The tortured history of Jewish-Ukrainian relations has again come to the fore. On May 25, Ukraine observed a minute of silence in memory of Symon Petliura, a nationalist leader blamed for the murder of some 50,000 Ukrainian Jews during the chaos of World War I and the Russian Revolution. The commemorative event marked the […]
Ada Ushpiz’s biopic, Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, takes a sweeping look at the life and ideas of a controversial philosopher. Scheduled to be screened at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto from June 10-16, this thoughtful two-hour film portrays Arendt as an independent thinker who was neither a classic liberal nor […]
There has always been a small minority of Jews who regarded Judaism as a burden to be jettisoned. Such Jews usually resolved their problem by means of complete assimilation. This invariably meant conversion to another religion, marriage to a spouse of a different faith or flight into exclusively non-Jewish circles. Over the centuries, this pattern […]
Genya Kirshner, my beloved mother, ended her long and arduous journey on Friday, May 27 at about 1:30 p.m. on a hospital bed in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. She was 100, five months short of her 101st birthday. As my old friend Henry Srebrnik wrote today, I was fortunate to have had her for so […]
Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog was right to mock Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent assertion that he’s ready to take “brave steps” to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Netanyahu made this claim in a speech to the Knesset on the eve of appointing Avigdor Liberman, a hawk, as Israel’s new defence minister. Commenting on this […]
Poland has experienced a Jewish revival since the end of the Communist era and the advent of democracy in 1989. And there is no better symbol of that remarkable phenomenon than the Lauder Morasha Middle School in Warsaw, which is marking its 22nd anniversary this year. Although it’s generously supported by grants from the Ronald […]
Shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cavalierly relieved him of his duties as minister of defence last week, Moshe Yaalon took to the podium to deliver a remarkable speech peppered with ominous references to the growth of extremism in Israel. Yaalon’s comments should be regarded by Israelis as a wakeup, reinforcing widespread fears that Israel is […]
Countries ranging from China and Jordan to India and the United States are experiencing water shortages. Yet strangely enough, Israel — a semi-arid nation whose annual rainfall has dropped by half in recent years — does not face a water crisis. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, “Israel doesn’t have a water problem.” […]
Whit Stillman’s romantic comedy, Love and Friendship, stars the divine Kate Beckinsale as a devious man hunter obsessed with finding a suitable husband for herself and her daughter. This drawing room period piece, based on a novella by Jane Austen, opens in Canada on May 27. More farcical than dramatic, it unfolds in a series […]
Improbably enough, one of the world’s most impressive 19th century opera houses, the Teatro Amazonas, is in Manaus, right in the middle of the great Amazon rainforest. The elegant pink and white neo-classical building, sporting an iridescent dome sprinkled with a dusting of colors, lies in old quarter of Manaus, the commercial capital of the […]