David Grossman is one of Israel’s literary treasures. A writer of fiction and non-fiction, his books have been translated into 30 languages and have won an assortment of awards, including the Man Booker Prize and the Israel Prize. In Adi Arbel’s reflective documentary, Grossman, he reflects on his life and career. It will be presented […]
The Jewish citizens of the Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Norway and Denmark had very different experiences during the Holocaust, as Suzannah Warlick’s documentary, Passage to Sweden, attests. The film will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. As Warlick points out, Sweden enjoyed immunity from the tumult of […]
A year after forming what is probably Israel’s most ideologically diverse government, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is clinging to power by the skin of his teeth. As of now, he controls only 60 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, allowing him to govern but leaving his government potentially unstable and vulnerable to upheaval and […]
Jews were among the earliest settlers of the American West, which, as late as the 19th century, was populated mainly by Indian tribes. Most Jewish immigrants arriving in the United States settled in major east coast cities, but a few ventured west, to fast- developing states like California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Antisemitism […]
Throughout much of the Arab world, Israel is regarded as a pariah state, a country that occupies Palestinian land and oppresses the Palestinians. But alongside this black cloud is a silver lining in which a more positive view of Israel has taken hold among a handful of conservative Arab states. The United Arab Emirates and […]
Avi Nesher’s captivating movie, Image of Victory, takes viewers back 74 years to a long-forgotten but important battle during Israel’s War of Independence. It will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. On June 7, 1948, Egypt won its first armed engagement with the newly-formed state of Israel […]
Vengeance was the name of the game for Holocaust survivor Abba Kovner. In postwar Germany, he and a few fellow survivors sought to kill six million Germans to avenge the deaths of six million Jews. The Israeli brothers Doron and Yoav Paz have recreated this little-known incident in their dark and sober movie, Plan A. It […]
No one should be surprised in the least by Iraq’s recent decision to criminalize normalization attempts with Israel, its longtime enemy. On May 27, Iraq’s parliament passed a law criminalizing contacts between Iraqi citizens, institutions and organizations and the state of Israel, or “the Zionist entity,” as it is derisively known in Iraq. The new […]
Israeli filmmaker Michal Weits untangles her grandfather’s complex past as a state builder in Blue Box, a compelling 82-minute documentary that will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. Joseph Weitz, the father of Israel’s forests, was the director of both the Jewish National Fund’s Department of Lands […]
By Julia Mintz’s estimation, more than 25,000 Jewish partisans fought German troops in the forests of Eastern Europe during World War II. Usually attached to networks of Russian and Polish partisan groups, they came from all walks of life from Poland and Lithuania. Her stirring documentary, Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and […]