Israel is, technically, not the only official Jewish homeland in the world. Hidden away in the far east of Russian Siberia, 8,361 kilometres east of Moscow, and not that far from the Pacific Ocean, is the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) of Birobidzhan. And it’s even bigger than the far more famous Jewish state: Birobidzhan has […]
The rise of the Nazi party in Germany in 1933 led to an outpouring of protest in the United States. Community leaders, politicians, trade unionists, writers and intellectuals, among others, took to the podiums, streets, airwaves and op-ed pages to denounce Adolf Hitler’s blatantly antisemitic regime. Strangely enough, the presidents of America’s universities and colleges […]
Israel is widely regarded by friends and foes alike as a Western state, but is it really Western? On the face of it, Israel is quintessentially Western, a modern, developed, democratic nation dedicated to and bound by the rule of law. And like classic Western states, Israel has a post-industrial economy, a bourgeois way of […]
Israeli balladeer David Broza, who has been compared to Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen and whose signature songs range from Yihye Tov to Belibi, will perform at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Saturday, Oct. 26 at 8 p.m. Returning to Toronto after a six-year absence, he will be followed by the Yemen Blues band after […]
Omri Givon’s Seven Minutes in Heaven works on two diametrically opposed levels, the real and the hallucinatory. To be presented by the Toronto Jewish Film Society on Oct. 20 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Al Green Theatre (750 Spadina Avenue), this psychological drama from Israel blends terrorism, trauma and romance. A year after […]
I can’t say I like autumn. Autumn, for me, marks the end of summer, my favorite season. I’m a warm-weather person who worships the sun, which, I realize, is not good for you if you expose yourself to its potentially harmful rays once too often. Yet, during the all too short Canadian summer, I’m in […]
I returned to Montreal last month after an absence of more than a year. Montreal, for me, is not just a destination but a place of memory. I was raised in Montreal and spent my formative years there. But after leaving in 1969 to study at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African […]
Myopically enough, Hollywood failed to fully grasp the significance of the rise of Nazism in Germany, even though the American motion picture industry was largely in the hands of Jewish Americans. They underestimated the Nazis, assuming that the national socialists were a passing phenomenon, writes Thomas Doherty in Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939, published by Columbia […]
You name it and they’ve designed it. Massimo and Lella Vignelli, born in Italy and based in New York City, are master graphic artists, having been instrumental in defining the landscape of contemporary design. Their motto is: If you can’t find it, design it. And so they have done to international acclaim. The Vignellis, a married […]
On Oct. 6, waves of Egyptians descended on Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate the 40th anniversary of what is widely regarded as Egypt’s “victory” over Israel in the three-week Yom Kippur War. When Islamist supporters of the ousted and now imprisoned president, Mohamed Morsi, converged on the square, the symbolic heart of the 2011 revolution, […]