Elsa Dorfman, an American portrait photographer whose subjects run the gamut from Allen Ginsberg to W.H. Auden, was once under-appreciated. Today, she’s sufficiently important enough in photographic circles to rate rave reviews from peers and clients alike. Certainly, filmmaker Errol Morris thinks highly of her, judging by his biopic, The B-Side, which opens in Canada […]
Author: Sheldon Kirshner
El Salvador’s Bearer Of Conscience
Jose Arturo Castellanos was one of the unassuming heroes of the Holocaust, an army colonel and diplomat from the small Central American country of El Salvador who rescued thousands of European Jews from the clutches of the Nazis. Honored by Yad Vashem in 2010 as a Righteous Gentile, he issued more than 12,000 Salvadoran citizenship certificates […]
Impediments To Peace
If Israel is ever to make peace with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have to display a lot more courage and backbone. In recent days, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that Netanyahu was prepared to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, broken off three years ago, in the hope of negotiating a comprehensive […]
Acre — A Preserved Crusader City
Acre, a historic port in northern Israel, sits on the remnants of the world’s only fully preserved Crusader city. Visitors who spend a few hours in its old quarter, designated as a World Heritage site by the United Nations, can feast their eyes on subterranean Crusader ruins that were uncovered by archaeologists in the 1950s and […]
Bringing Zion Home
It probably will come as no surprise that American Jews formed a binding relationship with Israel through culture and food rather than through politics. During the first two decades of Israel’s existence, they bonded with the new state by reading books about it, buying Israeli crafts, paintings and apparel, attending concerts by Israeli musicians and […]
The Templers Of Palestine
One of the busiest thoroughfares in Tel Aviv, Kaplan Street, leads to a host of nearby destinations — the Azrieli towers, the Arlozoroff railway station, the Ayalon expressway, the Israeli government media center and one of the city’s newest and most historically interesting attractions, the Sarona market, an upscale complex of more than 90 shops, […]
Taking Islamic Extremism Seriously
With Britain having been bloodied by three terrorist incidents in the past two-and-a-half months, British Prime Minister Theresa May may be finally coming to grips with a problem that has been festering for years. Speaking less than a day after Muslim terrorists rammed their van into a crowd of pedestrians on London Bridge and then […]
Putin’s Fake News From Syria
Denying the undeniable, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on May 30 that the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad had nothing whatsoever to do with the recent spate of deadly chemical weapon attacks in Syria. “According to our information, there is no proof that chemical weapons were used by Assad,” Putin told the French newspaper Le […]
Much to the disappointment of the right-wing nationalist camp in Israel, U.S. President Donald Trump may yet turn out to be something a dud. Israeli right-wingers, buoyed by his staunchly pro-Israel statements and comments during the presidential campaign, expected him to grant Israel carte blanche in its dealings with the Palestinians, display a tolerant attitude […]
Diverging from his predecessor’s policy, U.S. President Donald Trump has adopted a tougher approach to Iran, a position that pleases major American allies in the Middle East. Israel and Sunni Arab states were upset by Barack Obama’s advocacy of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement signed by the six major powers and […]