Tucson’s Arizona Jewish Post bids farewell

SHANNON LEVITT | MANAGING EDITOR

The Arizona Jewish Post was one of the first things that made Michelle Blumenberg, University of Arizona Hillel Foundation’s executive director, feel welcome when she moved to Tuscon in 1992.

“It was such a good paper and very hamash,” Blumenberg said. Coming from Ann Arbor, Michigan — a city with a large Jewish population — she was accustomed to reading the Detroit Jewish News with its focus on national and international stories. Prioritizing the local scene made AJP seem a breath of fresh air.

“It gave you a sense of what the community was about and made me feel welcomed — like I had a place,” Blumenberg said. “Absolutely everything was in there, and that’s how I knew what was going on.”

On March 1, AJP’s all-digital iteration came to an end. Its content had been exclusively online since September, 2020. The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, the paper’s owner, shuttered the print operation and cut back on staff last July in an effort to ameliorate the paper’s finances. Unfortunately, those steps weren’t enough.

“Changes in the landscape of modern journalism, including a push to digital and a move away from a subscription-based model, exerted formidable pressure on the AJP over the course of many years,” said Graham Hoffman, Southern Arizona Federation CEO, via email. “When the global pandemic hit, with its considerable economic impact, the AJP was not in a position to withstand additional force.”

Richard Kasper, president and CEO of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Phoenix, is sympathetic given that JCF owns Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.

“It is unfortunate they had to make this very difficult decision,” he said. “It’s rather remarkable to find ourselves as the only Jewish newspaper still publishing in Arizona.”

Lindsey Baker, Southern Arizona Federation COO, said, via email, “We have been very open with our community about the financial pressures facing the Arizona Jewish Post, and the steps we have taken to mitigate loss have been announced publicly.”

Kasper understands the financial pressures of the newspaper business too.

“This should be a wake-up call to the Phoenix Jewish community,” he said. “It costs money to publish a quality newspaper, and we’ve been fortunate to have some generous supporters and consistent fans. But if JN is going to avoid the fate of AJP, we’re going to need our fans to be subscribers, advertisers and donors as well.”

The Southern Arizona Federation is considering alternatives to continue coverage of lifecycle and milestone events as well as local news.

“To me, the heart of the Arizona Jewish Post lives on, regardless of what the packaging or branding around it is,” said Maya Horowitz, director of marketing, communications and events for Southern Arizona Federation. “We are open to considering new and different paths — or, indeed, existing paths — but our fundamental imperative is to provide our community with the stories that they care most about in a way that is sustainable for the Federation moving forward.”

Spotlighting local content was one of the newspaper’s founding principles. The paper should “stress Jewish activity, Jewish identity,” Rebecca Rutz told the Jewish Historical Society of Southern Arizona Oral History Project in 1947. Rutz and her husband, Meyer, founded the paper in 1946. They insisted that “there cannot be too much local news,” according to the Arizona Memory Project.

For the last two decades, Phyllis Braun, AJP’s executive editor, was responsible for maintaining that ideal. She’ll miss writing profiles the most. “Talking to people and finding out about them is really what I enjoy doing,” she said.

Braun’s final story for the newspaper

New Hadassah chapter takes shape in Prescott

On Feb. 22, Prescott’s new Hadassah Granite Mountain 19 chapter had its first meeting.

Prescott's previous Hadassah chapter was closely affiliated with Scottsdale’s Valley of the Sun chapter and meetings were held in Scottsdale. Over time, most Prescott members stopped attending because of the long drive, and when membership dwindled to two people, the chapter came to an end.

Last year, Linda Hochman and Shara Beck, both lifetime Hadassah members, decided to form a new chapter. When Hochman moved to Prescott in 2009 from Surprise, the old chapter was just coming to its end, which she found disappointing.

“Now we are experiencing a great immigration of people from all over who are moving to Prescott, and if they’re Jewish, they’re wondering where Hadassah is,” said Hochman.

She wrote to Hadassah’s national organization to find out what it would take to start a new chapter. She was referred to the Desert Mountain region and its head, Renee Sidman in Colorado, who gave her the guidelines.

Eight months ago, Hochman and Beck started making calls to a list of lifetime members in the Quad-City area, Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley and DeweyHumboldt, that Sidman gave them.

“Mostly all of them joyfully said yes,” Hochman said.

Hochman and Beck also discovered that another woman was inquiring about starting a Hadassah chapter in Prescott, and the three joined forces.

Sidman said that they needed 15 members to begin a chapter. Quickly they had 32 — many of whom were newcomers to town.

