The Tucson International Jewish Film Festival is celebrating its 24th season this year from Jan. 15 to 24 at several locations around the Old Pueblo. The Tucson Festival is sponsored by the Tucson Jewish Community Center. “We proudly consider it a jewel in the mosaic of our arts and culture programming,” says Lynn Davis, director…
The special Centerpiece Event of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival’s 19th annual event is the recognition and honoring of Theodore Bikel in person as the first recipient of the Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award. Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane will be on hand to present the city’s official proclamation of “Theodore Bikel Day” on Feb. 15…
In just its second year of operation, the Chandler Jewish Preschool at the Pollack Chabad Center for Jewish Life is thriving. The beautiful and spacious facility located just off the 101 and Ray Road is home to 16 curious, wide-eyed and adorable tots from 12 months through pre-kindergarten. The Reggio Emilia approach (named after the…
The recently released census of Jewish day schools in the United States sponsored by the Avi Chai Foundation demonstrates an overall increase in day school enrollment since the surveys began in the 1998-99 school year. Conducted at five-year intervals, this research provides a clear picture of trends in the day school system over an extended…
A story is told of a man named Akiva who could neither read nor write at the age of 40. He was bothered by the fact that people viewed him as ignorant and unlearned. His wife, Rachel, who was disowned by her father when she married him, and Akiva’s teacher, Rabbi Eliezier ben Hyrkanos, recognized…
Limmud’s promise to you is both simple and hopeful: Wherever you find yourself, Limmud will take you one step further on your Jewish journey. Limmud (from the Hebrew word meaning “to learn”) was originally a conference for educators in Great Britain. During the 1990s there was a significant change as Limmud reinvented itself as a…
As a child, I always dreaded going to Hebrew School. Although it was only a few blocks from my public school, the lonely bike ride felt like miles as I watched my friends walk away in the opposite direction, arms linked together like a human gum wrapper chain. Being Jewish in the small town where…
What you see isn’t always what you get. “When I was born, doctors told my parents the traumatic delivery had caused brain damage from hypoxia and would leave me unable to care for myself,” says Bennett Blum. Wrong. At 6 months old, he started talking in two-word sentences and hasn’t slowed down since. Today, Blum…
Danger doesn’t come from the direction of the water. So Big Mama, when not nursing her yearling cub, hungrily chews on long stalks of sedge grass just 10 feet from our zodiac. Dan Wakeman’s 20 years of observing yearly life cycles in British Columbia’s Khutzeymateen, North America’s largest grizzly bear sanctuary, has provided him the…
