By re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba after an almost 54-year break, U.S. President Barack Obama will be putting an end to a policy that long ago became pointless. Cuba may be no democracy, but Washington enjoys diplomatic relations with at least 20 countries whose regimes are more repressive than that of the Castro brothers. Yet […]
He was the master of the brush — a painter of light. He was Joseph Turner (1775-1851), the British landscape artist whose moody oils, watercolours and drawings guaranteed him a place of immortality in the pantheon of great European painters. Mike Leigh’s biopic, Mr. Turner, which opens in Toronto on Dec. 25, covers the last […]
The 2011 British census provides a snapshot of the country’s Muslim population, which now stands at almost 2.8 million — 4.4 percent of the country’s overall total. Most live in cities like Birmingham, Bradford, and, of course, London, whose Muslim population, at a bit over one million, is 12.4 percent of the city’s people. Philip […]
Israeli cuisine is a fusion of culinary tastes. Jewish immigrants from Muslim lands brought their traditional, time-honored dishes to Israel, as did Jews from Europe and the rest of the world. Through what Israeli food maven Janna Gur describes as a “process of natural selection,” Israeli society adopted them. Gur, in Jewish Soul Food: From […]
Julius Avery’s crime thriller, Son of a Gun, crackles with energy and tension. A new director, he has made a tightly-wound film turning on the theme of honor among thieves, if there is such a thing. Scheduled to start its run in Toronto on Dec. 19, it opens as Jesse (Brenton Thwaites), a young man […]
Whatever you may think of him, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon tells the unvarnished truth, at least in private settings. Recently, in a closed-door session with students at a West Bank yeshiva, he made a telling admission. Speaking to an obviously sympathetic audience, he said that the Israeli government has every intention of expanding Jewish settlements […]
Benito Mussolini, the fascist ruler of Italy, and Achille Ratti, the Roman Catholic cardinal anointed as Pope Pius XI, both came to power in the same year, 1922. They were polar opposites in terms of personality, but since they shared a distrust of democracy and an animus for communism, they were able to work together […]
Russia has taken hypocrisy to new cynical heights by having lodged a letter of complaint with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon over Israel’s “aggressive actions” in Syria. On Dec. 7, Israeli aircraft reportedly struck Syrian military facilities near the international airport just outside Damascus and a site close to the Lebanese border. According to […]
France has taken another step forward in acknowledging its role in the Holocaust. On Dec. 5, it announced it had established a fund to compensate Jews who had been deported to German concentration camps on French trains belonging to the state railway company, SNCF. By all estimates, SNCF, under pressure from Germany, sent some 76,000 […]
Can two strangers from diametrically opposing and irreconcilable backgrounds meet on common ground? Not likely. But in Maxime Giroux’s Felix and Meira — which will be screened by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s Chai Tea & A Movie series on Sunday, Dec. 14 at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. — all things are possible. The strangers […]