A Yad Sarah volunteer prepares a wheelchair to be loaned to a client. AJP Associate Editor Sheila Wilensky was in Israel in January with the American Jewish Press Association. From inhalers and humidifiers to walkers and wheelchairs, Israel’s Yad Sarah provides homecare services to thousands of people — all for free. Founded in 1976 in one room, Yad Sarah now has 100… Read more »
Rabbi Richard Address Rabbi Richard F. Address, author of “Seekers of Meaning: Baby Boomers, Judaism, and the Pursuit of Healthy Aging,” will bring his quest to Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging on Tuesday, April 23. In a free public lecture at 7 p.m., Address — a baby boomer himself — will… Read more »
Dan Siegel, M.D. Dan Siegel, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, exemplifies the mission of the Cindy Wool Memorial Seminar on Humanism in Medicine. Siegel is the author of “Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation,” an in-depth exploration of the power of the mind to integrate… Read more »
Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris, third from left, leading the march in his city from Liberty Square to the Old Railway Station, March 2013. (Michael Thaidigsmann/WJC) THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) — Antonis Samaras stood in the pale morning light coming through the stained glass windows of the only Thessaloniki synagogue to survive World War II and vowed, “Never again.” For Greek Jews marking the 70th anniversary of the destruction of this city’s historic Jewish community, the… Read more »
Yityish Aynaw, Miss Israel, meets President Barack Obama during his visit to Israel, March 2013. (Avi Ohayon/GPO/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Yityish Aynaw immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at age 12, she was thrust into an Israeli classroom. An orphan lacking Hebrew skills, Aynaw says she relied on other kids and her own sheer ambition to get through. Ten years later Aynaw, 22, is the… Read more »
Israeli ZAKA emergency rescue team carrying a body bag with one of the victims of the Hezbollah terrorist attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, July 19, 2012. (Dano Monkotovic/FLASH90/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) – The conviction in Cyprus of a Hezbollah operative plotting to attack Israelis could undercut efforts by the terrorist group to carry out additional attacks outside the Middle East. Last week’s conviction was the second confirmation in recent months that Hezbollah is active on European soil. The… Read more »
Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter appears on a hologram-like interactive presentation developed by the USC Shoah Foundation. (USC Institute for Creative Technology) LOS ANGELES (JTA) — In a dark glass building here, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter shows that his memory is crystal clear and his voice is strong. His responses seem a bit delayed — not that different from other survivors I have known who are reluctant to speak openly about… Read more »
President Obama placing a stone on the headstone of Yitzhak and Leah Rabin during a visit to Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, March 22, 2013. (Mark Neyman/GPO/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) — For a trip that U.S. officials had cautioned was not about getting “deliverables,” President Obama’s apparent success during his Middle East trip at getting Israel and Turkey to reconcile has raised some hopes for a breakthrough on another front: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The question now is whether… Read more »
The annual community-wide Yom HaShoah commemoration, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Coalition for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, will be held Sunday, April 7 at 2 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. This year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum… Read more »
(L-R) Liesel (Nele Trebs), Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), Jürgen (Mika Seidel) and Günther (André Frid) in Lore. (Music Box Films) Set during the fall of Germany in April 1945, Cate Shortland’s “Lore” evokes and filters the moral weight of history through a single adolescent girl. Experiential rather than informational, subjective without being reductive, the German-language film is a parable of the end of innocence —the naive innocence of girlhood… Read more »
Probably no more than the top 10 percent of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews will ever shop at Pomegranate, the luxury kosher supermarket recently featured by The New York Times columnist David Brooks in a column titled “The Orthodox Surge.” Brooks chose the upscale kosher version of Whole Foods as the… Read more »
The Noah Warren Cohen Scholarship has been established in memory of Noah Warren Cohen, a young man with great enthusiasm for social causes and compassion for those less fortunate. Noah died in 2010 at the age of 12 and his family has established a scholarship fund that will award… Read more »
Israeli President Shimon Peres presents the Presidential Medal to President Obama at Peres' residence in Jerusalem, March 21, 2013. (Mark Neyman/GPO/Flash90/JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — President Obama had three goals for his first presidential trip to Israel. He wanted to persuade Israelis that the United States is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He wanted to promote the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, albeit without any specific “deliverables.” Most… Read more »
(JTA) — Frolicking with her fiance in the cool waters of the Suez Canal, Lilian Abada would never have imagined she was about to experience the first of a string of events that would ultimately lead her to flee her native Egypt for Israel with only one suitcase. When… Read more »
Some interesting color in this one on President Obama’s time childhood in Indonesia, plus a couple jokes between leaders. Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met just outside the PM’s residence. When they entered the home, they went in front of flags for a photo-op. Obama invited Sara Netanyahu… Read more »
Jewish artist Siona Benjamin paints portraits of women in the Bible, using her Jewish and Inidan background as influences. (Siona Benjamin) MONTCLAIR, N.J. (JTA) — In the space of a single painting, Siona Benjamin juxtaposes feminism, Indian mythology and Jewish imagery. On a three-foot canvas, she’ll paint a portrait of a blue-skinned figure, usually a character from the Bible, with nods to Persian miniatures, Talmudic fables and Vishnu gods. Often… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — On page 15 of the most recent edition of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association’s newsletter, beneath griping about perceived threats to the industry posed by President Obama’s tax and energy policies, was a nugget of positive news: A new coalition had formed between the… Read more »
Wine is an integral part of the Passover Seder as matzah, but for alcoholics this can pose a serious problem. (Shutterstock) NEW YORK (JTA) — It’s rare that an Orthodox rabbi chooses to omit an important Jewish ritual in his holiday celebrations. But in the spring of 2000, Rabbi Yosef Lipsker cleared his living room of furniture, set up three large dining tables and invited dozens of people to a… Read more »
Women of the Wall holding their monthly Rosh Chodesh service at the Western Wall, in contravention of rules barring women from wearing prayer shawls or reading from the Torah at the site, March 12, 2013. (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — If ever there were a gathering of Women of the Wall that was going to spark a wider conflict, Tuesday’s would have been the one. For the past several months, police have detained members of the women’s prayer group during their monthly Rosh Chodesh services for… Read more »
Francine Hermelin Levite and Edgar Bronfman have been using unique versions of the Passover haggadah for years. Now both have decided to publish their versions of the Exodus story. Hermelin Levite, 43, the mother of three school-aged children, is the author of “My Haggadah: Made it Myself,” (http://madeitmyselfbooks.com), an… Read more »
