We should be beware of stereotypes, yet they persist from one generation to the next, twisting and distorting reality and causing misunderstandings and enmity. One of the oldest ones, concerning Poles, was perpetuated by William Styron in his novel Sophie’s Choice. Bieganski, a character in his book, is an antisemite. To some Polish Jews, especially Holocaust […]
Author: Sheldon Kirshner
Emboldened by Donald Trump’s election as America’s 45th president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is flaunting his true colours as an arch nationalist bent on expanding Israel’s borders at the expense of peace with the Palestinians through a two-state solution. No longer constrained by Barack Obama’s critique of settlement construction, and heartened by the Trump […]
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Puzzling And Troubling Omission
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was created by the United Nations in 2005 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on January 27, 1945. But on a deeper level, this solemn day is supposed to memorialize the Holocaust and combat Holocaust denial and antisemitism. It’s painfully true that […]
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Trump And The Iran Nuclear Accord
As newly-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump settles into his job at the White House, a host of thorny foreign policy issues are competing for his attention. How will he manage bilateral relations with China and Russia? How strong a position will he stake out in confronting the Islamic State organization? What will be his attitude […]
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Paterson: Jim Jarmusch’s Newest Film
The American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch seeks his material in the obscure, unheralded corners of America, focusing his gaze on the ordinary and the off-beat. Paterson, his latest movie, emerges from that quirky mould. Due to open in Canadian theaters on February 10, this is a quiet and appealing film which takes pleasure in elevating the […]
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The Comedian
Robert De Niro is in great form in The Comedian, a black comedy due to open in Canada on February 3. Here he plays Jackie Burke, an aging, foul-mouthed Jewish shock comedian whose best days are far behind him. Burke, whose real name is Jacob (Yaacov) Berkowitz, was once the beloved star of a popular […]
About a month before World War II broke out, the eminent scientist Albert Einstein sent U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt a letter imploring him to develop an atomic weapon before Nazi Germany did. Roosevelt formed a committee to study Einstein’s proposal, and within a few years, the Manhattan Project was established and the United States […]
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Selling Hitler
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, in his magisterial work, Selling Hitler (Oxford University Press), asks an oft-posed question: “How was it possible for a nation as sophisticated as Germany to regress in the way that it did, for Hitler and the Nazis to enlist an entire people, willingly or otherwise, into a crusade of extermination that would kill […]
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Israel’s Largest Outdoor Market
The sights, sounds and aromas of Israel’s largest outdoor market, Mahane Yehuda, are there to be savored. One of western Jerusalem’s top tourist attractions, it’s a jumble of shops and stalls, a place of sensory delights for gourmets and gourmands alike. Crowded with shoppers, especially as the Sabbath approaches, it resounds to the shouts of […]
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Scandalous Words
Nearly 12 years ago, in Berlin, I covered the official opening of one of the most important and poignant monuments in Germany, the Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Composed of 2,711 rectangular concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field in the center of Germany’s cosmopolitan capital, it pays […]