Yevgenia Kiseleva, who learned gymnastics in an orphanage in Latvia, displays her agility at age 77. (Courtesy Sharon Arkin)
Searching for a program that helps people with memory loss stay physically and mentally active, Natalija Kuznecova had one very specific requirement: she needed to find a program with a Russian speaker for mother, 77-year-old Yevgenia Kiseleva, who has been in the United States only four months and speaks… Read more »
Claire Johnson, left, at her cafe in Catalina with customers Scott McGowen (in cowboy hat) and Wayne and Bernadette Olsen (Korene Charnofsky Cohen/AJP)
Haimish, Yiddish for friendly or homey, sums up Claire’s Cafe and Art Gallery in Catalina. Good food also figures into the picture, but the warm atmosphere created by owners Claire and Steve Johnson keeps drawing loyal customers. The cafe was awarded the 2016 Better Business Bureau Good Neighbor Award… Read more »
From left to right: Matt Brooks, director of the Republican Jewish Coalition; Noam Neusner, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush; Tevi Troy, deputy health secretary under President George W. Bush, and Jeff Berkowitz, former research director of the Republican National Committee, at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in Washington, D.C., Nov. 14, 2016. (Ron Sachs)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Offer an open hand or a closed fist — or maybe both. Name names. Don’t name names, hint. Quietly adjust wording. Welcome to the second week of the World of Trump, Jewish organizational edition. Week 1 was fraught enough, with Jewish statements marking Donald Trump’s… Read more »
Karen Kadosh leaves the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv with her parents, Nov. 14, 2016. (Andrew Tobin)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Donald Trump’s surprising win may have spurred increased chatter among some Americans — Jews among them — about moving to Canada. But for Israelis, at least, the U.S. hasn’t lost its luster. Citizens of the Jewish state are as eager as ever to visit, and… Read more »
Top left, clockwise, Ivanka Trump, Jason Greenblatt, Boris Epshteyn and Steven Mnuchin (Trump photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Greenblatt photo: Uriel Heilman; Epshteyn photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for SiriusXM; Mnuchin photo: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for City Harvest)
(JTA) — President-elect Donald Trump has a complicated history with Jews. On the one hand, his daughter Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner, and he’s spoken fondly about having Jewish grandchildren. On the other, some of Trump’s supporters have links to the anti-Semitic far right movement known as… Read more »
Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally at Bronx Community College in New York City, April 9, 2016. (Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
(JTA) — At the start of his campaign, he was dismissed as a fringe protest candidate, an old man with messy hair whose ideas were too extreme to win a national election. But now that Democratic mainstay Hillary Clinton has lost the election to Donald Trump, it’s worth… Read more »
Eric Greitens as a Navy SEAL in Iraq. (Courtesy of Rubenstein Public Relations)
(JTA) — Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL whose seven military awards include the Bronze Star, has become the first Jewish governor of Missouri. Greitens, 42, a Republican, also is a former Rhodes scholar and the founder of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps veterans integrate themselves back… Read more »
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Leonard Cohen, center, performing with Matti Caspi, on guitar, for Ariel Sharon, with arms crossed, and other Israeli troops in the Sinai in 1973. (Courtesy of Maariv)
(JTA) — Using his M-16 assault rifle as a pillow, my father awoke abruptly from a dreamless sleep by the pleading voice of a young woman outside his tent in the Sinai. The woman, a uniformed volunteer, was urging reservists like him to forego shuteye to hear a musician… Read more »
Beth-El Congregation in Fort Worth, Texas (Courtesy of Beth-El Congregation)
(JTA) — At 6:30 Wednesday morning, Oklahoma City Rabbi Abby Jacobson received a text from one of her teenage congregants expressing sadness at the presidential election results — and fear. “She said, ‘I’m sorry for texting you, rabbi, but I can’t say any of this at school,’” related Jacobson,… Read more »
Kristallnacht commemoration at the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, Nov. 9, 2016. (Courtesy of Jonet.nl)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — His name was never mentioned during the Netherlands’ main commemoration event for Kristallnacht, but Donald Trump was likely on everyone’s mind at the ceremony at the Dutch capital’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue. It wasn’t for any imagined parallels between Trump’s election as U.S. president and the campaign… Read more »
Donald Trump at a campaign event in Sarasota, Fla., Nov. 7, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – In forging an unprecedented and stunning path to the presidency, Donald Trump claimed to represent Americans who were anxious, resentful and ready to make radical changes. Their electoral strength blindsided pollsters and pundits — and flabbergasted many Jews, for whom the Trump base was once largely… Read more »
President-elect Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York City, Nov. 9, 2016. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump will be the next U.S. president, having swept to victory in at least 29 states with 288 electoral votes and jolted a Jewish community made increasingly anxious as his rough-edged nativist rhetoric emboldened the far right and amplified a strain of anti-Semitic invective not heard… Read more »
The stars of "Good Girls Revolt," a new series on Amazon inspired by Lynn Povich's memoir. (Courtesy of Amazon Studios)
(JTA) — Men were writers and women were researchers. That’s the way it was when Lynn Povich and 45 of her colleagues at Newsweek decided to take a stand. In 1970, the women banded together and became the first women in the media to file a lawsuit on… Read more »
President Barack Obama talks on the phone in the Oval Office, July 15, 2016. (Pete Souza/ official White House photo)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – It started several months ago in anxious whispers among pro-Israel leaders. Now it has burst into the open in full-page ads in The New York Times and op-eds in The Wall Street Journal: Does Barack Obama have a lame-duck surprise in store for Israel? Or, as… Read more »
Bend the Arc protesters demonstrate outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City, Sept. 29, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Pieties? Out. Passports? In. Paranoia? On its way. Jewish Americans have never been ones to sit out an election, whether it comes to voting, political fundraising or dinner table punditry. But even for a community grown used to the political fray, the 2016 campaign was different.… Read more »
Steve Levine The Beth Shalom Temple Center, Green Valley’s self-proclaimed “reconformadox” Jewish congregation, recently hired its first membership coordinator. Steve Levine was attracted to his new position for professional and personal reasons, and began his new job in September. “The Jewish community has been very good to me over the years,… Read more »
Dr. Eliezer Diamond Congregation Anshei Israel will host scholar-in-residence Dr. Eliezer Diamond on Friday, Nov. 11 and Saturday, Nov. 12. Diamond is an associate professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He teaches courses in rabbinic literature and introductory, intermediate and advanced Talmud studies. He is the author of… Read more »
Adena Bank Lees (Jacquelynn Buck) Jewish Family & Children’s Services will present a Shalom in Every Home Healthy Family Lecture Series this month. The free, interactive two-part series will explore the important connection between healthy families and healthy relationships. The series will begin with “Put Your Listening Ears On: How to Create and Enhance… Read more »
Two young men wear Spider-Man costumes at the Icon Festival, Oct. 19, 2016. (Dan Ofer)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – As a kid, Ben Engelman dreamed of being a warrior. Until he was old enough to join the Israeli army, he settled for role playing as a sword fighter. Now 25, Engelman has been to war in Gaza and finished his service in a special… Read more »
Silvia Risser (center), 72, a resident at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging since January, enjoys a visit with her mother, Naomi Anderson (left), 90, and her granddaughter, Lauren Pernu (right), 22. Anderson currently lives in San Diego, Calif., and visits her daughter at Handmaker every few months. (David J. Del Grande/AJP)
Jill Rosenzweig, a local Jewish philanthropist and former board chair at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, enrolled in Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging’s post-hospital treatment program for physical therapy following back surgery last August. She recently returned to the care facility for further treatment. Rosenzweig initially chose Handmaker’s… Read more »
