Tagged HEADLINES

“Border Communities: Issues, Ideas and Initiatives” will be the focus of a breakfast and panel discussion presented by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. The event will take place on Friday, April 11 from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. in the Tucson Jewish Community… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Be afraid. Be very afraid. Even if you converted to Judaism under Orthodox auspices, your conversion may be called into question by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and the Rabbinical Council of America, the main centrist Orthodox rabbinical group in the United States. If you live… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The Obama administration is scrambling to salvage Israeli-Palestinian talks threatened by disputes over core identity issues for each side: recognition of the state’s Jewish character for Israel, the release of prisoners for the Palestinians. Martin Indyk, the peace process envoy for U.S. Secretary of State John… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) – In the lead-up to last year’s Knesset elections, the pro-settlement Jewish Home party released a controversial ad showing party chairman Naftali Bennett smiling alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The message was clear: Netanyahu will be prime minister, but a vote for Jewish Home would… Read more »

Protesters lighting memorial candles at a rally in Budapest against a government plan to erect a statue presenting Hungary as an innocent victim of Nazi occupation, March 23, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA) — A lone heckler tried to disrupt him, but Hungarian lawmaker Janos Hargitai was undeterred as he spoke earlier this month at a memorial day gathering in Hungary commemorating the 1848 revolution there. The holiday marks Hungary’s attempt to break free from the Austrian Empire, and… Read more »

The central synagogue of the Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda. Most of the 2000-member community is conservative, but a small faction has chosen to practice Orthodoxy. (Ben Sales)

NABUGOYE, Uganda (JTA) — On Fridays at sundown, the Jewish residents of this village set amid the lush hills of eastern Uganda gather in the synagogue to greet Shabbat. The room is bare, the light is dim and the Conservative prayer books are worn. But the spare surroundings do… Read more »

Operation Elijah is a community effort to ensure that every Jew in Southern Arizona has a seat at a Seder table for Passover. Sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish Community Relations Council and Outreach Connections, the project matches those who are new to the Tucson community,… Read more »

The University of Arizona Hillel Foundation’s annual 24-hour Holocaust vigil will be held from Wednesday, March 26 at noon till Thursday at 12:15 p.m. on the UA Mall. This year’s event will offer a variety of discussions, films and exhibits that address the theme, “For the dead and the… Read more »

Once a month, a group of about 20 Jewish women meet to talk about their children. That may sound fairly routine, but this gathering has a unique purpose. All of these women have children or grandchildren with special needs. They meet to share information and to support each other.… Read more »

Since 1970, individuals, local synagogues and businesses have joined with Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona for Matza & More, collecting and delivering Seder food items to more than 200 individuals and families in need. This year, 13-year-old Ben Spiegel is collecting food and financial donations for… Read more »

Vladimir Putin with Israeli President Shimon Peres during Peres' official visit to Moscow in 2012. (Mark Neyman/GPO/FLASH90)

(JTA) — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s… Read more »

A wounded individual os transported to a waiting plane, where he will be flown to Israel to receive medical care. (Shimon Briman)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — For 17-year-old Bolodimir Bedyuk, a Ukrainian who was severely wounded in clashes with Ukrainian police on Feb. 18, Israeli medical care may be his only hope. After a pitched battle with Ukrainian police forces on Institutskaya Street in Kiev, Bedyuk suffered chest wounds and extensive… Read more »

MADRID, Spain (JTA) — News that Spain is proposing to offer citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled in the 15th and 16th centuries spread like wildfire in Israel. Within hours of the Spanish government’s announcement last month, the Israeli website Ynet published a list of family names supposedly… Read more »

Barbara Garson

The Tucson Festival of Books, now the fourth largest book festival in the United States, returns to the University of Arizona campus March 15 and 16. One of the many Jewish writers presenting this year will be Barbara Garson, whose latest book is “Down the Up Escalator: How the… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA)– On Mar. 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day, a day intended to celebrate the economic and social advances made by women, while at the same time drawing attention to areas that still need action. It is striking that this year the day falls so close to Purim.… Read more »

Israeli Arab children at a school in Baqa al-Gharblyye reading books from the Lantern Library, a spinoff of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation's PJ Library. (Akmal Nagnagy/Harold Grinspoon Foundation)

NEW YORK (JTA) — A Religion News Service article about the PJ Library is headlined “Free books — 10 million of them — help keep Jewish kids Jewish.” Now the foundation behind the widely lauded nine-year-old program — which distributes free books to more than 130,000 Jewish children in… Read more »

Magician Michael C. DeSchalit of Magically Speaking will appear at Congregation Chofetz Chayim’s “Magical Purim Party” and dinner on Sunday, March 16 at 4 p.m. DeSchalit has performed in such venues as the Magic Castle in Hollywood, the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, the Riviera and Circus Circus hotels in… Read more »

Beth S. Wenger

Beth S. Wenger will pre­sent “Civic Lessons: Jews and American National Holidays,” as part of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies’ free Shaol & Louis Pozez Memorial Lectureship series, on Monday, March 10 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. When America’s Jews participated in national celebrations… Read more »

Just how open should Jewish institutions be when it comes to talking about Israel? That’s the question at the center of a flurry of controversies over the last few days involving Jewish museums, an Orthodox high school and Hillel chapters on college campuses. For years, Jewish institutions have been… Read more »

Rabbi Ephraim Zimmerman

Our Jewish history is extraordinary. According to the laws of nature, the course of our nation should have been drastically different. (You’ve probably gotten an email or two about this topic with the subject line reading FW: FW:). What is even more fascinating is that this incredible story was… Read more »