Jody Shapiro’s bracing documentary on Burt Shavitz, the reclusive Jewish hippie who co-founded the Burt’s Bees personal care empire in the backwoods of Maine 30 years ago, paints a vivid portrait of a loner, curmudgeon and reluctant entrepreneur whose rags-to-riches story is a template of the possibilities of American capitalism. Burt’s Buzz, which opens in […]
Nearly six months before the United States declared war on Japan following its attack on Pearl Harbor, the syndicated columnist Stewart Alsop, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, warned, “To fight the war we will be sooner or later called upon to fight we need a crusading faith, the kind that inspired the soldiers of 1917.” […]
By the late 1940s, Iraq was home to 180,000 Jews, of whom 90,000 lived in Baghdad, the capital. It was an ancient community whose origins could be traced back two millenniums. But by 1951, Iraq was virtually bereft of Jews, with only 6,000 still remaining in the country. What happened? The simple answer: Israel. The […]
Spain has revealed both sides of its face in recent weeks. Insular, intolerant Spain reared its ugly head when 18,000 Spaniards posted nearly 18,000 antisemitic comments after Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated Real Madrid by a margin of 98-86 in the final game of the Euroleague basketball championship. Enlightened Spain surfaced when Spanish Interior Minister Jorge […]
Years ago, when I was a postgraduate student in Britain, I saw Andrzej Wajda’s classic movie, Ashes and Diamonds, and was bowled over by it. It left a powerful impression and became one of my all-time favourites films. Last week, I had the pleasure of watching it yet again, and I was just as impressed. Ashes and […]
Man-against-nature films are common-place, but in John Curran’s Tracks, scheduled to open in Canada on June 6, a plucky, courageous young lady takes on the elements in an epic 1,700 mile journey across the untamed, barely inhabited wilderness of western Australia. Tracks, an Australian movie based on a best selling book by Robyn Davidson, demolishes […]
Last month, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, broke important historical ground by describing the Holocaust as “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.” Shortly afterwards, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif declared that he would not permit Iran’s reputation, such as it is, to be sullied […]
The United States, with Harry Truman as its president, recognized Israel only 11 minutes after its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared statehood on May 14, 1948. And so Truman was immortalized by Zionists as a great supporter of Jewish statehood. But as John Judis points out in Genesis: Truman, American Jews, And The Origins […]
Old Bamburg, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a time capsule — a stunning open-air museum of architectural styles. Bamburg’s collection of beautifully preserved Gothic, Romanesque, Baroque and Renaissance buildings, all located in a conveniently compact area ideal for strolling, transports a visitor back to pre-war Germany. During World War II, Bamberg was largely […]
Russia, backed by China, vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on May 22 that would have empowered the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate the terrible contagion of war crimes in Syria. This was Russia’s fourth veto of a Security Council resolution dealing with the Syrian civil war, which broke out three […]