I remember that deliciously surreal moment with piercing clarity — the day I walked into Nicolae Ceausescu’s former bedroom and, on a whim, bounced up and down on the late Romanian dictator’s bed. It might have been the firing squad for me had I been caught doing that before his ignominious downfall and execution in […]
Adolf Eichmann, a major German war criminal who orchestrated the deportation of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in 1944, was brought to justice in 1960 when the Mossad abducted him in Argentina and flew him to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Operation Finale, an original Netflix production directed by Chris […]
Three antisemitic films were released by Germany in 1940, a banner year for Adolf Hitler’s regime. Poland had been conquered, spelling finis to its independence and its venerable Jewish community. France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg would surrender to the German army. Only Britain would successfully resist the Nazi onslaught. At a moment when the Nazi juggernaut […]
An Israeli cabinet minister and a member of Israel’s parliament both acted inappropriately and impudently when they lambasted a recent interfaith marriage between an Israeli Jewish man and an Israeli Muslim woman. Tzachi Halevy, an actor, and Lucy Aharish, a television news anchor, had been in a romantic relationship for four years when they got married […]
Judging by Israel’s discovery and destruction of yet another Palestinian attack tunnel recently, Hamas is still very much in the business of war. The tunnel, which started in the Gaza Strip and penetrated about 200 meters into Israeli territory, was the 15th destroyed by the Israeli army in the past year. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza […]
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, has painted himself into a corner, revealing himself as an ultra-partisan political operative. Since his appointment in 2013, he has steadfastly refused to meet the leaders of progressive Jewish organizations, notably J Street, the New Israel Fund and Americans for Peace Now. All of them are critical […]
Gustav Moller’s Danish thriller, The Guilty, which opens in Toronto on October 19, keeps you on the edge of your seat. Unfolding over several hours in dim-lit cubicle at a police call center, it’s a well-crafted movie, exceedingly spare, focused and suspenseful. Virtually the only character in it is Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergreen), a laconic […]
On the face of it, the eugenics movement in the United States seemed like a positive thing. Reaching its apex of popularity in the first third of the 20th century, it garnered the support of notable Americans such as Theodore Roosevelt, the former U.S. president; John Harvey Kellogg, the health reformer and inventor of the […]
Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest synagogue in Los Angeles, was in danger of abandonment in the first decade of the 21st century. Membership was declining and the building was falling apart. Its fate hung in the balance. Thanks to the vision and persistence of its senior rabbi, Steve Leder, the shul, listed on the National […]
Nearly two years after his widely unexpected victory in the U.S. presidential election, one may be forgiven for wondering how Republican Donald Trump managed to defeat his much better qualified Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Clinton, after all, had excellent credentials. She had been the American secretary of state for four years. And she had learned […]