As Israelis celebrated Passover during the first week of April, Iran — Israel’s deadliest enemy — opened a new phase in its protracted struggle against Israel. The Islamic fundamentalist regime in Tehran, having long sought to bring its conflict with Israel to Israel’s borders, has promoted the idea of using Palestinian and Lebanese surrogates to […]
Jews who survived the Holocaust tended to be physically and mentally strong, adept at a certain skill, amazingly resourceful, or simply lucky. David Wisnia, who owes his survival to a fine singing voice, is one such person. Sara Taksler explores his unusual story in How Saba Kept Singing, a PBS documentary. A melange of on-camera […]
Varian Fry, the first American to be designated as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, is at the core of Transatlantic, a seven-part Netflix series. A Harvard University graduate and a journalist, Fry was one of the founders of the Emergency Rescue Committee. It was founded in New York City in 1940 with the aim […]
Ehud Olmert has the dubious distinction of having been the first Israeli prime minister to be jailed for a criminal offence. Convicted of bribery and obstruction of justice, he was released from prison in 2017 after serving 16 months of a six-year sentence. Now 77, Olmert was named prime minister after his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, […]
Baseball is not exactly a popular sport in Israel, and few Israelis have embraced it. But when the Israeli baseball team qualified for the summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021, some Israelis tuned in and cheered on its players, most of whom were Americans with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. Their quest for a medal — […]
Judging by the most recent announcement from Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry, Israel has no right to defend itself and must grin and bear it when attacked by an enemy. Conveniently ignoring Palestinian rocket attacks at Israel from Lebanese soil, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry announced it would file a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over Israel’s […]
Irving Rapper’s feature film, Rhapsody in Blue, is a paean to the legendary American Jewish composer and songwriter George Gershwin. It was broadcast on the Turner Classic Movies channel recently. An energetic drama and a buoyant musical by turns, this sleek 1945 production was panned by some observers, including the critic of The New York […]
A new variant of antisemitism, taking the form of a hostile Christian reaction to the legal emancipation of Jews in France and other Western countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, virtually supplanted the religious-based animus toward Jews that had been shaped and promoted by the Catholic church since time immemorial. This transformational shift was […]
Israel’s low-intensity, undeclared shadow war with Iran is intensifying as Israel reportedly prepares to launch air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the not-too-distant future. Since the beginning of the year, Israel has escalated its attacks on Iranian military sites in Syria — Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world — and bombed military factories […]
Warner Bros., one of the major Hollywood movie studios, was founded on April 4 a century ago by four Jewish brothers whose immigrant family hailed from Poland. The Warner siblings, Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack, worked together during the silent era and successfully transitioned into talkies, producing a succession of memorable films ranging from The […]