Reconstruction, one of the most complex, turbulent and divisive eras in American history, left a legacy of hope and terror that still haunts the United States. Extending from approximately 1865 to 1877, it raised a mountain of contentious racial, social, political and economic issues as Northerners and Southerners grappled with the outcome of the 1861-1865 Civil War. […]
As a fringe movement, the alt-right in the United States had its “15 minutes of fame” in August 2017, when it organized a Unite the Right rally in the quaint town of Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the scheduled removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the commander of Confederate forces during the American Civil […]
Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is widely admired and feared. Its fearsome reputation, the stuff of legends, informs Inside the Mossad, a four-part Israeli series now available on the Netflix streaming network. In the first few moments, Rafi Eitan, the Mossad’s chief of operations from 1950 to 1981, tells a story about an Israeli […]
The Israeli adventure drama, When Heroes Fly, has arrived at the Netflix streaming network. The 10-part series, set in Israel and Colombia, unfolds in Hebrew, Spanish and English. Four Israeli buddies, who fought together in the 2006 war in Lebanon, team up in a daring mission to find an Israeli woman supposedly killed nearly a decade ago. […]
The emergence of right-wing populist fringe groups in Europe today could well owe its origins to one man — Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. Some have dismissed him as a buffoon, but this would be a false and misleading appraisal of the architect of fascism, which plunged continental Europe into darkness. A […]
Ultra- Orthodox Jews in Israel, known as haredim in Hebrew, live in almost total seclusion, their everyday lives an enduring mystery to most Israelis. Shtisel, a popular Israeli television series which ran from 2013 to 2014, shines a spotlight on these reclusive Jews through the Shtisels, a middle-class family in western Jerusalem. Rather than regarding […]
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, a persona non-grata in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s, looms large in Trotsky, an eight-part Russian television series released last year to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Now available on the Netflix streaming network, Trotsky is an ambitious, finely-crafted period piece featuring a stellar cast. […]
Netflix’s eight-part comedy series, The Kominsky Method, created by Chuck Lorre and starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin, chronicles the perils of aging in the entertainment industry, which values the vitality, spunk and effervescence of youth. Douglas portrays Sandy Kominsky, a washed-up actor who ekes out a living as an acting coach in Los Angeles. […]
Long before the emancipation of women in Western societies, Gertrude Bell led the way forward as an historian, political analyst, administrator, archeologist, writer and photographer. She was surely was one of the most influential females of the 20th century. T.E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, hailed her as “a wonderful person.” D. G. Hogarth, […]
Dramatic reunions are the stock-in-trade of We’ll Meet Again, the PBS series hosted by Ann Curry. In the latest installment, Surviving the Holocaust, which will be broadcast on Tuesday, November 20 at 8 p.m. (check local listings), two Jewish men discover the power of friendship. Benjamin Lesser, a Polish Jew from Krakow, is a survivor […]