Deep in the vast Amazon rainforest are Indians living primitive lives in complete isolation. Totally untouched by modernity, they resemble our Stone Age ancestors. According to experts, several thousand such Indians belonging to a multitude of tribes have yet to make contact with the outside world. Once in a blue moon, explorers report sightings of […]
Norman Oppenheimer, the main character in Israeli director Joseph Cedar’s first English-language film, Norman: The Moderate Rise And Tragic Fall Of A New York Fixer, is a man in motion. People think they know Norman, yet no one really knows him. He’s omnipresent, yet he’s elusive. Norman reminds a viewer of Jay Gatsby, the alluring and […]
Emil Ben Shimon’s Hebrew-language movie, The Women’s Balcony, takes a viewer into a divided Sephardic Jewish community in Jerusalem. Premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, it’s about tradition, friendship, faith and rebellion. The opening scene sets the tone. On a beautiful Saturday morning, with the rays of the sun glinting off beige stone buildings, […]
Jews in Canada live a charmed life. Living in a liberal democracy defined by such values as fairness, tolerance and inclusion, Jews have it good here, though Canada definitely has its share of bigots and racists. Before World War II, Canada was a far different country, a place where racism was depressingly common. Ira Robinson, […]
A two-day road trip which showcases the magnificent scenery and delectable gastronomic delights of southern France perks up Eleanor Coppola’s Paris Can Wait, which was screened at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. This an old-school 1950s movie, and Coppola has resurrected it in style. Starring Diane Lane as the wife of a busy, penny-pinching […]
To put it bluntly, Holocaust denial is the stock-in-trade of antisemites. In their zeal to defame Jews, defend Nazi Germany and rehabilitate Adolf Hitler, they dredge up factually baseless arguments. Their claims are absurd: The number of Jewish victims was drastically inflated to benefit Jews and Israel. Jews succumbed to disease and were not murdered […]
If it were left to some Israeli generals, Israel and the Palestinians would be closer to bridging their differences and reaching a two-state solution, says American journalist J.J. Goldberg, the former editor-in-chief of the Forward, a major Jewish newspaper and website in the United States. Suggesting they’re far more pragmatic and realistic than Israeli Prime […]
The much anticipated second season of Narcos, the taut crime thriller set in Colombia, is now available on the Netflix streaming service. In a word, it’s scintillating. It lives up to expectations. Focusing on the real-life narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar and the Medellin drug cartel he controlled with an iron fist, Narcos has all the elements of […]
Waitstill and Martha Sharp were relief workers from the United States who risked their lives to help victims of Nazism. Recruited by the American Unitarian Association, they rescued hundreds of Jews and Christian anti-Nazis from the jaws of death. Their selflessness, dedication and courage, the stuff of legend, is recounted in Defying the Nazis: The […]
Skepticism is the order of the day following an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce the scale of violence in Syria’s five-year-old civil war and to coordinate American and Russian air attacks on Islamic State and other jihadist groups in Syria. The complex accord, brokered in Geneva on September 9 by U.S. […]