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Film

Let It Be Morning

Starring a talented all-Arab cast, Eran Kolirin’s subtle satire, Let It Be Morning, unfolds in a remote Israeli Arab village before and after a wedding. Based on a novel by Sayed Kashua, it draws a portrait of the current Arab condition in Israel. It will be presented at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which started […]

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Film

The Missing Tale

Klara Trencsényi was transfixed by Sarah Cohen. “Sarah’s image wouldn’t let me rest,” she says in her documentary, The Missing Tale, which will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. Cohen, one of the last Jews of Cochin, a town in south-west India, reminded Trencsényi of her Catholic […]

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Film

Shtetl Jews

Jews in Eastern Europe once inhabited remote villages known as shtetls. There they lived in splendid isolation for hundreds of years, observing the customs and folkways of their ancestors and speaking Yiddish and the languages of the local region. The Nazis all but destroyed this vibrant and unique culture in just a few short years. […]

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Film

A Reflective Documentary About Israeli Author David Grossman

David Grossman is one of Israel’s literary treasures. A writer of fiction and non-fiction, his books have been translated into 30 languages and have won an assortment of awards, including the Man Booker Prize and the Israel Prize. In Adi Arbel’s reflective documentary, Grossman, he reflects on his life and career. It will be presented […]

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Film

Passage To Sweden

The Jewish citizens of the Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Norway and Denmark had very different experiences during the Holocaust, as Suzannah Warlick’s documentary, Passage to Sweden, attests. The film will be screened at this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 9-26. As Warlick points out, Sweden enjoyed immunity from the tumult of […]

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Middle East

Israel’s Coalition Government Teeters On Thin Ice

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 […]

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Film

Jews Of The Wild West

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 […]

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Middle East

Israel Upgrades Trade Ties With Arab World

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 […]

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Film

Image Of Victory

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 […]

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Film

Plan A Resurrects A Chilling Footnote In Jewish History

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 […]