Abba Eban has been dead for 14 years but his name still resonates. Eban was unquestionably Israel’s most eloquent foreign minister, defending the Jewish state at the United Nations and other international forums. Hailed abroad as the Voice of Israel, he was regarded far less admirably at home. Although his contemporaries in Israel’s Labor Party […]
Benjamin Netanyahu is a big proponent of “economic peace” with the Palestinians. In 2009, shortly after becoming Israel’s prime minister for the second time, he talked about the need to develop the Palestinian economy in the West Bank, claiming that job creation would benefit both parties. He formed a special committee to improve the Palestinians’ […]
On May 19, 1916, representatives of Britain and France secretly reached an accord, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I. The Ottoman […]
Poland was a charnel house during World War II, a place of death for Jews and Christians alike. Three million Christians and an equal number of Jews perished during Nazi Germany’s inhumane occupation of Poland. Amid the darkness, a small minority of decent, courageous Polish Christians risked their lives to help Jews, a crime punishable […]
Fulfilling a childhood dream, I finally made it to the Amazon rainforest, a vast, trackless, virtually unspoiled region in Brazil. Bisected by rivers and streams and speckled with lakes, it’s a gigantic greenhouse of unimaginable richness and diversity, containing one-tenth of the world’s plants and animal species. Comprising 36 percent of Brazil’s territory, the Amazon […]
Canadian short story writer/novelist David Bezmozgis draws on his Russian Jewish background for inspiration. Born in Latvia when it was still part of the now-defunct Soviet Union, he arrived in Toronto with his parents when he was six years old, joining the growing Russian diaspora in Canada. Although Bezmozgis has forged his reputation on the […]
Lorene Scafaria’s feature film, The Meddler, is burdened with a misleading title. One might assume it’s about an unpleasant person who makes other people uneasy or miserable, but it’s actually about a guileless and needy widow with a sunny disposition whose chief ambition is to help her fellow human beings. Marnie (Susan Sarandon), still grieving […]
The Labor Party in Britain is mired in the muck of antisemitism, but it’s a self-inflicted wound. In the past few days, two of its members have been suspended for having brought the party into “disrepute.” Naseem Shah, an MP of Pakistani descent who represents the riding of Bradford West, stirred outrage following the disclosure […]
As usual, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival — which runs from May 5-15 — has a great lineup of movies this year. A sampler: Uri Barbash’s Kapo in Jerusalem (May 9 and 15) is shot through with moral ambiguities. Bruno Kaminski (Gil Frank), a Holocaust survivor in Israel, is accused of having committed reprehensible […]
Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) is remembered as the sharp-eyed observer who produced a priceless trove of some 15,000 photographs documenting Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe before the Holocaust. Assigned to this prescient project by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, he poured body and soul into it. From 1935 to 1938, he travelled far and […]