Suzi Hileman, shortly after the 2011 shooting, displaying some of the hundreds of cards and letters she received from well-wishers around the world. (Sheila Wilensky) Three bullets ripped through Suzi Hileman’s body during the Jan. 8 shooting rampage that killed her 9-year-old neighbor and friend Christina-Taylor Green, and wounded 12 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Hileman, who is Jewish, told the AJP, “I choose to look forward. I’m thinking about what I can do… Read more »
Smoke from a burning government building fills the sky above the Eyptian Museum in Cairo, Jan. 29. The photograph was taken from a tour bus window. (Joan Elder) When Tucsonan Joan Elder signed up for a 10-day late-January trip to Egypt to celebrate her 70th birthday, she had no idea that her adventure would be interrupted by massive anti-government demonstrations. Apparently, the Egyptian people were just as stunned by the uprising. “No one expected anything like this… Read more »
Pro-Israel groups are caught in a dilemma over whether to back Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak or his opponents, such as those seen here gathering in Cairo on Jan. 25, 2011 to call for his ouster. (Muhammad Ghafari) WASHINGTON (JTA) — As Egypt convulses, pro-Israel groups and U.S. Congress members are seized by the ancient maternal dilemma: If you have nothing nice to say, should you say anything at all? The question of whether to stake a claim in the protests against 30 years of President Hosni… Read more »
Sen. Joe Lieberman, right, talks to Gen. David Petraeus at the International Security Assistance Force Headquarters in Afghanistan during a congressional delegation tour, Nov. 10, 2010. (Joshua Treadwell) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Joe Lieberman ascended to national prominence by building one bridge at a time. Then, having reached the pinnacle by becoming the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, he spent 10 years burning bridges. Ultimately, Lieberman’s most celebrated bridge — between America’s non-Christian, non-establishment minorities and… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, President Nixon (center) and Secretary of State Kissinger in a 1973 Oval Office meeting covered in newly released Nixon White House tapes. (White House Photo Office Collection) WASHINGTON (JTA) — It should have been ancient, if unsavory, news: A cavalier reference to gassing Jews, an aside in a conversation nearly 40 years old. But the aside was pronounced by Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jew who fled Nazi horrors as a child and who has been honored… Read more »
Barbra Streisand, left, Jerry Seinfeld and Bette Midler were among the stars who gathered for a gala celebrating the new National Museum of American Jewish hisotry, Nov. 13, 2010. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images) PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — Her granddaughter at her elbow, 89-year-old Ruth Sarner-Libros walked slowly through the fourth floor of the National Museum of American Jewish History, drinking in every display. Flashing a broad smile, Sarner-Libros said it was beyond anything she had imagined when she hosted the museum’s first… Read more »
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, named by Talk magazine as one of the 50 best speakers in the United States, will be the keynote speaker at the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Campaign Kickoff event on Wednesday, Nov. 17 at Congregation Anshei Israel at 7:15 p.m. The author of “Jewish Literacy:… Read more »
An all-time high of 600 college students took part in the 2010 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America held in New Orleans, Nov. 7, 2010. (JFNA) NEW ORLEANS, La. (JTA) – After three days of schmoozing, sessions and feel-good speeches, the 3,000 or so Jewish federation officials who came to the annual General Assembly may have left New Orleans feeling invigorated. The view expressed by many top officials was that after two years of a… Read more »
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords prepares to open the Jewish History Museum’s time capsule Oct. 24. (Madeline Friedman/Jewish History Museum) Hundreds of people crowded around the courtyard of the Jewish History Museum on Sunday to witness the opening of a 100-year-old time capsule. The capsule had been placed under the cornerstone of the building, originally the Stone Avenue Temple, when it was built in 1910. The building was the… Read more »
