Franz Kafka died 100 years ago today in a sanatorium in Kierling, Austria, the victim of laryngeal tuberculosis. He was just 40 when he passed on June 3, 1924. One of the greatest German-language writers of the last century, this Prague-born Czech Jew left behind an eclectic collection of novels, short stories, diaries and notebooks. […]
At the age of 16, citizens of the now-defunct Soviet Union received their official identification card. This was usually seen as a festive and significant event, a giant step forward into adulthood. One’s “nationality” was inscribed on the fifth line of this document. In a multicultural country with 100 nationalities, you could be Russian, Ukrainian, […]
The vociferous anti-Israel protesters who have illegally occupied a considerable expanse of land at the University of Toronto’s King’s College Circle are determined to flout the law come what may. Last week, the university issued trespass notices ordering hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators to pack up their tents and leave their encampment, which is filled with […]
Nazi-looted paintings turn up in the most surprising of places. In Pascal Bonitzer’s French-language movie, Auction, which will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on June 2, a canvas by the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele is found in the home of a young factory worker who has no idea of its intrinsic […]
He discovered them in 1961 in The Cavern, a dingy nightclub in the British port of Liverpool. The four scruffy young men he heard singing that night impressed him, and under his tutelage, they achieved astonishing success. The Beatles, arguably the most successful band in musical history, rose to stardom thanks in no small part […]
The Voice of Israel, or Kol Israel, broadcast special radio programs to the Arab world from the late 1940s onward. Mostly hosted by Arabic-speaking Iraqi Jews superbly acquainted with Arab culture, they were quite popular, judging by the stream of appreciative letters from Arab listeners that landed in an Israeli postal box in Geneva, Switzerland, […]
Marco Carmel’s bitter-sweet movie, Arugam Bay, is set in an idyllic corner of Sri Lanka to which surfers gravitate. It’s where three Israelis go on vacation to chill out and reminisce about an old friend who has passed. It will be screened on June 1 at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from May […]
Thanks to a recent agreement between the United States and Egypt, humanitarian aid has begun flowing into the Gaza Strip via Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing, albeit it on a far lower scale. This assistance had been channelled through the adjacent Rafah crossing prior to Israel’s invasion of Rafah and its takeover of the crossing […]
The first group of Jews to be transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland consisted of 999 women from Slovakia. Their gruesome story unfolds in Heather Dune Macadam’s empathetic documentary, 999: The Forgotten Girls, which is scheduled to be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on May 31. Slovakia, a province of Czechoslovakia, […]
Foreign intrigue suffuses Background To Danger, a 1943 Warner Bros. Pictures movie directed by Raoul Walsh. Recently screened on the Turner Classic Movies channel, this taut espionage thriller unfolds primarily in Turkey but also in Syria and Nazi Germany at the height of World War II. Turkey, one of several neutral countries that stayed out […]