On Nov. 7, the Quebec government tabled Bill 60, the so-called Charter of Quebec Values, in the province’s National Assembly. The law would forbid all public employees from wearing “overt and conspicuous” religious symbols and headgear, including Muslim face veils, Jewish yarmulkes, Sikh turbans, or large crucifixes. The regulations would apply only to publicly-paid […]
Categories
The Films of the Coen Brothers
Joel and Ethan Coen have made an indelible impression, to say the very least. Since the release of their first feature film, Blood Simple, the Coens have carved out a niche for themselves in American cinema. Their films, from Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing to Fargo and The Big Lebowski, are distinguished by memorable characters, laconic […]
Categories
12 Years A Slave is Unaffected and Troubling
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave takes us into the ferocious maw of slavery in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War. Based on a true story, it recounts the bitter experiences of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free African American who was drugged, kidnapped and sold into bondage. This unadorned, unaffected and […]
Categories
Lance Armstrong unmasked in documentary
There was no better cyclist than Lance Armstrong during his supremacy of the sport from 1999 to 2005, when he won seven successive Tour de France titles. Detractors claimed he owed his success to performance enhancing drugs, but Armstrong strenuously denied the accusation, reminding critics he had passed a succession of drug tests. In 2013, […]
During the Nazi era in Germany, Jews were robbed of their valuable art collections or forced to sell them at ridiculously deflated prices. Paintings by such masters as Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall were shamelessly expropriated by Nazi officials like Hermann Goering, a self-styled art connoisseur, and by fellow travellers. In one of the most notorious […]
Categories
Antisemitism in Quebec
The historical relationship between Jews and French Canadians is fundamentally important in understanding the history of Jews in Canada, but as a topic it remains controversial due to the occurrence of antisemitism in the province of Quebec, Canadian historian Ira Robinson told a symposium in Toronto on Nov. 17. Robinson, a professor of Judaic Studies […]
Categories
Yiddish Scholarship in Canada
Pierre Anctil may well be an anomaly: a French Canadian scholar who has learned Yiddish and writes extensively on the history of the Jewish community in Montreal. But on second thought, as he suggested in a lecture on Yiddish scholarship in Canada today, he may not be an oddity at all. Speaking at a symposium […]
After meeting Manfred Rommel, the son of legendary World War II German field marshal Erwin Rommel, I realized that yesterday’s enemies can be today’s friends. Or to put it another way, Germans are not intrinsically hostile to Jews. Far from it. Manfred Rommel, who died a few days ago at the age of 84, was […]
Categories
A Courageous Polish Film
Challenging conventional dogma in Poland, Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s intense and courageous feature film, Aftermath, boldly asserts that Polish Catholics, far from having been only victims of Nazi oppression, were also perpetrators. Inspired by a notorious incident in 1941 in which as many as 1,600 Jews in the northeastern Polish town of Jedwabne were massacred by their Catholic […]
Categories
The Sins of Joseph Patrick Kennedy
Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1888-1969) was the patriarch of one of America’s greatest political dynasties. Kennedy’s son, John, the first Roman Catholic president, was assassinated 50 years ago on Nov. 22. Robert, John’s attorney general and a U.S. senator, was gunned down in 1968. Edward, who died four years ago, enjoyed a stellar career in the […]