Television arrived late in Israel. A generation of Israelis missed it altogether. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, panned TV as “uncultured” and a “waste of time.” He would much rather read a book, he told an interviewer. During that austere era, some Israelis shared his view, considering TV an indulgence that could best be […]
Moshe Dayan, a black patch covering his left eye, was one of Israel’s most identifiable figures. An army general, a government minister and the scion of a Zionist pioneering clan, he was at once flamboyant and reserved. Dayan figures prominently in Anat Goren’s biopic, Dayan: The First Family, which will be screened online by the […]
For millions of West Germans, it would be an evening like no other. On January 22, 1979, the first episode of Holocaust, a four-part, nine-and-a-half hour American television series, was broadcast. By one estimate, half of all Germans over the age of 14 watched at least one of the episodes. Holocaust resonated with most viewers, touching […]
The bookends of Conrad Veidt’s distinguished acting career are two memorable films that appeared more than 20 years apart — The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 masterpiece of the silver screen and German Expressionism, and Casablanca, a legendary Hollywood movie released in 1942. Veidt was thus one of the relatively few performers who made the […]
Until his resignation from Israel’s Knesset last year, Dov Khenin was the only Jewish member of the Joint List, an amalgamation of four diverse Arab political parties. Khenin was affiliated with the Hadash faction, the successor of the Israeli Communist Party. A lawyer with a PhD in political science, and an idealist in an era […]
Tel Aviv, Israel’s lively and exuberant city on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, has the distinction of possessing the world’s largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings. Bauhaus architecture, the forerunner of the modern International style, emerged in Germany in the 1920s and fell out of favor after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Driven […]
Marthe Hofnung Cohn is quite a lady. During the final weeks of World War II, this French Jewish woman was spy in Nazi Germany, providing France with vital, real-time intelligence about the movement of German army troops. Cohn’s exploits, the stuff of legend, were known only to a select few in 1945, when she courageously sneaked […]
The first known documentary in Hebrew about Israel’s Arab minority, My Name is Ahmad, will be screened online on June 2 at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Directed by Avshalom Katz and Ram Loevy, and released in 1966, this 14-minute short is like a time capsule from a bygone era. They focus their attention […]
The notorious antisemitic campaign launched by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union after World War II is chronicled in exacting and chilling detail in Guillaume Ribot’s superb French-language documentary, The Black Book, which will be screened online on June 3 at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Guillaume’s 92-minute film revolves around the Black Book, […]
Sara Goralnik, a 12-year-old Polish Jewish girl, survived the Holocaust by adopting the identity of her Ukrainian friend, Manya Romanchuk. Passing as a Christian, she worked on a small farm in eastern Poland from 1942 to 1944, until it was safe to return to her hometown near the Russian border. Sara’s story of survival unfolds in […]