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FEBRUARY 18, 2022 | ADAR I 17, 5782 | VOLUME 74, NUMBER 12
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Jewish community Prescott rabbi launches a new way to coat drives deliver ‘do Jewish’ for non-affiliated area Jews warm welcome to refugees R RACHEL RASKIN-ZRIHEN
ELLEN BRAUNSTEIN
H
undreds of asylum seekers arrive daily at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) Welcome Center in Phoenix wearing only hoodies and sweatshirts to stay warm. They are on their way from Phoenix to colder climates to be resettled with family, friends and other sponsors while they await asylum hearings. They need heavy coats and winter gear and that’s where the Jewish communities of Sedona, Verde Valley and Flagstaff have stepped in. Learning of the need, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix turned to neighbors to the north for coats and other winter clothing available for donation. “Thankfully, they took up the charge and were able to work together with their communities to be able to run with this and donate large capacities of winter coats for the asylum seekers,” said Paul Rockower, executive director of JCRC, which has worked with the IRC Welcome Center before. “We don’t have winter coats here, which is why we reached out to places where they get more wintry weather.” Gloria Brown, chair of the social action committee of the Jewish Community of Sedona and the Verde Valley (JCSVV), organized a winter coat collection along with the Sedona Community Food Bank and Old Town Mission in Cottonwood. Brown said that about 140 winter coats and lighter weight jackets and an abundance of sweaters, scarves, socks, hats and gloves were collected by all the local organizations. SEE COAT DRIVE, PAGE 2 In Flagstaff, Congregation
abbi Julie Kozlow said she’s broken out of the traditional rabbinical box and is creating a more spiritually productive Jewish congregation. She said the new group, called “The Community,” founded in Prescott, is liberating for herself as a rabbi and her 25-families strong congregation. She said she knows she’s not alone in this and appears to be part of a movement away from the more traditional ways of “doing Jewish.” “There are a handful of rabbis right now creating alternative ways of doing Jewish, and I’m one of them,” she said. “It’s my belief that the construct we have for normative synagogue life is not built for the future,” the 65-year-old mother of two grown children said. “This is more about living in the rhythm of Jewish life and being part of it.”
Kozlow said, “The Community emphasizes the sacred connections between human beings and doesn’t define itself as Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. It’s just Jewish. It’s soulful. It’s about souls coming together to uplift our personal lives and our world.” The Community, which serves the unaffiliated Jews of the quad city area and beyond – some as near and far away as Phoenix and the East Coast – has no building of their own, mostly because it takes “too much time, money and energy to sustain a place,” Kozlow said. Launched Jan. 1, The Community rents space from the local Unitarian Church and the chapel at Embr y– Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott. SEE RABBI KOZLOW, PAGE 3
Rabbi Julie Kozlow
COURTESY OF RABBI JULIE KOZLOW
‘Holocaust by Bullets’ returns to ASU Valley residents will get the chance to see “Holocaust by Bullets 10 Years of Investigation” during its run at Arizona State University’s Hayden Library from Feb. 27 through April 17. See page 8. COURTESY OF CLAUDIA JOHNSTONE
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