Israeli women whose recalcitrant husbands refuse to grant them a divorce, or gett, are known in Hebrew as agunot. Tragically, they are figuratively chained to their husbands, unable to live normally, or restart their lives. This egregious and unjust system, presided over by Orthodox rabbis and tolerated by the Israeli government, has been in existence […]
The second season of Tehran, an Apple TV and Israeli state television co-production, lives up to expectations. Tehran, in its debut season, introduced us to a cast of canny Israeli and Iranian spies trying to outwit each other before and after an Israeli air raid intended to wipe out Iran’s nuclear arsenal. In the latest and […]
From 1933 until 1945, a momentous 12-year period encompassing the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and the onset of the Holocaust, the United States admitted 225,000 European Jewish refugees. This was more than any other country, but only a fraction of the Jews in jeopardy who clamored to find a safe haven in […]
Netflix’s new, mildly entertaining eight-part series, Mo, comically focuses on the trials and tribulations of a displaced Palestinian refugee family in Texas. It could very well be the first American television production exclusively about Palestinian migrants in the United States. The American standup comedian Mohammed Amer plays the central character, Mohammed Najjar, who lives in Houston […]
Fabian Nury’s Paris Police 1900 is set against the backdrop of the sensational Dreyfus affair, which split France down the middle in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A moody police procedural and a taut political drama, it will be available in Canada and the United States on the MHz Choice streaming platform on September 20. […]
It will come as no surprise to the well-informed class that openly-expressed antisemitism has been on an upward trajectory in the United States for the past few years. Antisemitic incidents, as measured by the Anti-Defamation League, have been steadily on the increase since 2017. Rising Hate: Antisemitism in America, a special report carried by CNN […]
Shimon Peres, Israel’s three-time prime minister and ninth president, was a dreamer who fused idealism with practicality. A hawk who was instrumental in building the Israeli armed forces in the late 1940s and 1950s, he was also a dove who strove for peace with the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbors in the 1990s. Peres, who […]
The Polish TV series Wartime Girls is back for a second season on the ChaiFlicks Jewish streaming platform. This is good news because Michal Rogalski’s drama, set during the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945, is compelling and entertaining, judging by the first four of 13 episodes. Three characters, all young women from completely […]
In one of the most audacious deception operations of World War II, Britain tricked Nazi Germany into thinking that Allied armies would invade Greece rather than Sicily. The Germans fell for the ruse, thereby saving thousands of soldiers’ lives and bringing Germany and the Axis powers one step closer to ignominious defeat. John Madden’s competently-crafted […]
Magen David Adom, an Israeli paramedic organization, is busy day and night tending to the sick and wounded. Its staff of 25,000 medics and 29,000 volunteers respond to a wide assortment of emergencies ranging from traffic accidents to terrorist attacks. Martin Himel, a Canadian journalist based in Israel, has been one of its volunteers for the […]