Members of an aliyah group from the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement from Toronto, Montreal and Detroit at a summer camp in 1949, not long before many of them would immigrate to Israel. (Courtesy of Ted Friedgut) KIBBUTZ GALON, Israel (JTA) – In 1952, a 20-year-old with bright blue eyes who had never seen much of life outside of the Bronx, N.Y., mounted a kibbutz tractor armed with a rifle to plow wheat and sorghum fields bordering the Gaza Strip. Saul Adelson would live in Israel… Read more »
(L-R) Brenda Landau of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, Vern Kozlen of the Jewish Federation of Palm Springs and Desert Area, former Canadian Olympic swimmer Karen James and Israeli President Shimon Peres recite the Shehecheyanu blessing at Peres’ residence in Jerusalem on July 13. In Hungary, as in other eastern European countries, many young adults are now discovering their Jewish histories and identities. Recently, four Jewish women from Tucson experienced their own journeys of Jewish discovery as participants in a Jewish Federations of North America mission to Hungary and Israel, joining 120 U.S.… Read more »
Karla Ember “Radiant” and “giving” are the words friends use to describe Karla Marie Ember, 54, cantorial soloist for Congregation Chaverim, who died Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010, from injuries sustained in an attack on Friday, Sept. 3.… Read more »
Tucsonan Peter Ruiz, who has cerebral palsy, with the mechanical device that will allow him to sound the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. Blowing a shofar via a mechanical device? When 23-year-old Peter Ruiz, who has cerebral palsy, presses a touch screen at Congregation Or Chadash’s contemporary Rosh Hashanah service on Thursday, Sept. 9 at 8:30 a.m., he will remarkably do just that. “This may be the first time this has been… Read more »
Tucsonan Fran Katz, right, and Kim Rosenberg of Portland, Ore., haul rubble during a Jewish Federations of North America fact-finding mission to Haiti. Tucsonan Fran Katz joined a national Jewish Federation of North America fact-finding tour to Haiti, from July 5 to 7, to see firsthand how American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee funds have aided Haitians since the January earthquake, which killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced more than 1.2 million.… Read more »
Rachel Green reads a newspaper while floating in the Dead Sea Sixteen Jewish women, ages 32 to 45, plus group leader Amy Hirshberg Lederman, departed from Tucson in June on a 10-day Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona mission that many say changed their lives. “It was a pretty emotional trip. If the personal is political then this was a political… Read more »
Marc Mezvinsky and Chelsea Clinton during their wedding ceremony, July 31, 2010 (Genevieve de Manio) NEW YORK (JTA) — Is it possible that the first iconic Jewish picture of the decade is of an interfaith marriage? Photographs taken Saturday show the Jewish groom wearing a yarmulke and a crumpled tallit staring into the eyes of his giddy bride under a traditional Jewish wedding canopy… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a Jewish gathering in New York, July 7, 2010. (Michael Priest Photography) NEW YORK (JTA) — It was an otherwise wholly unremarkable stump speech before a friendly audience in New York. On the evening of July 7 at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, the Israeli prime minister addressed a roomful of more than 300 Jews on the subjects of Iran, his government’s eagerness… Read more »
Tens of thousands of haredi Orthodox Israelis take to the streets in Jerusalem to protest a court order requiring haredi parents to send their daughters to an Emanuel school , June 17, 2010. (Abir Sultan / Flash90 / JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — The showdown between the Supreme Court and the parents of students at a haredi Orthodox school found guilty of discriminatory practices against Sephardic girls has brought already strained secular-religious relations in Israel to a fever pitch. A remark by Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy that the… Read more »
The Israeli Navy, seen here approaching one of a flotilla of Gaza-bound ships, clashed with Turkish activists aboard one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara. (Moti Milrod/Pool/Flash90/JTA). ASHDOD, Israel (JTA) — The blurry black-and-white video footage was not what any Israeli wanted to see: elite navy commandos armed with paint ball guns (the pistols were only to be used as a last resort) dangling by a rope onto a boat filled with activists wielding metal bars… Read more »
“The world is changing so fast, that none of us feels completely prepared for leadership. Engaging with very bright thinkers helps position us,” Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, said during the 5th Saul Tobin Jewish Community Leadership Institute, held in April and… Read more »
