The saga of Germans who despised the Nazi regime and struggled against it can be inspirational. Rhonda Lauritzen delves into that topic in A Child In Berlin (Post Hill Press). She does so through the lives of one German woman, Heidi Posnien, and her mother, Kathe Wypych. The Posiens were German citizens of Polish ethnicity from […]
The United States has pulled out all the stops in a concerted effort to preserve the shaky ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Brokered earlier this month by President Donald Trump in coordination with Israel, Arab states and Turkey, it kicked off the first phase of Trump’s 20-point peace plan to end the two-year war between […]
Portraying the illustrious Jewish American lyricist Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke dominates Richard Linklater’s movie, which opens in Canadian theaters on October 24. Appearing in virtually every scene, Hawke delivers a virtuoso performance as the Broadway legend whose untimely death at 48 robbed America of a great talent far too soon. For 24 […]
Late last month, on the eve of his latest meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a bombshell statement. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” said Trump, whom Netanyahu has often hailed as the most pro-Israel president in American history. “It’s not […]
Nir Baram, an Israeli novelist and journalist, is a peacenik. He is convinced that the protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians should be resolved through a two-state solution, which has so far proved to be a pipe dream. Testing his firmly-held belief, he spent two years travelling around the Israeli-occupied West Bank, speaking to Jewish […]
Christophe Lebold’s lyrical biography of the Canadian singer and literary figure, Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw The Angels Fall (ECW Press), is definitive in its comprehensiveness. The author, a professor of literature at the University of Strasbourg in France, befriended Cohen, and his admiration of him shines through the pages of this massive book, […]
In a word, the Dead Sea is dying. The world’s lowest body of water, 440 meters below sea level, is drying up at an alarming rate, creating thousands of sinkholes along the shore. The reasons for its decline are clear. It is not being replenished sufficiently by the Jordan River, which itself is dangerously polluted. […]
Two dates in October are seared into the consciousness of Israelis — October 7 and October 13 — in split-screen moments. On October 7, 2023, Israel was suddenly thrown into shock, grief and trauma as thousands of Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip broke through the fortified border fence and proceeded to kill about 1,200 […]
The mists of time have obscured the life of Souad Zaki, a largely forgotten Egyptian Jewish entertainer who achieved a measure of fame in her country and the Arab world during the 1940s. Egypt, A Love Story, a bitter-sweet documentary, recounts the trajectory of her relatively short-lived career as an alluring chanteuse and movie actress. […]
There is finally light at the end of the tunnel. Israel’s two-year war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, appears to have belatedly drawn to a close thanks to a 20-point peace plan devised by U.S. President Donald Trump and his aides. Trump and […]