Less than a month after President Donald Trump abruptly announced the withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria within 30 days, the United States has adjusted its Syrian policy, much to Israel’s relief. Trump’s announcement on December 19 alarmed Israel, which feared that a precipitous U.S. pullout would leave a dangerous vacuum in Syria that Iran, Israel’s fiercest […]
A low-key but vibrant film about quiet desperation and survival, Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is never less than absorbing. The chief protagonist, New York-based author Lee Israel, finds herself in dire straits in the early 1990s. Israel’s last book about cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder has bombed and, cruelly enough, publishers are shunning her. Unable to earn […]
Bjorn Runge’s film, The Wife, is a complex, compelling and nuanced portrait of Joe and Joan Castleman, an elderly couple whose marriage is sorely tested by an unexpected telephone call in the dead of night and a glittering awards ceremony thousands of kilometres away from their home. It’s 1992 and Joe (Jonathan Pryce), an acclaimed […]
When Israelis head to the polls on April 9 for the second time in four years to cast their ballots in a general election, they’ll be confronted by an array of political, social and economic issues. This time around, they’ll have to factor one more consideration into their calculations: the criminal charges of corruption and […]
Morris (Moe) Berg has acquired a reputation as the most educated and brainiest player in the history of American major league baseball. Born in New York City in 1902, he studied modern languages at Princeton University and law at Columbia University. Despite his bent for academia, he devoted himself to baseball. For 15 years, he […]
We live in an era of rising racism, antisemitism and tacit acceptance of racial and ethnic hatred by right-wing populist politicians. Case in point: A year and a half ago, at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, neo-Nazi louts chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” In a profoundly disappointing response, U.S. President Donald Trump […]
Israeli police recommended a month ago that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on criminal charges in connection with three corruption, bribery and fraud cases against him. These are extremely serious accusations that should concern Israeli voters. Lest it be forgotten, this was the third time in a year that the police had filed this recommendation. […]
Founded in 1866, just a year after the U.S. Civil War ended, the Ku Klux Klan was established as a secret fraternal organization whose aim was to promote white supremacy and reimpose servitude on African Americans by various means of terrorism, including lynchings. Concentrated in southern states that had formed the Confederacy, the Klan faded […]
Few cities in France have been roiled by as much upheaval. Strasbourg, the cosmopolitan capital of Alsace, has always been in the eye of a storm. Founded by the Romans as a military camp, it was a free imperial city during the Holy Roman Empire. Ceded to France in 1681, it fell into Germany’s hands during […]
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 […]