Borgen, the first-rate Danish Netflix drama, is at once like and unlike House of Cards, the acclaimed American series. Borgen is a nuanced portrait of Brigitte Nyborg, Denmark’s mythical first female prime minister and of the rival politicians, colleagues, journalists, spouse and children she interacts with on a daily basis. Although there is a competitive […]
Six months ago, the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, otherwise known as the Claims Conference — a sponsor of Holocaust education programs and a coordinator of restitution payments to survivors — conducted a survey to gauge the level of Holocaust knowledge among Americans from age 18 to 39. One thousand respondents from all […]
Israeli Arab chef Nof Atamna-Ismaeel passionately believes that food is the first step toward achieving coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Israel. As she says, “There is no room for politics in the kitchen.” Personable and outgoing, she is at the center of Breaking Bread, an uplifting documentary by Beth Elise Hawk scheduled to be […]
September marks the 80th anniversary of a World War II incident that could have gone badly awry and cost the lives of scores of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. On August 8, 1940, the Portuguese vessel, the SS Quanza, set sail from Lisbon en route to New York City with 362 passengers, many of whom […]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck a balanced tone recently when she hailed the emergence of a vibrant Jewish community in postwar Germany, but denounced the uptick in racism and antisemitism in her country. Celebrating the 7oth anniversary of the founding of the Central Council of Jews, Germany’s leading Jewish organization, Merkel made two major points. […]
Azzam Al-Ahmad, a senior Palestinian official, recently told Qatar’s Al-Araby television network that Israel aspires to expand its borders from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. Portraying the Palestinians as the guardians of Arab interests, Al-Ahmad, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, said, “We, the Palestinians, are defending all of you. […]
Of the eight Jewish justices who have sat on the U.S. Supreme Court since the appointment of Louis Brandeis in 1916, Ruth Bader Ginsburg held the record for longevity. Ginsburg, who died of cancer on September 18 at the age of 87, served for 27 years, four more than Felix Frankfurter, who was appointed in 1939. […]
Donald Trump is doing it again, conflating American Jews with Israelis and blurring the line between his duties as president and the needs of his reelection campaign. In a phone call with Jewish communal leaders on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, he voiced praise for Jews in the United States. “We really appreciate you,” he […]
Israel submitted itself to a three-week nation-wide lockdown on September 18, in a disheartening and demoralizing sign of its failure to keep the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in check. Barely four months after emerging from its first painful encounter with a lockdown, Israel was forced to introduce an array of stifling restrictions to contain […]
The White House ceremony on September 15 at which Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates formalized their normalization agreements could well herald the dawn of a new era in the Middle East, as President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both declared in separate speeches. Counting its 1979 and 1994 treaties with Egypt […]