The group hasn’t advertised or held membership drives, but both Temple

B’rith Shalom and Chabad of Prescott put notices in their newsletters to announce

“That was neat,” Hochman said. “Very gracious — shoutout to both of those entities.”

Sometimes, Hochman joked, finding members is as simple as asking someone in the grocery store if she wants to join.

The group’s charter ceremony on Zoom last week was attended by 45 people.

“It was obviously something people missed in their lives and they all had fascinating stories about how they came to Hadassah,” Hochman said. “Some stories are bookworthy — they’re hilarious.”

The group will have its first organizational meeting on March 8 on Zoom. It will be a brainstorming session to decide what will be the chapter’s main goals. Right now, the organization’s link to Israel is its priority and what has been “the missing piece of the puzzle” for many Jews in Prescott, said Hochman. Two local Purim celebrations to view on YouTube

On Feb. 21, Gesher Disability Resources held a Purim shpiel table read of “Queen Esther and the Shushan Schemer.”

The event was Gesher’s first national collaboration and was watched live by 150 people. Gesher partnered with the Pink Umbrella Theater Company of Wisconsin and Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center in Milwaukee.

The Silverstein Family Foundation Fund sponsored the event. Mishloach manot bags were delivered to Gesher members in Greater Phoenix, and the East Valley Jewish Community Center sponsored the deliveries.

Gesher plans to repeat the event next year, but in the meantime people can still view this year's celebration at youtu. be/4HHMRhAoqL4.

Daniel Stein Kokin, a member of Beth

El Congregation and a visiting researcher at Arizona State University, developed a Purim performance highlighting the talents of Beth El congregants and members of the Greater Phoenix Jewish community.

Kokin is a scholar of Jewish studies and the Renaissance. The show is called “Inversions and Subversions: Leone de’ Sommi’s Purim Comedy of Betrothal,” and is devoted to the oldest-known Hebrew-language play, which was written in 16th-century Italy as Purim entertainment.

The show also features Beth El Cantor Jonathan Angress and Phoenix-based soprano Nina Cole Garguilo.

"At once lighthearted and scholarly, this program focuses especially on the drama’s proto-feminism, Near Eastern setting and use of biblical and rabbinic texts," Kokin said, via email.

The show is available to watch at youtube. com/watch?v=-njuXO2sqso&feature= youtu.be.

Neighbors clean up swastika-filled gra ti in North Phoenix

On Feb. 15, Jason Israel was with his 9-year-old son when he spied graffiti on the wall separating his cul-de-sac from the main street at 37th Place and Mayo Boulevard in North Phoenix. Swastikas and the words “GOP” and “QAnon” covered a large swath of the wall.

“It was very upsetting,” Israel said. “I understand the political message considering the discourse we have in our nation, but just the images of the swastika and what it represents — I was pissed. It was very close to home.” He drives by the wall every day.

Israel immediately called his homeowner association to report the graffiti and assumed that would be the end of it. He was surprised to find it still on the wall a few hours later. He called the HOA again and was told the police had been called. He spoke with the police who told him the graffiti was written in charcoal and could probably be removed with warm water and soap.

The neighborhood is full of families with young children, Israel said, and he wanted the graffiti, especially the swastikas, gone.

“Regardless of the political message it probably wanted to convey, the swastikas stood out, and I live in a neighborhood with all families and didn’t want the kids to see that,” he said. “It was concerning and extremely offensive as a Jew.”

Israel, who attends both Chabad of Phoenix and Chabad of North Phoenix, decided not to wait for the HOA to clean it up.

His neighbors, Shelly Flecky, Amy House and others, gathered supplies to clean the wall. Israel’s son, Russell, and Flecky’s son, Alex, also helped. The warm, soapy water wasn’t enough, but they were eventually able to remove the graffiti by power-washing the wall.

Israel used the opportunity to answer his son’s questions about why the swastika was so offensive and needed to be removed. “I told him it was wrong,” he said. “I tried to teach him as best I could in that moment, that the symbol represents hate and evil. But we treat people with kindness, decency and love — all that you see here is completely opposite of that.”

Israel lost family in the Holocaust, and seeing the image of the swastika so close to home was extremely concerning, he said. The rest of the message was “gibberish,” but “the swastika has the most power in terms of imagery, and that was what I was concerned with,” he said. He hopes not to encounter more offensive graffiti but will be prepared if he does.

“It’s hateful speech, it’s wrong and we don’t want it on the wall anymore,” he said. “If it comes again, we’ll take it down again.” JN