Rabbi Stephanie Aaron We were a gathering of 60 adults, drenched, freezing, each of us holding the image of roll-call, rows and rows of Jews standing in the pelting rain, weak from starvation, wearing cotton shifts, frozen human beings. We held onto our umbrellas with clenched fists and clenched hearts; walking, living… Read more »
Faina Dorfman, whose only child, Yevgenia, 15, was killed in a suicide bombing at Tel Aviv’s seaside Dolphinarium disco. (Dina Kraft) Tel Aviv — Faina Dorfman, who immigrated to Israel from Uzbekistan hoping that her only child would have a better life here, walks along a stretch of beach just south of a tattered seaside disco called the Dolphinarium. Ten years ago, a young Palestinian detonated a bomb packed with… Read more »
The Tucson Jewish Community Center summer camp (“Camp J”) and the Weintraub Israel Center are seeking host families for two Israeli counselors who will be working at Camp J this summer. Yael Weizner, 19, has a passion for dance and painting. She comes from a non-religious background and although… Read more »
As the summer begins, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona campaign leaders are working to close the 2011 Campaign by contacting past donors who have not yet made a pledge for this year. “The budgeting process for next season begins this summer,” explains Campaign Chair Kathryn Unger. “And the 2011… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Joan Nathan says she’s always had a particular fascination with French Jews and their food. For Nathan, author of “Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (Knopf, 2010), the love affair with French cuisine started as a teenager when she made… Read more »
Ever wonder what’s in the Talmud and why it was written? Who wrote it and where? Why we study it and what we can learn from it? The Tucson Board of Rabbis will host “Talmud in Twenty” on Sunday, June 5 at Congregation Anshei Israel. The program will begin… Read more »
Congregation Anshei Israel’s Esther B. Feldman Preschool/Kindergarten will open its summer camp June 6 to children ages 2 to 6. This year, an additional 4-week morning camp for children with special needs ages 3 to 5 will be offered. Staffed by Debby Eisen, a certified special education teacher with… Read more »
Barry Baker, one of 43 Jewish Federations of North America Young Leadership Cabinet members from around the United States, represented Tucson on a JFNA mission to Chile — its first ever — and Argentina earlier this month. After spending two days in Chile and three in Argentina, Baker told… Read more »
Amy Hirshberg Lederman I recently returned from a fantastic trip to Israel — an interfaith business and leadership delegation sponsored by the America-Israel Friendship League. Our group consisted of 29 dynamic Tucsonans — a vibrant mix of faiths, ethnicities and professional backgrounds. Together we explored the religious, archeological, business and cultural sites… Read more »
Lillian Mizrahi, left, one of many Peace Corps volunteers over age 50, poses with her Macedonian host "mother" -- who is younger than Mizrahi. (Peace Corps) Lillian Mizrahi is not your typical Peace Corps volunteer. A Jewish woman from the Bronx who is now 69 years old, Mizrahi first considered joining 40 years ago, when she moved to Los Angeles from New York, but her life got busy with children and a career. “Two years… Read more »
Hadassah Rosensaft is flanked by her future husband, Josef, left, and Earl Harrison, President Truman's special envoy, at the Bergen-Belsen camp, July 1945. (Menachem Rosensaft) NEW YORK (JTA) — Sunday, May 13, 1945, five days after the end of World War II in Europe, was Mother’s Day in the United States. At Bergen-Belsen in Germany, however, there was nothing for my mother to celebrate on that day as she took part in the ongoing… Read more »
SAG HARBOR, N.Y. (JTA) — Change is afoot in American Reform Judaism. A new president of the Union for Reform Judaism has been selected. The movement has launched a series of nationwide public forums to discuss its future. Hundreds of Reform rabbis have endorsed a plan toward achieving greater… Read more »
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) — On a recent trip to Berlin with a dozen other Conservative rabbis, we made certain to stop at the apartment building that Regina Jonas once called home. I had never heard of Jonas, but to the four female rabbis in our group she was… Read more »
(JTA) — We appreciate Rabbi Shafran’s embrace of the importance of the work of Magen Tzedek when he states in his JTA Op-Ed, “to be sure Jewish ethical values in food production are no less important (than) halachic concerns, and are indeed embodied in independent halachic mandates. But they… Read more »
(JTA) — There is something ironic, to put it politely, about an effort championing ethics that speaks from both sides of its mouth. That would be the new certification seal for kosher food products, created by a Conservative rabbi and actively being promoted by his movement, that aims to… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Known today as the massacre at Babi Yar, the killing near Kiev of tens of thousands of Jews by German troops at the end of September 1941 is remembered today as one of the most grisly chapters of the Holocaust in Ukraine. In the weeks… Read more »
Lisa Edelstein, a star of the hit television show "House," jokingly comforts a dummy used in medical simulations at the Sheba Medical Center, an Israeli hospital outside of Tel Aviv alongside fellow cast members. [Jorge Novominsky] RAMAT GAN, Israel (JTA) — On television Lisa Edelstein, a star of the hit Fox show “House,” and her fellow actors work medical miracles every episode. But at an Israeli hospital she stumbled trying her hand at simulated arthroscopic surgery. “I’m so glad this is not a living person,”… Read more »
A breakfast meeting cosponsored by Hadassah Southern Arizona and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Foundation of Southern Arizona, “Views on Recovery and Progress: A Conversation with Tucson City Council Members and Pima County Board of Supervisors,” held at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on April… Read more »
(JTA) — Jewish and Israeli leaders welcomed the news that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan. The body of bin Laden, head of the terrorist group al-Qaida and the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks on New York and Washington, was… Read more »
Nazi defendants listen to testimony at the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, which set a precendent for prosecuting crimes agains humanity. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of John W. Mosenthal) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sixty-five years ago at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, 22 defendants stood in the dock. They represented a cross-section of Nazi diplomatic, economic, political and military leadership, and became the first people in history to be indicted for crimes against humanity. A tribunal of… Read more »
