Film
Warsaw: A City Divided
Eric Bednarski’s poignant documentary, Warsaw: A City Divided, due to be screened at the Jewish Film Festival in Jerusalem later this year, provides viewers with a fresh look at the Warsaw Ghetto. Established in 1940 on the cynically false rationale of halting the spread of infectious diseases, it was an overcrowded, walled-off dumping ground rife with […]
Fiddler: A Miracle Of Miracles
Nearly 55 years after its inaugural opening at the Imperial Theatre in New York City, Fiddler on the Roof, the iconic Broadway play, is still going strong. Such is its longevity that it has been performed every day somewhere around the globe since September 22, 1964. Based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, this dark musical has been […]
After The Wedding
Secrets abound in Bart Freundlich’s drama, After the Wedding, which opens in Canadian theatres on August 16. Filmed in India and the United States, and adapted from Susanne Bier’s 2006 Oscar-nominated Danish movie, it pits a wealthy entrepreneur against an idealist whose lives are more intertwined than they initially realize. Isabel (Michelle Williams), the director […]
Mike Wallace Is Here
At the height of his 40-year career at 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace was probably the most feared interviewer in the business. Hard as nails, with a no-nonsense style, he was a “rough boy,” as one of his many interviewees, Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas, said of him with a mixture of awe and annoyance. Wallace, a reporter on […]
She Broke A Glass Ceiling
In this age of female empowerment, Tracy Edwards is a shining role model. Thirty years ago, Edwards had the distinction of being the first women to skipper a boat in the gruelling Whitbread Round-the-World Yacht Race (which has since been renamed the Volvo Ocean Race). She was 26, a slip of a girl, when she […]
Back To The Fatherland
Thousands of young Israelis have immigrated to Germany and Austria in the past decade. By some estimates, upwards of 20,000 have made that move. It’s a deeply ironic development, given what happened in these countries during the 12-year Nazi interregnum. In most cases, the Israelis who’ve forsaken their homeland are the grandchildren of German and […]
The World Of The Cairo Geniza
By the end of the 19th century, the venerable Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo was falling apart and was in dire need of repair. During the restoration, workmen stumbled upon a massive cache of mouldering documents in the dusty attic ranging from the sacred to the mundane. For approximately 1,000 years, the attic had been […]
Photograph: A Poignant Bollywood Movie
Ritesh Batra’s unassuming, poignant and likeable Bollywood film, Photograph, which opens in Canada on May 31, conjures up what might have been a successful romantic relationship in a better world. Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) ekes out a living as an itinerant photographer in Mumbai’s Gateway to India tourist attraction. He seeks out new customers by promising […]
The Rise And Fall Of John DeLorean
Call him what you will — a con man or a visionary, a winner or a loser. John DeLorean was all these things, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. A brilliant automotive engineer who was on a trajectory to becoming the president of General Motors, the world’s biggest car manufacturer, he was the creator of […]
Ask Dr. Ruth
American sex therapist Ruth Westheimer whimsically asks Alexa, her electronic assistant, to identify Ruth Westheimer. Alexa’s disembodied answer is correct, bringing a smile to Westheimer’s face. “She knows who I am,” she exclaims excitedly. Westheimer, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is indeed famous. Long a fixture on radio and television, the author of a […]
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