director Rabbi Yisroel Meir Riani in Modiin, Israel, October 2016.
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Many Israelis feel alienated by the marriage process in their country, fed up with the bureaucracy and strict religious requirements. Some seek to reform the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate while creating alternatives to its monopoly on marriage and other personal status issues in Israel. But haredi Rabbi Yisroel Meir… Read more »
President Barack Obama delivering his farewell speech in Chicago, Jan. 10, 2017. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Barack Obama got his kishkes back. The president, whose alleged aloofness was the signature flaw cited by his rivals, his critics and at times his friends, ended his presidency with an impassioned appeal for the preservation of democracy — his lower lip trembling, a tear streaking his… Read more »
A view of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with the image of an Israeli flag, Jan. 9, 2017. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Is terrorism softening European attitudes toward Israel? When a Palestinian terrorist used a car to ram and kill an Israeli soldier in eastern Jerusalem in 2014, the European Union urged “restraint” and, without condemning the attack, called it merely “further painful evidence of the need to undertake… Read more »
Protestors rally in support of the Affordable Care Act in Philadelphia, Dec. 20, 2016. (Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Moveon.org)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, Jewish Family Service of Metro Detroit organized local doctors to provide free care to Jews who lacked health insurance. The Detroit agency closed the doctors’ program after enactment of the health care law, also known… Read more »
'Online conversion' can help make Judaism more accessible to those in remote locations, but everyone isn’t on board. (Lior Zaltzman)
(JTA) — The morning of her conversion, Diana Sewell was so nervous she “was running around like a headless chicken” in her Australia home. Meanwhile, some 9,000 miles away in Georgia, her rabbi was dealing with computer difficulties. Neither of those things put a stop to Sewell fulfilling a 60-something-year-old… Read more »
Shelly Silverman, chair of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona 2016 Community Campaign, left, with Super Sunday co-chairs Nina Isaacs and Julie Feldman at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on Jan. 31, 2016
(Martha Lochert)
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will hold its Super Sunday phone-a-thon on Jan. 29 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. During the annual fundraising event, volunteers will reach out to members of the Jewish community for donations to the Federation’s 2017 Community Campaign, which supports humanitarian and educational… Read more »
A scene from “My Hero Brother,” a new film by Israeli filmmaker Yonatan Nir
Yonatan Nir, an Israeli documentary filmmaker and producer, says making movies is an education unto itself. “Every film that I make is a window to a new world,” says Nir. “For me, the camera is a way to communicate, to learn more about the world and to experience it… Read more »
(L-R): Major L. Cohn, M.D.; Marthe Cohn; Rabbi Ephraim Zimmerman of Chabad Oro Valley; and Phyllis Gold, director of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Northwest Division, at the Country Club of La Cholla on Dec. 7 (Sarah Chen/Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona)
Marthe Cohn was crossing a field covered with ankle-deep snow. She was alone. There was no moon and she had no compass, no flashlight, nothing written down. As a French Jew, she had enlisted in the army to help defeat the Nazis. Her mission was to cross the border… Read more »
