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Travel

Kazimierz — Outpost of The Past In Poland

Having read Thomas Keneally’s novel, Schindler’s List, Hollywood film director Steven Spielberg sought to turn it into one of his signature movies. But where would it be shot? Instead of some back lot studio in Los Angeles, he chose the southern Polish city of Krakow, where German manufacturer Oskar Schindler had saved hundreds of Jews by […]

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Middle East

United States Mending Relations With Egypt

As predicted by Egypt’s newly-elected president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, the United States has begun mending its bilateral relationship with Egypt, one of its most important allies in the Arab world. Less than a year after Washington imposed punitive measures on Egypt after the military-backed Egyptian government ousted the duly elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, and killed […]

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Arts

The Films of Satyajit Ray From TIFF

Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), one of the masters of the Indian cinema, is coming t0 Toronto through the medium of a retrospective of his prolific body of work. The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray runs from July 3 to Aug. 17 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.   A sampler: Aparajito (Friday, July […]

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Jewish Affairs

Private Property Issue Looms Over Polish-Jewish Relations

Poland marked an historic anniversary on June 23. At a “Polish Freedom Gala” banquet, held at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto under the patronage of  President Bronislaw Komorowski, Poland hailed its return to the western democratic fold. Twenty five years ago this month, the Solidarity trade union movement staged a peaceful revolution that […]

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Middle East

Crisis In Iraq Replay Of Religious Animosities

The current crisis in Iraq is yet another replay of the historic power struggle and thinly-veiled animosities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Middle East. When the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — an extremist Sunni group known as ISIS — invaded western and northern Iraq earlier this month, it enunciated its intentions […]

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Jewish Affairs

Roosevelt And The Jews

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal administration coincided with the emergence of state-sponsored antisemitism in Germany and the mass murder of  Jews during the Holocaust. How did Roosevelt respond to these shattering events? Ambivalently, conclude American University historians Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman in their important and cogent book, FDR and the Jews, published by Harvard […]

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Arts

The Promised Land Is Lush And Theatrical

Andrzej Wajda’s The Promised Land, screened on June 17 by the Toronto International Film Festival and part of its ongoing retrospective on contemporary Polish cinema, transports us back to early 20th century Lodz, a multi-ethnic city in central Poland that brings the uglier aspects of the industrial revolution up close and personal. Based on a novel by […]

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Jewish Affairs

Golden Dawn Is Capitalizing On Hard Times In Greece

Shortly after posting a stunning victory in last month’s European Parliament election, Marine Le Pen, the French politician who leads the National Front, said she hoped to form a far right-wing alliance of like-minded parties in Europe. Tellingly enough, she ruled out joining forces with an ultra nationalist Greek party that, she believes, has embraced […]

Categories
Arts

The Allure of Middle Eastern And Mediterranean Food

I was raised on Polish food with a Jewish accent, but after my first trip to Israel in the summer of 1967, I became hopelessly hooked on Middle Eastern/Mediterranean cuisine, finding it fresh, flavourful and healthy. In Israel, I discovered the wonders of falafel, hummus, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, lamb, beef and chicken skewers, roasted peppers, […]

Categories
Travel

Tel Aviv — A Center Of Bauhaus Architecture

Tel Aviv, Israel’s lively city set along the shores of the balmy Mediterranean Sea, tends to be architecturally drab. On closer inspection, it leaves a far more positive impression. Founded 105 years ago as a garden suburb of adjacent Jaffa, and now Israel’s cultural and commercial capital, Tel Aviv has the distinction of possessing one […]