Salmon Cakes with Tropical Fruit Salsa Passover may be the mother of all kitchen yuntifs, but stay cool and don’t stress. Last year, 99 percent of the dishes I made for Passover weren’t actually Passover recipes. Of course they were kosher for Passover, but they didn’t require any major Passover ingredient tweaks. These recipes were… Read more »
NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — The novelist Jonathan Safran Foer grew up with a fairly typical American Passover. His father would use the Maxwell House Haggadah, supplemented with his own pamphlet of writings, and lead the annual Foer Seder. But nine years ago, sitting at his family Seder… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Though the death last weekend of John Demjanjuk brought a close to the seemingly never-ending quest for justice in the case of a man long accused of being a Nazi war criminal, it also brought a premature end to the legal battle over his legacy. Though Demjanjuk,… Read more »
(N.Y. Jewish Week) — The recent celebration of Purim offers an appropriate moment to recall a man known for a time as “America’s Haman.” That Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s story ended very differently than the story of Haman in the Book of Esther reminds us how America itself is… Read more »
Guy Gelbart The month of Adar is here, “Mishenichnas Adar marbin b’simcha!” — It’s Adar, be happy! The month of Adar is considered the month of joy in Jewish tradition. As my grandmother used to say, “That’s the way we are; you need to tell us to be happy.” It seems… Read more »
State Sens. Steve Gallardo and Robert Meza, both of Phoenix, walked out of an Arizona Senate hearing March 1 to protest a presentation by Glenn Spencer, a border activist who the Anti-Defamation League calls “an anti-Hispanic, anti-Semitic bigot.” Sen. Sylvia Allen invited Spencer to speak to the Arizona Senate… Read more »
Rabbi Michael Morgan When Rabbi Michael Morgan, Ph.D., comes to Tucson as Temple Emanu-El’s Bilgray scholar, be ready for some lively intellectual discussion. Morgan, a distinguished scholar in post-Holocaust philosophy and the author of 16 books, will be a scholar-in-residence at Temple Emanu-El March 22 to 24, with his first talk at… Read more »
New Jersey native hopes to sled for Israel at Olympics (Ken Childs) Meet Bradley Chalupski, Israel’s best hope for a medal on the bobsled track at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. Chalupski is an unlikely Israeli athlete. For one thing, he competes in skeleton, a sport that’s virtually unknown in Israel — not to mention the rest of… Read more »
Yair Miller, left, and Ahron Guttman seek comfort from their fathers after losing the championship game, March 3, 2012. (Samantha Steinberg) FORT WORTH, Texas (JTA) — In Texas, they say, high school athletics are a religion. But last weekend the saying took on a new meaning. The Robert M. Beren Academy, a small Modern Orthodox school in Houston, had captured national headlines during the week. Its boys’ basketball team had… Read more »
BERLIN (JTA) — A new documentary is shining light on Germany’s neo-Nazi music scene and the role it plays in cultivating a violent far-right subculture. The film “Blut muss Fliessen” (Blood Must Flow) looks at the neo-Nazi music scene in Germany, as well as in Austria, Italy and Hungary.… Read more »
Demonstrators in Moscow protest Vladimir Putin's re-election, including one carrying a sign reading "We are not an opposition, we are your employers!" with the word "fired" over a drawing of Putin's face, March 5, 2012. (Freedom House via CC) (JTA) — With Vladimir Putin’s re-election as president of Russia pretty much a foregone conclusion, the question facing Russia was never what would result from last weekend’s election but what would happen after the vote. Thousands of protesters turned out Monday in a Moscow saturated with police and soldiers… Read more »
Ruth Feigenbaum, founder of the Support Group of Families of the Terminally Ill in Zumbabwe, with AIDS orphan Ruth Thabini Dube. (Courtesy SGOFOTI) JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (JTA) — Two years after moving to Zimbabwe from South Africa 20 years ago, Ruth Feigenbaum noticed that her gardener, James Phiri, was losing weight and looking ill. With the help of a physician friend, Phiri was diagnosed: Like nearly one in seven Zimbabweans, he was… Read more »
(JTA) — Thirty years ago, a Jewish woman experiencing domestic violence had few places to turn. Community leaders strongly resisted acknowledging violence for fear that it would harm marriages and break up families. Few services existed for women seeking support in a Jewish setting. Prior to 1994, the U.S.… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — It ordered the West Bank security fence rerouted because it cut through private Palestinian property. It overturned state-backed discrimination against Arab Israelis on issues of land distribution and ruled against the Israel Defense Forces’ use of military methods deemed to cause “disproportionate” harm to Palestinian civilians.… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel — three prominent Jewish activists who have joined with other prominent people in a bid to remove a group with a blood-soaked history from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — In advance of Super Tuesday, JTA takes a look at the stances of the four Republican presidential candidates on some issues of Jewish interest. The candidates are listed in alphabetical order. ABORTION Newt Gingrich: Has said that abortion should not be legal, though he makes… Read more »
Syrians demonstrate in the coastal city of Banias against the regime of hard-line leader Bashar Assad in the spring of 2011. (Syrian Freedom via Creative Commons) As the Syrian government intensifies its assault on opposition strongholds, the debate is heating up in Washington over how to end the bloody crackdown and bring about regime change. The Obama administration has tried to ratchet up pressure on the Syrian regime through international diplomacy and strong economic sanctions.… Read more »
Tucson diners will now be able to go out on the town while still paying attention to calories. Twenty-seven restaurant owners joined nutritional experts earlier this month to launch the “Smart Choices for Healthy Dining” program. The program is one of the crowning achievements of the $16 million grant… Read more »
Rabbi Jason Holtz These are the things that are limitless, of which a person enjoys the fruit of the world, while the principal remains in the world to come … visiting the sick. — Rabbi Yochanan as cited in Shabbat 127 Back in September, I was a very healthy guy, never having… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — During February, Jewish communities across North America observe Jewish Disability Awareness Month. It is an opportunity for us to raise awareness of the needs, strengths, opportunities and challenges of individuals with disabilities in our communities, and to ensure we are building more inclusive communities that celebrate… Read more »
