By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent As a new Certified Senior Advisor, Janis Blauer-Chima has learned about what seniors go through as they get older. “I have more of an appreciation than I used to about different cultures,” she says. “I’ve learned a lot just about the difference between people.” AContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent The midday sun warmed the children by the pond while dancers danced and musicians played on the nearby hillside. Others who wore rainbow-colored prayer shawls and woven multi-hued yarmulkes beat ethnic drums in drum circles, all as a way to spend a hot summer weekContinue Reading

By Britten Schear, Special to JTNews “I know these are onions because it says so on the sign,” Rachel Bravmann-Bevens tells me as we walk through the University of Washington’s Urban Horticulture garden, “but for a lot of this stuff, you’d have to ask the kids what it is.” TheContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent After more than two years of suspense, 18 months of construction and $127 million, Seattle’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall opened to enthusiastic crowds. Excited patrons paid $300–$500 a ticket to attend the opening-night celebration on June 28, “The Curtain Rises.” The gala offered one hourContinue Reading

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By Deborah Ashin, JTNews Correspondent Three ordinary bowls, one enamel, two aluminum. To see them on a shelf or in someone’s attic, they would be unremarkable. But each bowl is a silent witness to history, telling the powerful story about the Holocaust survivor who used it. On display at Seattle’sContinue Reading

By Emily Moore, JTNews Correspondent How do you begin to explore a cuisine whose geographic area is at least a dozen times the size of France, includes most of Italy, all of Spain and Morocco, much of Portugal, Tunisia, Algeria and Greece, the entirety of Iraq and Iran, most ofContinue Reading

By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent With the exception of the modern, lightweight tents, and the setting up of camp in a parking lot, and the surrounding area looking nothing like the sands of the Sinai Peninsula, Seattle’s self-contained moveable homeless community known as Tent City could almost be a sceneContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent One of the single most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis has been the Jewish settlements. These small enclaves, built by the Israeli government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — known by many settlers as Judea and Samaria — have been associatedContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent The Seattle Association for Jews with Disabilities has had a very tough year. In addition to rising health care costs, the reserves in the supporting foundation fund of the Jewish Family Service department have been depleted by loss of investment income, and its endowment fundContinue Reading

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By David Chesanow, JTNews Correspondent On June 23, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California’s Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act as unconstitutional. Since then, Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler and other local advocates of Holocaust-era life insurance claimants expressed dismay at the ruling against the 1999 act. The lawContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent Seattle-based Jewish Family Service has recently received a large grant from Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger. Mazon, a private philanthropic organization that gives funding for people going hungry across the United States, granted $15,000 to JFS. This amount is equal to what JFS receivedContinue Reading

By Robert Shay, JTNews Correspondent Due to the copious amount of new films released on home video this past month, I am going to forego the regular commentary and concentrate on featuring as many of these new films as space allows. This list of videos consists of many Israeli shortContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent Maybe it was the wrestling. Or perhaps it was the use of birdcalls to recite a poem. Whatever it was that tied the wide range of sketches that made up the Seattle-based Typing Explosion Local 898’s new show, “This is a Test,” together, it worked.Continue Reading

By Kristine Israelson and Thomas F. Klein, Special to JTNews In January, a 40-foot shipping container laden with more than 10 tons of gifts set sail from Seattle to Ashdod for distribution to new immigrants establishing homes in Israel. Arriving in Israel on the first of March, the goods wereContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent When the news from Israel is often so depressing, it’s nice to have a visitor to the area who has something good to say about what’s happening in the Jewish state. That was recently the case, when the Seattle chapter of the Women’s American OrganizationContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent While driving along the freeway in rural Outlook, Wash., a Star of David displayed on the outside of an adobe building caught Geri Gustin’s eye. Gustin, who is Jewish, was interested in finding out more about the building. Unaware of any synagogues in that partContinue Reading

By Deborah Ashin, Special to JTNews With its roots in mysticism and meditation, Tiferet is a Jewish vocal ensemble that defies musical classification. The music it performs isn’t Klezmer, cantorial or folk, yet it blends elements from these traditions as well as chants into an experience that could be describedContinue Reading