Tagged HEADLINES

PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — By now, the whole world knows the name and face of Joshua Fattal, the 29-year-old Elkins Park, Pa., native who spent 26 months in an Iranian prison before being reunited with his family last week in Oman and arriving back on U.S. soil on Sunday.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Mahmoud Abbas outlined a vision for an independent Palestine that hewed to the two-state formula but also revived rhetoric that hearkened back to an era of Palestinian belligerence. Shortly after concluding his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, the Palestinian Authority president was… Read more »

Asked why we fast on Yom Kippur, the prophet Isaiah responded, “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” (Isaiah 58:6) Each year, the local Jewish community honors Isaiah with the Project Isaiah High Holidays food drive benefiting the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. This year,… Read more »

Amy Hirshberg Lederman

Exactly 10 years ago this month, I wrote my first column for the Arizona Jewish Post. “Running to Catch Up with Myself” was an attempt to address the confusion, pain and fear I felt after 9/11. I had no idea a decade ago that writing would become such an… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — At first glance, Reut looks like a typical religious Israeli high school. The first day starts with Shacharit, the morning service. The boys, all wearing kippot, sit separately from the girls. Only boys lead the service. There’s plenty of singing and clapping. The service lasts more… Read more »

Marc Stanley, standing, the chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, and NJDC President David Harris at a Wahington fly-in for top NJDC activists, Sept. 8, 2011. (Courtesy National Jewish Democratic Council)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Democratic Party’s outreach to Jewish voters is beginning at home, with pep talks in recent and coming weeks scheduled for top donors and Jewish lawmakers. Insiders acknowledged to JTA that they have to explain Obama’s record on Israel to the very foot soldiers expected to… Read more »

I am suffering from Periodic Missile Stress Disorder (PMSD), which is being aggravated by the world’s indifference to my situation. Once again sirens sounded last night in our sleepy town of Meitar and the non-stop booms of missiles falling in nearby Beersheva could clearly be heard and yet we… Read more »

JTA is introducing a new column, “Seeking Kin,” that aims to help reunite readers with long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Eliyahu Finkelstein grew up in the only Jewish family in the village of Zavizov in northwestern Ukraine, escaped from the Nazis after losing his parents and sister,… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Although the paint is still wet on Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History, an announcement has just been made of a planned National Museum of the Jewish People on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., steps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and not… Read more »

TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — What is the legacy of 9/11? The 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, give us a chance as a nation to reflect on more than just our own stories of what happened that day. One theme that has emerged is “Remember Sept.… Read more »

(Tablet Magazine) — Walk down the cobblestone alley and you’ll see it lined with restaurants serving falafel and schnitzel, and Internet cafes advertising their businesses with Hebrew signs and Israeli flags. Shoppers speak Hebrew, and Israeli pop music emanates from storefronts. A shopkeeper waves and calls out “Shalom!” to… Read more »

Noah Pensak (left) and Jacob Meyer donate books to the Ocotillo Learning Center library. (Courtesy Ocotillo Learning Center)

It started as a novel way to teach Jewish children about philanthropy, social justice and tikkun olam (repairing the world). Today, the mitzvah project has become a cherished part of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah scene. Yet for each child who chooses to take part in this burgeoning tradition,… Read more »

Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Rabbi Levi Matusof, Dec. 12, 2004 (Yasin Aras)

The months of the Hebrew calendar can easily be categorized. We have Nissan exploring slavery and freedom. In Tevet, Tammuz and Av we deplore hatred and the destruction it causes and pray for redemption. Shevat is for the trees and Adar involves uplifting joy. The month of Elul, however,… Read more »

As a child, I grew up listening to music on my father’s prized possession, our stereo system, which consisted of a record player nestled deep within a richly oiled mahogany cabinet and two huge speakers that dominated the living room. Sunday mornings were dedicated to classical music, the afternoons… Read more »

Dr. Lane P. Johnson

The Tucson Maimonides Society will present a dinner event on “Medicine and Marijuana” with guest speaker Dr. Lane P. Johnson on Monday, Sept. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Westward Look Resort. Johnson is an associate professor of clinical family and community medicine and a clinical associate professor in… Read more »

ST. LOUIS (JTA) — American Jews are known for the emphasis they place on academic success. Jewish professors populate America’s universities, and, respectively, Jewish doctors, lawyers and politicians help fill the nation’s hospitals, law firms and legislatures. At the core of this success are generations of American Jewish parents… Read more »

MINORITY OF ONE: The New York Jewish Week looks at the lives of the small numbers of Jewish students enrolled at historically black colleges. “I create my own Jewish life,” says Abraham Mercado, a place-kicker for the football team at Baltimore’s Morgan State University, where he may (or may… Read more »

On Sunday, Aug. 21, Ira Kerem, the TIPS (Tucson Israel Phoenix Seattle) partnership representative in Israel, reported that following the killing of eight Israelis along the border with Egypt by terrorists based in Gaza, the Israeli air force launched attacks into Gaza.  “Since then almost 100 missiles have been fired from… Read more »

(JTA) – He was the Arab world’s most quixotic leader. During the Reagan era, he was Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States. Later, after his apparent cooperation in dismantling nonconventional weapons, he became an ally to President George W. Bush’s administration in the war on terror. He… Read more »

Rabbi Rafoel Franklin at his farm in Swan Lake, N.Y. (Itta Werdiger Roth)

(Tablet Magazine) — Every morning before breakfast, Rabbi Rafoel Franklin, 60, an Orthodox Jew living in Swan Lake, N.Y., puts on tefillin, says his morning prayers, and then heads outside to milk his 30 cows. Three decades ago Franklin and his wife, Naomi, left Monsey, N.Y., the ultra-Orthodox hamlet… Read more »