The southern German state of Bavaria is trying to resolve a vexing issue. Should Muslim high school students in all grades be required to visit former concentration camps, or the new Nazi documentation center in Munich, as part of their studies on the Holocaust? It’s a very German problem for a number of compelling reasons. […]
Maya Forbes’ comedic drama, Infinitely Polar Bear, is biographical. Cameron Stewart (Mark Ruffalo), the main character, is modelled after her father. Compassionate and funny, he’s a manic depressive with a bipolar edge. His African American wife, Maggie (Zoe Saldana), appreciates his finer qualities, but can no longer cope with his debilitating disorder. His two adolescent […]
Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) was a remarkable photographer, often mentioned in the same breadth as the illustrious Henri Cartier Bresson. A lithographer and engraver by trade, he slipped into photojournalism gradually. By the 1950s, he was well established, known in particular for his photographs of Paris. Jean Claude Gautrand’s lavishly-illustrated coffee-table book, Robert Doisneau, published by Taschen […]
By now the whole world knows about the murders of nine African Americans holding a Bible study class at the historic Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17. It is one of the oldest African American congregations in the United States. Dylann Roof, a 21-year old man, has been arrested for […]
Whatever you think of the report released yesterday by the United Nations Human Rights Council on last summer’s Gaza war, take a moment to reflect on its causes. In a nutshell, it was the result of aggression on the part of Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip with an iron hand since the spring […]
On his obnoxious racist website, American mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof holds the battle flag of the Confederacy as he spits on and burns the American flag. It’s hardly a mystery why he desecrated the Stars and Stripes as he paid respect to the Confederate flag. Roof, who cold bloodedly killed nine African-American parishioners at the historically […]
Extremism in Israel, whether manifested in deed or through rhetoric, should be a source of grave concern to decent Israelis who care about the future direction of their country. In recent days, vandals have desecrated the Church of the Multiplication, near the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, while a United Torah Judaism parliamentarian […]
Are you in the mood for some eclectic reading material? Sit back in your chair and enjoy the company of these books, published recently. The major league baseball season is in full swing throughout Canada and the United States. As you may know, American Jewish athletes, from Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax to Al Rosen […]
Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist, has written a poignant memoir of identity, displacement and prejudice in The Girl From Human Street: Ghosts of Memory of a Jewish Family, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Born in London, raised in South Africa, schooled in Britain and now a citizen of the United States, he’s a […]
A voice from the past emerges in the pages of The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today’s Kitchen (Schocken Books), first published in Yiddish in 1938 when Vilna — a center of Jewish learning and scholarship — was part of Poland rather than Lithuania. It’s the inimitable voice of Fania Lewando, the […]