France’s encounter with multiculturalism has not been a roaring success of late, judging by the Charlie Hebdo incident, the radicalization of some French Muslim youth and the spate of antisemitism that has prompted thousands of Jews to emigrate. It’s evident that the forces of xenophobia and racism are corroding French society, and that the spirit of […]
You don’t have to be Irish to like Irish films, so enjoy the forthcoming Irish Film Festival, which runs from Friday, March 6 to Sunday, March 8 at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Bell Lightbox. The festival gets under way with the Toronto premiere of Standby, directed by the brothers Rob and Ronan Burke. A romantic […]
Iran’s film industry is subjected to censorship and hobbled by a poor global distribution system, but it has chalked up stellar achievements nonetheless. It has produced internationally-recognized directors like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf and films like A Separation (the first Iranian movie to win the best foreign language film award at the Academy Awards) and […]
On Aug. 25, 1938, Der Angriff — a Nazi newspaper published in Berlin under the auspices of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels — described Henry Morgenthau Jr., the U.S. secretary of the treasury, as “the real chief of a wide Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy” against Germany. The antipathy was mutual. Morgenthau, the sole Jew in President Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet, hated […]
Queen Isabella’s legacy is nothing if not checkered. Consider her virtues and failings: She paved the way for the unification of Spain after having subdued the last remaining Islamic kingdom in the country. She launched the Spanish Inquisition and drove Jews and Muslims out of Spain. She sponsored Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World, […]
Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Hebrew-language film, Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, leaves a viewer puzzled and angry. An intense court room drama playing out over a five-year period, it’s a scathing critique of the outmoded divorce system in contemporary Israel. Through the main character, an emotionally abused woman who yearns for freedom, the directors […]
Since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the Shebaa Farms sector of the Golan Heights has turned into a dangerous flashpoint of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the past 15 years, armed clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have erupted periodically. Last month, in the most serious incident in years, two Israeli […]
Lev Golinkin’s bracing memoir of boyhood in the Soviet Union and manhood in the United States, A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka (Doubleday), bears a striking resemblance to Gary Shtenyngart’s Little Failure, which I read last year. Like so many Soviet Jews born in the Soviet Union, the two authors share common […]
If you’re like me, you adore New York City. It’s a wonderful town, as the song goes. New York has it all — great neighborhoods, world-class museums, theaters, restaurants and cafes, and a grand assortment of sylvan parks, the finest of which is Central Park. Unless you’ve been there many times and know the city […]
It was called the “captain of death.” Tuberculosis, until a few decades ago, had killed one in seven people who had ever lived on the planet, and there was no cure in sight. Popularly known as consumption, it ravaged the United States in 19th century, spreading fear, uncertainty and mass deaths. The effort to contain […]