In June 2014, 89-year-old Johann Breyer appeared before a Philadelphia federal judge charged with complicity in the gassing of 216,000 Jews at Auschwitz. American and German investigators presented the court with documents that proved that Breyer, a dedicated SS officer, was a willing participant in the Nazi death camp’s… Read more »
(JTA) — Spring — when nature itself seems to reawaken — is a time for renewal. So it’s probably a good idea to spruce up your bookshelf (or e-reader or audiobook app), no? Here are nine Jewishy suggestions to rejuvenate your reading. Alligator Candy (Simon & Schuster) By David… Read more »
Kathryn Hahn arriving at the FYC special screening of “Transparent” at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, May 5, 2016. (Michael Tran/FilmMagic)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Kathryn Hahn’s no rabbi, but this nice Catholic girl from Cleveland plays one on TV. As Rabbi Raquel Fein on “Transparent,” the groundbreaking Amazon series about a dysfunctional Jewish family with a transgender parent (Jeffrey Tambor), Hahn has spent a lot of time thinking about… Read more »
Yvonne van Gennep-Bouma, left, tells visitors about a Jewish family that once lived at what is now her home in The Hague, May 1, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — After Yvonne van Gennep-Bouma discovered that Holocaust victims used to live in what is now her home, she began to think about them constantly. At night, van Gennep-Bouma imagined the former occupants preparing to turn in. And in the morning, she wondered where they had… Read more »
(L-R) Chefs Yael Shamir, Maya Klein, Orli Varon Shushan and Sahar Refael from the Weintraub Israel Center’s Partnership2Gether region in Israel will spend a week in Tucson. (Courtesy Weintraub Israel Center)
Four celebrity chefs from Israel will arrive in Tucson next month for the third annual Tucson Celebrates Israel Week, May 9-15. “Food is known to be a great bridge between people and cultures,” says Oshrat Barel, director of the Weintraub Israel Center, which organizes the festivities. Chefs Orli Varon… Read more »
(L-R) Gregory School students Daniel Leighou, Elaine Wright, Jaiveer Katariya, Moritz Gloesslein and Tianyi Zhu, with teacher Dennis Conner, took fourth place in the International Shalhevet Freier Physics Tournament at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
Earlier this month, a team of talented physics students from Tucson’s Gregory School placed fourth in the world in the April 5-6 International Shalhevet Freier Physics Tournament at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, where they displayed their outstanding skills in high-tech safecracking. Israel is an international leader in… Read more »
The endorsements of Chiune Sugihara and Jan Zwartendijk, the Japanese and Dutch consuls, respectively, in Kovno, Lithuania, appear on the Leidimas, or travel document, that allowed Isaac Lewin and his family to escape Lithuania in 1940. Nathan Lewin, now a prominent attorney, is the 4-year-old boy in the arms of his mother, Peppy Sternheim Lewin. (Photo courtesy Alyza D. Lewin)
Editor’s note: In honor of Yom HaShoah, which will be commemorated in Tucson on Sunday, May 1 at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, the AJP offers this commentary. See also “In Remembrance.” In May 1998, the AJP published an interview with Jan Zwartendijk, the son of… Read more »
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon (front) and the Armon Bizman band at a Late Night Downtown Shabbat at the Jewish History Museum on March 25. (Karen Schaffner/AJP)
Tucson, a.k.a. the Old Pueblo, is known for its laid back attitude, not for bucking a trend. Enter Temple Emanu-El’s Late Night Downtown Shabbat, which is roping in the millennials coming of age in the 21st century, statistically a hard group to round up for synagogue participation. According to… Read more »
Imre Kertesz
In June of 1944, an anonymous diarist in the Lodz Ghetto wrote, “The human language is too poor to describe the suffering of Jews in the ghettos of 1944. Where would the expressions come from, the descriptions, adjectives, that could only superficially describe our pain?” This diarist kept his… Read more »
Six Flags Great Adventure, an amusement park in New Jersey, on Passover becomes the site of an annual Orthodox Jewish pilgrimage. (Uriel Heilman)
JACKSON, N.J. (JTA) – Pinchas Cohen spent most of Monday wandering around Six Flags Great Adventure under a blazing sun, wearing a knee-length black coat and carrying a big box of shmura matzah under his arm. An imposing, Russian-born Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid who now lives in Brooklyn, Cohen came to… Read more »
Jesse Sbaih in his law office, April 8, 2016. (Ron Kampeas)
HENDERSON, Nev. (JTA) – Come November, Nevadans in this suburban Las Vegas district may well elect to Congress Jacky Rosen, a software developer and president of her synagogue. A Jordanian-American lawyer says her win would be at his expense, and it’s because of his Muslim faith. But Jesse Sbaih isn’t blaming… Read more »
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders greet each other at the CNN Presidential Debate in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 14, 2016. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – The combative tone in Bernie Sanders’ campaign statements faded on Tuesday evening to a softer pitch of suasion. “I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her victories tonight, and I look forward to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come,” Sanders’ statement began after his rival for… Read more »
House Speaker Paul Ryan speaking with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., April 13, 2016. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Paul Ryan wants you to know he’s not running for president, he’s no fan of the Obama doctrine and he’s not a neoconservative. What the Wisconsin congressman wants to be, he suggested at an April 14 breakfast in his Capitol Hill offices with foreign policy reporters, is the leader of… Read more »
Mel Brooks doing a Hitler bit in an interview for "The Last Laugh," director Ferne Pearlstein's new documentary about Holocaust humor. (Tangerine Entertainment)
NEW YORK (JTA) — In “The Last Laugh,” a new documentary about humor and the Holocaust (you read that right), the comedian Judy Gold tells this joke: If the Nazis forced her to stand naked on a line with other women, would she hold her stomach in? How you,… Read more »
Demonstrators protesting against the arrival of Muslim immigrants to Europe in The Hague, Netherlands, April 10, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Donald Trump’s xenophobic views are neither new nor particularly shocking in Europe, where fears of jihadism and the challenges of illegal immigration are blowing winds into the sails of a rising far right. Although the Republican presidential hopeful’s statements on immigrants, Mexicans and Muslims are often… Read more »
Merav Michaeli, shown in the Knesset, came to the United States with the message that Israel is still improving. (Michal Fattal)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When a pro-Israel U.S. lawmaker greeted a member of Israel’s Knesset here last week, the former may not have anticipated the candor of the latter. “Give me good news,” Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., told Merav Michaeli on April 13, a typical request when the ranking Democrat on the… Read more »
Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn, March 22, 2015. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — For a people obsessed with numbers, the Jews have relatively scant concrete data about how, exactly, the Jews voted in Tuesday’s presidential primaries in New York. But we do know enough to make some educated guesses. Here’s what we know: Approximately 12 percent of… Read more »
Firefighters and rescue personnel at the scene of a bus bombing in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem, April 18, 2016. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — At least 21 people were injured in a bus bombing in Jerusalem, police said, in the first such attack in Israel in years. A city bus exploded and went up in flames Monday evening on a major thoroughfare in the southern end of the capital. The blast… Read more »
Simone Zimmerman (Facebook)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders’ campaign suspended its new Jewish outreach director over the tone of her past criticism of Israel. “She has been suspended while we investigate the matter further,” Michael Briggs, a campaign spokesman, said Thursday, referring to Simone Zimmerman. Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist,… Read more »
(Copyright Anne Lowe)
Tucsonan Anne Lowe created “Miriam Dancing With Her Timbrel” for the AJP, illustrating a poem she wrote some years ago. … Read more »
