A year after forming what is probably Israel’s most ideologically diverse government, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is clinging to power by the skin of his teeth. As of now, he controls only 60 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, allowing him to govern but leaving his government potentially unstable and vulnerable to upheaval and […]
Jews were among the earliest settlers of the American West, which, as late as the 19th century, was populated mainly by Indian tribes. Most Jewish immigrants arriving in the United States settled in major east coast cities, but a few ventured west, to fast- developing states like California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Antisemitism […]
Throughout much of the Arab world, Israel is regarded as a pariah state, a country that occupies Palestinian land and oppresses the Palestinians. But alongside this black cloud is a silver lining in which a more positive view of Israel has taken hold among a handful of conservative Arab states. The United Arab Emirates and […]
Avi Nesher’s captivating movie, Image of Victory, takes viewers back 74 years to a long-forgotten but important battle during Israel’s War of Independence. It will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. On June 7, 1948, Egypt won its first armed engagement with the newly-formed state of Israel […]
Vengeance was the name of the game for Holocaust survivor Abba Kovner. In postwar Germany, he and a few fellow survivors sought to kill six million Germans to avenge the deaths of six million Jews. The Israeli brothers Doron and Yoav Paz have recreated this little-known incident in their dark and sober movie, Plan A. It […]
No one should be surprised in the least by Iraq’s recent decision to criminalize normalization attempts with Israel, its longtime enemy. On May 27, Iraq’s parliament passed a law criminalizing contacts between Iraqi citizens, institutions and organizations and the state of Israel, or “the Zionist entity,” as it is derisively known in Iraq. The new […]
Israeli filmmaker Michal Weits untangles her grandfather’s complex past as a state builder in Blue Box, a compelling 82-minute documentary that will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. Joseph Weitz, the father of Israel’s forests, was the director of both the Jewish National Fund’s Department of Lands […]
By Julia Mintz’s estimation, more than 25,000 Jewish partisans fought German troops in the forests of Eastern Europe during World War II. Usually attached to networks of Russian and Polish partisan groups, they came from all walks of life from Poland and Lithuania. Her stirring documentary, Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and […]
Monticello is one of the finest public buildings in America. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the author of the Declaration Independence, lived there periodically until his death in 1826. When he died, he was deeply in debt, compelling his daughter, Martha, to sell the estate, which had fallen into disrepair. […]
Wojciech Smarzowski’s unusually strong and emotive Polish-language movie, The Wedding Day, merges past and present, gliding over a ragged landscape torn by ethnocentrism and violence and healed by humanity. It will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs online and in-person from June 9-26. Shifting seamlessly between modern-day Soviet-and German-occupied Poland, it […]