African and Jewish Americans have been bound together in a deeply intertwined relationship despite their historical, religious and cultural differences and divergent priorities. Since the formation of the American republic more than two centuries ago, they have been mocked and feared as they have tried to tear down the walls of hatred and prejudice, says […]
Elie Wiesel, the late Jewish novelist and human rights activist, was deeply affected by the Holocaust. He was personally traumatized by it and drew on its horrors as a writer. Oren Rudavsky’s documentary, Elie Wiesel: Soul On Fire, which is scheduled to be broadcast by the PBS network on Tuesday, January 27 at 9 p.m. […]
The second and last season of House of Promises, a fine German television series about the Jewish proprietor of a department store in a working-class district of Berlin, gets under way as Germany lurches toward the abominable Nazi era. In the first six episodes of the debut season, which appeared on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform, […]
The Alternative for Germany, the second largest political party in the Bundestag, is growing stronger, according to a sober and disturbing PBS documentary broadcast last week. In The Rise of Germany’s New Right, correspondent Evan Williams takes a hard look at this ultra right-wing populist party twelve years after its founding and suggests it is […]
The Palmach, the elite fighting unit of the Haganah self-defence force in British Mandate Palestine, is at the core of Palmach Rising, a 95-part Israeli television series now available on the Izzy streaming platform. Described as a teen drama, each episode is about 20 minutes in length. Judging by the first five, they are likely […]
The first season of House of Promises, a bright and atmospheric German-language period piece which takes place in Berlin from the late 1920s until the Nazi takeover in the 1930s, is now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. The opening scene is captivating and original, hinting of much more to come. Arthur Grunberg (Alexander Scheer), […]
Beth Lane’s Netflix documentary, Unbroken, tells what is perhaps a unique story of survival during the Holocaust. By a stroke of good fortune, all seven siblings in a Jewish family in Nazi Germany managed to surmount adversity. At a time when being Jewish or even half-Jewish was tantamount to a virtual death sentence in Adolf […]
A new television series from Argentina, Family Therapy, an appealing melange of comedy and drama, is now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. Set in contemporary Buenos Aires, and revolving around a secular Jewish family caught up in a crisis caused by the passing of a beloved relative, it is consistently entertaining. The central characters, […]
Before Shtisel there was Kugel. Shtisel, the award-winning Israeli television series that enjoyed a three-year run from 2013 onward, was about the trials, tribulations and joyous interludes of an ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem. Although it was laser focused on haredi Jews, a cloistered sect, it exuded universal appeal, drawing in a secular Jewish audience as […]
A new and thoughtful documentary about Jewish resistance to Nazi oppression, Resistance: They Fought Back, will be broadcast on the PBS network on Monday, January 27 at 10 p.m. (check local listings). It coincides with International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 8oth anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi extermination camp in […]