Tagged FRONT

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

  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 »

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 »

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 »

Tucsonan Anne Lowe created “Miriam Dancing With Her Timbrel” for the AJP, illustrating a poem she wrote some years ago. … Read more »

(JTA) — You know Lily. You do. She’s that chipper, slyly witty girl who works at the AT&T store — not a real one, but the one you see in those ubiquitous TV ads. What you may not know is that the actress who plays her, Milana Vayntrub, is… Read more »

Child victims will be the focus of the annual community Yom HaShoah commemoration, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, which will be held Sunday, May 1, at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. This year’s program, “They Were Children… Read more »

The Arizona International Film Festival, running now through May 1, is celebrating its 25th year with films from 25 countries. Revolving around the theme “Bridging Cultures,” 30 full length features and 58 shorts in a variety of categories are scheduled at nine downtown venues. Among the films is “Blind… Read more »

For local Jewish community organizations to reach and attract new members, specifically young Jewish adults, leaders must learn to use the tools of social media, such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. That was the message of “A Whole New World … Engagement of Young Adults and Young Families,”… Read more »

LAS VEGAS (JTA) – Ted Cruz came here to woo Republican Jews over the weekend, and in the absence of his opponents for the GOP presidential nomination came away with qualified support based not on who he is but who he is not — Donald Trump. Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich skipped… Read more »

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — In January 2015, Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff was stuck in Buenos Aires when his phone rang. He’d been planning a trip to New York but a storm had canceled all flights, and Polakoff, the rabbi of Cordoba, a province in central Argentina, was cooling his… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The scene could easily have been mistaken for a rock concert at one of Brooklyn’s countless music halls.Smartly dressed 20- and 30-somethings crammed into a small corner building. The overflow crowd, clad in skinny jeans and black beanies, spilled onto the sidewalk, where they drank coffee… Read more »

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (JTA) — In a ramshackle village off a dirt road in the West Bank’s central hills, near an inhabited shack with a cloth roof and tin walls, stands an outhouse bearing a peeling sticker with the European Union flag. The text below the flag reads “Humanitarian… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – How was Helene and Bob Fine’s family seder in 2000 different from every other Passover night? First lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea came. (President Bill Clinton would have joined, too, if not for Yasser Arafat, but we’ll get to that.) This was no… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – For the first time in decades New York, politically, is about to live up to its “make it here, make it anywhere” promise. The vast state and its huge Jewish community –nearly 2 million, or just under 10 percent of the population — have not figured… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Here’s a riddle: If a transgender Jew shows up at an Orthodox synagogue, on which side of the mechitzah barrier separating the sexes should the person be seated? That’s an easy one compared to more complex Jewish legal questions raised by people who don’t identify… Read more »

KFAR SABA, Israel (JTA) — One family lost their son in late July 2014. The other lost theirs on the first of August in the same year. One family has lobbied the United Nations and crossed an ocean in hopes of bringing their son’s remains back. The other mostly stays… Read more »