Matt Haimovitz (Steph MacKinnon)
The Tucson Jewish Community Center will join with UA Presents to hold a free “sneak peek” mini concert by cellist Matt Haimovitz on Friday, Jan. 13 at 3 p.m., one day prior to his Jan. 14 concert at 8 p.m. at Crowder Hall. Haimovitz will offer a musical variation… Read more »
Allison Richter (nee Lachter) and Michael Richter at Capital Camps in Waynesboro, Pa. in 1991. (Courtesy Allison Richter)
As a kid, Allison Richter of Tucson spent many happy hours canoeing, shooting arrows, hiking and crafting at Camp Pearlstein, now called Camp Daisy and Harry Stein, in Prescott. Her parents never thought she would bring home a husband. She didn’t, of course, but those summers began a beautiful… Read more »
Hadassah national board member Cathy Olswing and her husband, Brian, at the ruins in Beit Shean, Israel on Nov. 7 (Courtesy Cathy Olswing)
Cathy Olswing will present “Israel Through Our Eyes,” a report on a recent Hadassah Desert-Mountain Region mission, at a Hadassah Southern Arizona early dinner event on Jan. 15 at 3 p.m. at Skyline Country Club, 5200 E. St Andrews Drive. Olswing, who serves on the national board of Hadassah,… Read more »
Officer Yaara Bareket oversees stretches at the Wingate army base in Netanya, Israel, Dec. 13, 2016. (Andrew Tobin)
NETANYA, Israel (JTA) – One fit young soldier scales a rope. Two others practice hand-to-hand combat. A large group marches across the sand. But those were just the inspirational photographs on the walls. The actual soldiers crowded in the one-room building here on the Orde Wingate army base were… Read more »
The West Bank security fence running near Jerusalem, April 17, 2016. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Israel’s leading security think tank has published a plan to redraw the map of the West Bank in a bid to consolidate major settlements and prevent the spread of others. The plan, presented Monday to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as part of the Institute for National Security Studies’ yearly strategic… Read more »
Rep. Ed Royce participates in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – There’s a striking difference between competing bids in Congress addressing last month’s U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. It’s not that they differ on the United Nations – the two nonbinding congressional resolutions under consideration condemn the Security Council, as well as the outgoing Obama… Read more »
Josh Radnor playing Aaron Port, a less than successful writer turned adult ed teacher, in "The Babylon Line." (Jeremy Daniel)
(JTA) — Josh Radnor is starring these days in Richard Greenberg’s off-Broadway play “The Babylon Line.” For the 42-year-old actor, it is the latest in a long and impressive list of credits. However, the odds are that no matter what else he accomplishes in life, for most people he… Read more »
Joseph Waks, fourth from the right, poses with Jewish visitors and soldiers at the Oz Vegaon tent outpost in the West Bank, Jan. 2, 2017. (Courtesy of Avi Hyman Communications)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – About 200 Jews from around the world toured the West Bank in response to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent speech warning of the dangers of settlement expansion. The group, organized on short notice by Miami-based fashion designer Joseph Waks, visited Jewish communities and met… Read more »
President Barack Obama speaks with John Kerry during a bilateral meeting with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in New York City, Sept. 21, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(JTA) — What did Secretary of State John Kerry say last week that caused former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren to say that U.S. policy toward Israeli has become “sad, tragic and dangerous?” That led Sen. Ted Cruz to say that Kerry and President Barack Obama are… Read more »
A view of a portion of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) –There was little new in the dueling speeches of John Kerry and Benjamin Netanyahu. In remarks from the State Department on Wednesday, the secretary of state reiterated the vehement opposition of the United States to Israeli settlement construction and its belief that the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace are dying.… Read more »
Samantha Power, center, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at the Security Council meeting in New York, Dec. 23, 2016. (Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Ahead of the unknowns a Trump administration will bring to American Middle East policy, the Obama administration allowed a bracing reminderon Friday that the international community does not recognize the validity of Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. The U.S. abstention on the U.N. Security Council… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second from right, chairs the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Dec. 25, 2016. (Dan Balilty/AFP/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expects a “new era” when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. He said as much at a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony Saturday, where he addressed the United Nations Security Council resolution passed a day earlier against Israeli settlements in the… Read more »
Album cover for "Dreidel I Shall Play" by composer Samuel E. Goldfarb. (Courtesy of Myron Gordon)
(JTA) — Within the Jewish musical canon are several songs that seem to have always existed — tunes we all know and pass down from one generation to the next. One example is the Hanukkah favorite “I Have a Little Dreidel” — chances are most everyone reading this can… Read more »
Mourners lay flowers and candles at a makeshift memorial in Berlin near the site where two days earlier, a man drove a heavy truck into a Christmas market in an apparent terrorist attack, Dec. 21, 2016. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
BERLIN (JTA) — Even before the deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Jews in Germany were divided in their approach to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Muslim countries since 2014. Citing a Jewish moral duty to aid the displaced, many Jewish organizations, synagogue groups… Read more »
A menorah in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Dec. 16, 2014. (Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Before Monday’s attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Rabbi Yehudah Teichtal had planned to invite hundreds of people to the traditional lighting of the first Hanukkah candle at a large menorah erected at the city’s Brandenburg Gate monument. But he decided to change his original… Read more »
Ambassadors of countries that aided Israel during its recent forest fires pose with officials of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at a Hanukkah party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., Dec. 14, 2016. (Conference of Presidents)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Weird paradoxes have been packed into Hanukkah observance forever. It’s the holiday about killing infidels that is now celebrated as a victory of religious pluralism. It’s the unofficial little Jewish holiday that a U.S. congressman once tried to turn into a major American holiday. It’s… Read more »
Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom officiates at the wedding of his stepdaughter and her fiance in 2014. (Courtesy of Stefanie Fox)
NEW YORK (JTA) – Conservative Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom has been expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly, the movement’s rabbis’ association, for performing interfaith weddings. An ordained Conservative rabbi for 44 years, Rosenbloom was expelled last month by unanimous vote, with abstentions, after a hearing of the R.A.’s Executive Council. Since… Read more »
Donald Trump, center, along with his attorney David Friedman, left, exit the Federal Building following their appearance in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, New Jersey, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010. (Bradley C Bower/Bloomberg News via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) -– Nearly six years ago, when President Barack Obama was set to elevate one of his top emissaries to the Jewish community to the Israel ambassadorship, Dan Shapiro asked for – and got – the endorsement of one of Obama’s fiercest pro-Israel critics. “Dan has always spoken… Read more »
Syrians fleeing violence in Aleppo arrive in the city's Fardos neighborhood after government troops retook the area from rebel fighters, Dec. 13, 2016. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Although Poopa Dweck has never been to Aleppo, her New Jersey home evokes the smells of a kitchen in the now-ravaged Syrian city. Dweck was born after her parents left the once-bustling metropolis in 1947, but she still calls it her “homeland.” She has dedicated herself… Read more »
'Desert Dreidel' by Anne Lowe
(MyJewishLearning via JTA) — Hanukkah, which starts at sundown on Dec. 24 — Christmas eve — is among the most widely celebrated Jewish holidays in the United States. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing new to learn about this eight-day festival. From the mysterious origins of gelt to… Read more »
