Richard Feynman, the brilliant American physicist, was one of the most captivating communicators in the history of science. That’s how he’s portrayed in Christopher Riley’s The Fantastic Mr, Feyman, an engaging BBC documentary now available on the Netflix streaming network. Feynman was a Nobel Prize recipient who endowed physics with a human face, says one of […]
My mother turned 100 today. It’s an auspicious moment leavened by sadness. By any yardstick, she has beaten the odds. She might have been a victim of the Holocaust, like nine out of 10 Polish Jews. She has battled health problems all her life. And now her body and mind have succumbed to the frailties […]
Muslims from the Caucasus, not Jews, are the chief targets of race-based hate crimes in Russia, according to a researcher who studies right-wing extremist and vigilante groups in the Russian Federation. From the czarist era to the last gasp of communism, xenophobic Russians tended to turn their racial animus on Jews. But since the collapse […]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, have both mangled the fundamental facts of the Holocaust for cynical political ends. Shame on them. Netanyahu, in a speech to the Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on October 20, claimed that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the […]
Marina Rustow belongs to a fairly new school of historians/sleuths who’ve revolutionized the field of medieval Middle Eastern Jewish history. A Princeton University professor, and one of the recipients of this year’s prestigious MacArthur fellowship, she’s a social historian who’s played a leading role in modernizing Cairo Geniza research. During the Fatimid caliphate, which stretched across […]
The Iran nuclear agreement and the disintegration of Arab state structures pose significant security challenges for Israel, says one of Israel’s most prominent political analysts. Speaking at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs on October 19, Efraim Inbar said the accord curbing rather rolling back Iran’s nuclear program will have dire repercussions […]
Israel is a foreign body in the Middle East and the Jewish people have no historic connection or right to the land, Israel’s enemies claim. It’s a false and persistent allegation, used to delegitimize the Jewish state, and should be vigorously challenged. Gloria Greenfield’s one-hour documentary, Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation, […]
Leon Blum High School, named after the first Jewish prime minister of France, sits in a depressed suburb of Paris populated mainly by Muslims. The majority of the students in Anne Gueguen’s history and geography class are bored and unruly. It’s a wonder she’s able to teach them anything. This is the setting of Once […]
Sports and politics collided in 1936, when the winter and summer Olympic Games were held in Germany. Opponents of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime called for a boycott, believing that participation would be a validation of Germany’s openly antisemitic policies and practices. Critics blasted this approach, claiming the Olympics fostered national pride and unity as well […]
There is a nip in the air as autumn arrives incrementally in Toronto. The days are shorter and cooler and the nights are chilly. The sun shines less strongly, but you can feel its pleasant warmth on your skin. This is the time of the year when the green leaves on deciduous trees gradually turn […]