Nearly 80 years have elapsed since the execution of Sophie Scholl, the courageous German political activist who sought to topple Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Hailed as a heroine in contemporary Germany, she was a member of White Rose, a small but militant organization, based in Munich, that conveyed its pointed messages of resistance through trenchant […]
Gerard Oury was clearly influenced by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy when he directed The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, an uproarious and madcap French comedy now being screened online by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation. Although it was released in 1974, it has not been dulled by the […]
Small Jewish communities in Canada are rarities these days. Since the 1950s and 1960s, they have been disappearing as elders have died and children and grandchildren have moved to big cities like Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. A documentary by Sonya Jampolsky and Michael MacDonald, Minyan on the Mira: The Jewish People of Glace Bay, […]
During the early 1960s, when we were teens, my friend Henry Srebrnik and I popped into a midtown cafeteria in New York City and found ourselves in a bright, bustling and unfamiliar world of fairly high ceilings, dome lighting fixtures, marble floors and tables, and chrome and glass dispensers. We had entered the inviting domain […]
Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman, two kibitzers from Montreal’s heavily Jewish enclave of Cote St. Luc, spend a day sampling the city’s culinary delights in their hour-long offbeat documentary, Chewdism: A Taste of Jewish Montreal. They made the film for YidLife Crisis, the Yiddish comedy web site they created a few years ago. Chewdism has […]
Poland was bloodied and traumatized by World War II. Conquered and occupied by Nazi Germany, Poland is still licking its wounds and mourning its dead seven decades on. Wartime Girls, a Polish television series now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming service, unfolds against the backdrop of these disastrous events. Directed by Michal Rogalski and Karolina […]
He was, as an admirer succinctly put it, a “bolt of lightning.” Marty Glickman was probably the fastest Jewish sprinter of all time. A member of the U.S. track and field team at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, he was later the first Jewish broadcaster in major league sports. He’s the subject of James Freedman’s […]
Joe Balass was born in Baghdad in 1966, only four years before he and his family were forced to leave Iraq for good. He has few memories of his birthplace, but his mother, Valentine, remembers it vividly in his 33-minute documentary, Baghdad Twist, which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Available on […]
Travelling around Ukraine with a phonograph and wax cylinders in hand, Moyshe Beregovsky methodically preserved the musical heritage of Ukrainian Jews before the Holocaust. A folklorist and ethnomusicologist, he recorded hundreds, if not thousands, of Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian folk songs, love songs, revolutionary songs, klezmer music and wordless religious melodies (nigunim). He was also […]
Schwartz’s Jewish-style delicatessen on St. Laurent Boulevard in Montreal is not merely a restaurant but an institution. It’s immensely popular with locals and foreign visitors. On a normal day, you have you wait in line outside on the street before you’re ushered in. It’s a small and intimate place, with tables and chairs on the […]