Tagged FRONT

At the Shay-Shay Community Garden at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, enthusiastic amateur gardeners tend sunflowers, enormous squash, cherry tomatoes, spiky artichokes and other bounty. The 23 plots opened for use in mid-March, says site coordinator Susanne Kaplan, who has served on the board of the nonprofit Community Gardens… Read more »

The Jewish dietary laws, termed kashrut, are many and complex. According to the Torah and the Talmud, Jews may not mix meat and dairy, and may eat only fish with scales and fins, and meat from ruminants with cloven hooves. Pareve — foods containing neither meat nor dairy, including… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – When Shachar was 2 years old, she asked her parents to keep her hair short. When she was 5, she asked them to throw out every skirt in her closet. When Shachar was 16, he realized he was a boy, and when he was 19 he got… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Like his fellow competitors on “American Ninja Warrior,” 25-year-old Akiva Neuman pushed himself to his physical limits — climbing, jumping and running through an intense obstacle course — in the hopes of making it to the national finals in Las Vegas. But unlike the dozens… Read more »

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — Mazel tov! That’s perhaps how the big shots in charge of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the first to take place in South America, will toast victories when the competition gets underway Aug. 5. Three of the top officials of the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee, including… Read more »

Dear friends, On the evening of June 26, the Jewish History Museum will host the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona (JFSA) Pride program Celebrating Marriage Equality, an event that will mark the one year anniversary of the Marriage Equality Act, a landmark moment for our country and for LGBT… Read more »

University of Arizona College of Medicine professor Paul Gordon, MD, MPH, is living a dream he’s held onto for 40 years. An avid cyclist since high school, Gordon has always wanted to bike across the continental United States. On April 22, his dream came to life when he put… Read more »

Joel Feinman, left, and Barbara LaWall

Barbara LaWall, a Democrat first elected in 1996, is running for her sixth term as Pima County Attorney. Joel Feinman, who practiced criminal law as a Pima County public defender from 2007-2015 and who is also a Democrat, announced his candidacy for the county attorney position in October. Both… Read more »

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) – For the sixth year in a row, the seven synagogues in Krakow’s historic Jewish district, Kazimierz, opened their doors for 7@Nite – or the Night of the Synagogues, a one-night mini-festival aimed at bolstering Jewish pride and promoting Jewish awareness among the public. Each synagogue –… Read more »

(JTA) — Here a plan, there a plan, everywhere a peace plan. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian Authority may not exactly seem conducive topeace — Israel just formed what may be its most right-wing government ever, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is aging and becoming less popular. Yet peace plans… Read more »

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (JTA) — A nascent Jewish community was officially born in Madagascar last month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs, chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla. The conversions, which took place over a 10-day… Read more »

(JTA) — Alex Law is not your typical Jewish 25-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter. Instead of simply posting tweets with the hashtag #feelthebern or attending campaign rallies, the Collingswood, New Jersey, resident is running to be Sanders’ colleague in Congress. The aptly named Law, who if elected would become the… Read more »

(JTA) — Erin Schrode may not be a household name — yet. But if the 25-year-old Jewish activist lures enough of her millennial peers to the polls for California’s Democratic primary on June 7, she just may become the youngest person in the U.S. House of Representatives — and… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Since 1972, when the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi, more than 700 others have joined her ranks in that denomination alone. But a surprise awaited them, though few seemed to notice: The language on their ordination certificates was markedly different than that of their… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Boycott Trump? Mock Trump? Trump, the musical? Jewish liberals are ready to sow a summer of Donald Trump discontent in ways that aim both to bludgeon and entertain. Bend the Arc, an advocacy group, is convening its first national conference here next week aimed in part at… Read more »

Angela Salmon, a program coordinator at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, doesn’t mind if her clients don’t always remember her name. She doesn’t mind if they sometimes have to search for the right words. When she and her clients are together on the Adventure Bus, a program for… Read more »

Temple Emanu-El’s Kurn Religious School will implement a new distance learning strategy to increase Hebrew school engagement in the upcoming academic year. Called Hebrew@Home, it will allow students in third through eighth grades who live in remote locations or cannot make it to the school for other reasons to… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a rare and sharp split with Israeli government policy, a group of Jewish community leaders want to get a proposal for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the next president’s desk. Two complementary U.S. and Israeli working papers to be launched next week propose… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In Israel, when the two-minute siren sounds at 11 a.m. on Yom Hazikaron, the Jewish state’s Memorial Day, the nation comes to a halt. As we saw just two weeks ago, cars on streets and highways pull over, and drivers and passengers get out of their vehicles… Read more »

A year of service will soon begin for two Israeli teens and their work will bring them here to Tucson. Leah Genei Avuno, 17, of Kiryat Malachi and Bar Alkaher, 17, of Shimshit will arrive here at the beginning of August and they cannot wait to dig in. They are… Read more »