When Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker was taken hostage along with a few of his congregants in their Colleyville, Texas synagogue in January 2022, it sent a shudder through the nation’s Jewish communities, specifically its synagogues. Jewish clergy were already keenly aware of the vulnerability t…

Next fall, when Zack Okun starts his college career at Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University, he’ll have just enough course credits to make him a second-semester sophomore — even though he’s graduating from high school this spring.

Avery Chadwick didn’t know it when she was first assigned a project about the Holocaust, but she soon discovered that she had something of a personal connection to the subject. Her grandfather’s longtime friend, Marc Yablonka, was the son of a survivor, the grandson of a murdered victim and …

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel joined Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego on Tuesday, May 9, as the mayor announced “an aggressive new effort to close the digital divide and connect more Phoenix residents to high-speed internet in 2023.”

In 2001, ninth-grader Shulamit Izen, an out Jewish lesbian who felt isolated in her suburban Boston Jewish high school, decided to start a gay/straight student alliance (GSA). The struggle she faced convincing her fellow students, teachers, principal and broader Jewish community to accept he…

A makeshift shuk lined the far side of the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus’ parking lot on Sunday afternoon, serving as the entrance for the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center’s community-wide celebration of Israel’s 75th birthday. A multitude of Israeli flags and vendors selling J…

Jeremy Rovinsky has always held firm when it comes to spending Purim with his family rather than at work. Although it’s a holiday that doesn’t prohibit observant Jews from driving, using technology or other work-related things, Rovinsky views it as an important day to set aside exclusively f…

The week of April 17-21, the 11th annual Rosenbluth Family Charitable Foundation Genocide Awareness Week (GAW) brought together genocide scholars and survivors, as well as artists and activists, for an educational initiative involving lectures, exhibits and storytelling on Tempe’s Arizona St…

Nona Siegel cares deeply about the environment. She has a degree in environmental science, follows a vegan diet and is a founding member of Temple Chai’s Eco Chai group, the Phoenix Reform synagogue’s “green team.”

Ari Simones was a relatively shy kid in high school, so when he was a high-school sophomore and heard about a new summer volunteer opportunity for Hebrew High students, he thought it sounded like a good way to meet a few new people and grow his small circle of friends.

A few years ago, when Rabbi Laura Geller was still the senior rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California, she began to notice that many of her older congregants had started to drift away and she wanted to know why. At the time, she was also contemplating what her life after retirem…

On the last two days of Passover, a gruesome anti-abortion display featuring Holocaust victims appeared on the campus mall of the University of Arizona in Tucson. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, an anti-abortion rights organization that carries its display filled with images from genocide…

Antisemitic vandalism in Arizona remained worryingly high last year, with 53 reported antisemitic incidents across the state, nearly double the amount from 2018, 2019 and 2020 and roughly the same as 2021. That number comes from the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) annual audit of antisemitic …

Linda Zell has been the face of the Jewish Tuition Organization (JTO) for the last two decades, but come July she will pass the executive director baton to Janet Silva to spend more time with family, travel and finally do some of the things she enjoys but hasn’t always had time for.

Rise Stillman was 14 when she was transported to Auschwitz in April 1944, a day after Passover ended.

In late February, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent and nonpartisan government agency, released a report stating that domestic terrorism increased by 357% in the last decade and found that racially or ethnically motivated extremists committed the most violent in…

Temple Kol Ami (TKA) is rolling out a new option next fall for kids not quite ready for traditional kindergarten. The new class, called K Prep, is a certified-kindergarten program that offers a low student-to-teacher ratio, small-group instruction, a multisensory approach to math and literac…

On most weekday mornings, Morah Lakie Blech makes breakfast for her family, gets her three children ready for school and heads out the door. When the weather is temperate, the kids grab their bikes, even the youngest, who is three and new to riding without training wheels — though Blech brin…

In July 2018, Israel’s controversial nation-state bill established Israel as the historic home of the Jewish people with a “united” Jerusalem as its capital and declared under law that the Jewish people “have an exclusive right to national self-determination.”

From 2020 to 2021, antisemitic incidents reported to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) rose by 5% nationally. In Arizona, there was a 65% increase in reported incidents during those years. The highest concentration of incidents reported occurred in the Phoenix metropolitan area and in Tucson,…

In the first of four “Mussar: The Jewish Way of Building Character” classes, offered in February by the Women’s Leadership Institute (WLI), Sharona Silverman invited her students to explore the concept of “humility.”

On Tuesday, Jan. 18, while adults gathered in the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus’ social hall to talk about possible ways to unite the Jewish community, across the hall, Jewish teenagers came together as one.

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, one out of every 100 people in the U.S. is in a prison or jail. Nearly half (47%) of the approximately 1.25 million people in state prisons are parents of minor children…

In 2020, JScreen, a national non-profit public health initiative dedicated to preventing genetic diseases, initiated the first annual Jewish Genetic Screening Awareness Week (JGSAW). This year, JGSAW is Feb. 5-11.

Douglas Emhoff, the Second Gentleman of the United States, made a brief visit to the offices of Hillel Jewish Student Center at Arizona State University to speak directly to college students about antisemitism on Thursday, Jan. 18.

Dozens of hands shot up last Tuesday night the moment Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz opened the floor to audience questions. In person and on Zoom, roughly 100 people attended Valley Beit Midrash’s (VBM) panel “Can the Phoenix/Scottsdale Community be United?”

On the second day of a 10-day November trip to Israel, Pastor Terry E. Mackey of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Phoenix, stepped into the Jordan River to baptize his flock.

Zillah al-Kahiya is already bringing a sense of humor to her work with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix (JCRC) as its latest communications and public diplomacy fellow.

The East Valley Jewish Community Center (EVJCC) in Chandler opened its Early Learning Center (ELC) in 1971 and currently has children anywhere from 6 weeks to 5 years enrolled. Next year, it will add a kindergarten class for the 2023-24 school year.

Rabbi Efraim and Bracha Leviyev moved to Greater Phoenix from New York seven years ago because they saw a great opportunity to assist the youth of the nation’s second-largest Bukharian Jewish community.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, journalist, social activist, Emmy winner and author of 12 books, will be giving this year’s Hammerman Family Lecture, hosted by Valley Beit Midrash (VBM), a global center for learning and action.

Shira Shecter knew she would only go to a college with a Hillel on campus. It was her biggest dealbreaker. She regularly attends her synagogue outside of Seattle and wouldn’t risk losing her connection to Jewish community — no matter where she ended up.

When Nancy Eisenberg began her career in 1977, there were relatively few women doing research in developmental psychology. Throughout her 44-year career, she’s watched women increase in number until they reached parity and even a majority of professionals in the field.

Jews in every community across the country are being pummeled daily by news of antisemitism in politics, in pop culture and in recent memory — Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life massacre just marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 27.

On Nov. 2, the Tax & Legal Seminar, Arizona’s premier estate-planning event, will take place at the Arizona Biltmore. After attending virtually the last two years, the state’s CPAs, estate planning attorneys, financial planners and many more will meet in person once again.

Running, tripping over dead bodies and an overwhelming sense of fear are the things that Marion Weinzweig remembers most from her childhood in Poland. She was one of only a few family members to survive the Holocaust.

Tom Horne, the Republican and Jewish candidate for Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, repeatedly said he wanted to talk about test scores in his debate with Kathy Hoffman, the Democratic candidate and current superintendent.