Rabbi Adam Chalom The Secular Humanist Jewish Circle will sponsor a lecture on Sunday, March 9, by Rabbi Adam Chalom on “The Secular Synagogue: Judaism Beyond God.” The lecture will be held in the board room of the Junior League, 2099 E. River Road, from 3-5 p.m. Chalom is dean for North… Read more »
Jacqueline Soule Jacqueline Soule, Ph.D., will teach classes on gardening on Wednesday, March 5 and Tuesday, March 11, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The first class is “Create Your Own Biblical Tanakh Garden.” Tucson and Israel share a similar climate, says Soule, so why not… Read more »
Devorah Halberstam honored Raymond Kelly, the former commissioner of the New York Police Department at a gala dinner at the Jewish Children's Museum in May 2013. (Jewish Children's Museum) NEW YORK (JTA) – When a 16-year-old Lubavitcher named Ari Halberstam was gunned down on the Brooklyn Bridge on March 1, 1994 by a Lebanese livery cab driver, the killing seemed to be a cut-and-dried case. The shooter, Rashid Baz, was captured the following day and confessed to police.… Read more »
Children with disabilities and their peers kayaking at the Conservative movement's Camp Ramah Wisconsin. (Courtesy National Ramah commission) NEW YORK (JTA) — In the coming months, six young Jews with disabilities will start paid internships at major Jewish federations through a pilot program. If successful, the program will expand to communities throughout North America. In the fall, Manhattan’s first Jewish day school for children with special needs… Read more »
The protagonist of the Oscar-nominated "Omar" is on the run from Israeli agents who are pursuing the Palestinian murderer of an Israeli soldier. (Adopt Films) LOS ANGELES (JTA) — For cinematic observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this is a banner year, with both sides choosing Oscar submissions that center on the Israeli occupation. Israel’s “Bethlehem,” which pits Shin Bet agents against diverse Palestinian factions eager to blow up the Jewish state, was eliminated early… Read more »
Members of the National Socialist Movement rally near Los Angeles City Hall on April 17, 2010. (David McNew/Getty Images) NEW YORK (JTA) — When Abraham Foxman steps down next summer from his longtime post as national director of the Anti-Defamation League, he’ll be leaving his successor with a much brighter picture on anti-Semitism in America than when Foxman joined the organization in 1965. In an age when anti-Semitic… Read more »
Jonathan S. Tobin In the past few weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry has come under attack from prominent Israelis as well as American friends of the Jewish state for some of the methods he has adopted in his determination to find a solution to the Middle East conflict. Such criticism strikes… Read more »
Rabbi Sharon Brous John Kerry is not a naive man. I met him recently at a luncheon at Georgetown University with a small group of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith leaders brought together to hear the secretary of state’s frank reflections on the peace process. While deeply aware of the complexities and… Read more »
The Invisible Theatre will present “My Buddy,” a tribute to comedian Buddy Hackett — starring his son, Sandy Hackett — on Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9 at the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway Blvd. This musical production will reveal stories about Hackett’s relationships with myriad… Read more »
Lori Hunt as Rosalind Franklin in ‘Photograph 51’ at Live Theatre Workshop “Photograph 51,” a play about Jewish scientist Rosalind Franklin, will be staged at Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd., from Feb. 20 to March 22. Written by Anna Ziegler and directed by Sabian Trout, the production takes on the puzzle of DNA. Franklin, born to an affluent London… Read more »
Abe Chanin, a former publisher of the Arizona Jewish Post, longtime Arizona Daily Star sports editor, University of Arizona professor, author and historian, died Feb. 1 in Albuquerque, N.M. He was 92. Mr. Chanin co-published the Arizona Post, as it was then known, with his wife, Mildred, from 1956… Read more »
"Spiraling" by Ira Wiesenfeld Twelve additions to the Tucson Jewish Community Center’s Sculpture Garden will be unveiled on Sunday, March 9, 1-3 p.m. at the opening of the 5th annual Sculpture Garden exhibition, which features the work of artists from Tucson and across the country. “The goal was to find sculptures that would… Read more »
John Kerry is not the first U.S. secretary of state trying to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Nor the first to be rewarded with angry Israeli response for his efforts. James Baker, for one, is still perceived today as one of the secretaries most hostile to Israel. Kerry,… Read more »
Suzanne Levy (JTA) — On Valentine’s Day, I’d like to sing the praises of American Jewish men. I’m aware it’s a rather large group, but that’s the point: The United States is a sea of plenty for Jewish men. Whereas in Britain, where I grew up, there are only about 300,000… Read more »
From left to right: John Goodman, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Bob Balaban and Bill Murray star in "The Monuments Men" (Claudette Barius/Columbia Pictures) BOSTON (JTA) — There’s nothing like a star-studded Hollywood movie to shine a light on a little-known piece of history. That’s the hope of Robert Edsel, who wrote the book that inspired “The Monuments Men,” the George Clooney-Matt Damon film that opens Friday in theaters across the country. The… Read more »
Anne Heyman (Courtesy of DOROT) AGAHOZO-SHALOM YOUTH VILLAGE, Rwanda (JTA) – Anne Heyman’s death during a horse-riding competition in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 31 shocked and devastated many in the Jewish world. But it was Heyman’s work in Rwanda that so many of her admirers will remember most. A former assistant district attorney… Read more »
Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin [Britta Van Vranken) There’s television footage currently going viral on the web showing a group of Chabad yeshiva students dancing on Interstate Highway 80 during a traffic jam. “I’ve been covering weather stories for 20 years now and never have I seen what we are about to show you,” said WPXI-TV/ Channel… Read more »
When the Israeli mobile maps start-up Waze accepted a buyout from Google for more than $1 billion in June, each of the company’s 100 employees walked away with an average of $1.2 million from the sale. An even bigger check, though, went to Baruch Lipner, a Canadian Israeli who… Read more »
A modern Orthodox high school in New York recently announced it will allow girls to lay tefillin. Another school has quietly done so since the 1990s. The announcement last week that SAR, a modern Orthodox high school in New York, is allowing girls to lay tefillin is helping expose an increasingly sharp fault line within Orthodoxy. For decades, it has been difficult to sort out the precise dividing lines between the varieties of Orthodoxy —… Read more »
Ira Sheskin, a professor of geography at the University of Miami, has conducted 43 Jewish federation population surveys since 1982. His most recent began in mid-January in Miami. (Uriel Heilman) MIAMI (JTA) — Fueled by KitKats and Cherry Coke, some two dozen people sit hunched over stacks of questionnaires in a windowless conference room in Miami, a phalanx of 1980s-era push-button telephones in front of them. It’s the first day of work on a new survey of Miami Jews,… Read more »
