Seven hundred thousand Jewish immigrants poured into Israel during its first years statehood, straining its relatively limited absorption capacity. Yet immigration was one of the key priorities of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, after the 1948 War of Liberation. Approximately one-third of the newcomers were sent to abandoned British army bases. These rudimentary transit camps, […]
Outremont, a sedate and generally affluent neighborhood in the center of Montreal, is embroiled in a running dispute regarding its willingness to accommodate its tight-knit, insular ultra-Orthodox population. This divisive issue has stamped Outremont as a place of conflict, laments its mayor, Philipe Tomlinson. The majority of Outremont’s French and English residents do not appear to […]
Mauro Mancini’s Italian-language feature film, Thou Shalt Not Hate, is driven by moralistic fervor. Scheduled to be screened online at the autumn edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from October 22 to November 1, it pits a middle-aged Jewish doctor against a young neo-Nazi thug. The first scene establishes its tone and […]
Jorge Weller’s entertaining Israeli romantic comedy, Love in Suspenders, is awash in geriatric romance. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv, it will be screened online by the Toronto Jewish Festival, which runs from October 22 to November 1. Beno (Yehuda Barkan) and Tami (Nitza Saul) meet under inauspicious circumstances when she bumps into him with her car. […]
The world’s oldest, most persistent hatred is expertly surveyed in a two-hour documentary by Ilan Ziv. His movie, Antisemitism, will be screened online by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from October 22 to November 1. Ziv’s substantive film covers a wide swath of ground, but focuses on France, whose treatment of Jews has […]
Dalit Kimor’s intriguing biopic, Mrs. G, which will be screened at the forthcoming online Toronto Jewish Film Festival, is a portrait of Lea Gottlieb, who was probably the world’s finest swimwear designer. Known far and wide as Mrs. G or Mrs. Gottlieb, she was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor whose stylish, brightly colored bathing suits and […]
The Holocaust exacted a terrible toll in Greece. Seven out of ten Greek Jews were murdered by the Nazis. But on the scenic Ionian Sea island of Zakynthos, something very different happened. All 275 of its Jewish residents survived thanks to the humanity and courage of a bishop and a mayor and the assistance and […]
She beat the odds. Bess Myerson (1924-2014) was the first and still only Jewish woman to be crowned Miss America. She won that glittering prize in 1945, crashing through the glass ceiling of persistent and widespread antisemitism in the United States. “She was the most important pretty girl since Queen Esther,” quips the narrator in […]
The late Polish-Jewish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam was one of the key figures in the development of the atomic bomb, which was created by a cadre of mainly European-born scientists during World War II. Ulam worked on the Manhattan Project with a brilliant group of physicists, mathematicians and engineers at the Los Alamos laboratory in New […]
Israeli Arab chef Nof Atamna-Ismaeel passionately believes that food is the first step toward achieving coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Israel. As she says, “There is no room for politics in the kitchen.” Personable and outgoing, she is at the center of Breaking Bread, an uplifting documentary by Beth Elise Hawk scheduled to be […]