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- NEWS & COMMENTARY
Kerry praises Netanyahu’s ‘seriousness’ on peace
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his “seriousness” in finding ways to restart the peace process.
Angelina’s breast cancer victory isn’t for celebrities only
Actress Angelina Jolie just announced that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning that she was genetically predisposed to cancer. Her disclosure was a powerful show of solidarity with the more than 100,000 American women who undergo breast removal…
Garcetti, Feuer, Galperin: A new era of Jewish leadership in L.A.?
Los Angeles chose Eric Garcetti as its first elected Jewish mayor in a number of political contests on Tuesday that reflected the city’s diversity, as well as its numerous variations of Jewishness. (In a historical footnote, one Bernard Cohn served…
- HOLLYWOOD
Spielberg to produce ‘Halo’ television series, plus other news from the Xbox One announcement
Microsoft Corp gave the world a first look at its new Xbox One on Tuesday, announcing that its first gaming console in eight years will come with exclusive video and…
Justin Timberlake and Coen brothers answer Jewish questions at Cannes
Using his preternatural smoothness, Justin Timberlake saved the Coen brothers from some serious awkwardness at a Cannes press conference for their folk singer film “Inside Llewyn Davis” on Sunday. “Jewish…
Sarah Silverman sings about staying home in ‘Perfect Night’
For your listening pleasure, “Perfect Night,” in which Sarah Silverman recounts the benefits of skipping the club for the couch. Because this is a Silverman production you can expect references…
- LIFE & CULTURE
Angelina’s breast cancer victory isn’t for celebrities only
Actress Angelina Jolie just announced that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning that she was genetically predisposed to cancer. Her disclosure was a powerful show of solidarity with…
‘God is a fraud’
In this week’s parasha, Beha’alotecha, Moses faces the fragility of life as he watches his sister, Miriam, struggle with tzara’at, a dangerous skin disease. Overcome with anguish, Moses cries out…
Startup classroom
In a twist on the classic academic approach to entrepreneurship, Israeli universities are trending toward classroom-based incubators that allow students to put theory to the test in a sheltering atmosphere.…
- BLOGS
Propaganda lies in a disguise
Muhammad al-Durrah, the little boy who became the symbol of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, is returning to the headlines after a decade. A photo of him, crying, leaning against a wall…
Male Eating Disorders: A Real Thing
Recently, People Magazine came out with an article about Ashley Hamilton talking openly about his struggles with an eating disorder. I applaud Ashley for coming out about having an eating…
Religion at the End of The Big C
Last night, Showtime’s The Big C aired its final episode. After three seasons of half-hour installments, this comedy returned for a shortened final season consisting of four hour-long episodes. Subtitled…
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Tom Tugend
Garcetti, Feuer, Galperin: A new era of Jewish leadership in L.A.?
Los Angeles chose Eric Garcetti as its first elected Jewish mayor in a number of political contests on Tuesday that reflected the city’s diversity, as well as its numerous variations of Jewishness. (In a historical footnote, one Bernard Cohn served as the appointed mayor of Los Angeles for a few weeks in 1878.)
Choosing between love and obligation
"Fill the Void,” which won Israel’s equivalent of the Academy Award last year, is a love story unlike any Hollywood fare and it is set in a Jewish community unfamiliar to most Jews.
Mezzo’s Kibbutz roots
It’s a long way from Kibbutz Dalia, where Rachel Frenkel was raised, to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, but the mezzo-soprano is completing that journey this week.
‘Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic’ exhibition related events and programs
Some 20 public events — including lectures, discussions, musical performances, film screenings and bus tours of Jewish Los Angeles — will complement the “Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic” exhibition at the Autry National Center (May 10, 2013, through Jan. 5, 2014). Included are:
Autry president embodies American complexity
W. (Walter) Richard West Jr., the new president and CEO of the Autry National Center, believes that a key job of this country’s museums is to interpret the complexity of the American heritage, and he embodies this mission both in his work and in his personal background.
How the Jews changed L.A.
When Los Angeles was incorporated as a city in 1850, eight Jews, all bachelors, were included on the population rolls. Today, according to the best estimates, somewhere between 600,000 to 650,000 Jews live in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, with figures varying depending upon who does the estimating, how they define the geographical boundaries and, indeed, the definition of who is a Jew.
Murder-suicide by despondent senior reported in Sherman Oaks
BDS campaign spreads with little effect
The multinational boycott campaign targeting Israel, aimed at stopping the country’s perceived injustices against Palestinians, has a venerable history, but the movement showed a new spurt of activism this month.
What would Woody Allen do?
“Paris-Manhattan,” whose respective residents consider their city to be the center of the known universe, is the title of an appealing French movie by a first-time feature film director.
Berkeley students vote to divest from Israel latest in a UC string
UC Berkeley student senators approved a bill on Thursday calling for the University of California system to divest of stock in American companies that provide technological and weapon support used by the Israeli military in the Palestinian territories.
Mark Yudof on Jews, Israel and his UC presidency
When Mark G. Yudof arrived at University of California headquarters in Oakland in 2008 to take over as president of the 10-campus system, among the problems awaiting him were charges that administrators on the Irvine campus were not protecting Jewish students against hate speech and intimidation by Muslim student groups and from invited outside speakers.
The off-campus Yudof
Mark Yudof, the soon-to-retire president of the University of California system, was born in Philadelphia, the son of an electrician, and during a distinguished career as head of the Universities of Minnesota, Texas and California multicampus systems, has never quite lost his taste for the blue-collar lifestyle, especially when it comes to food.
Israel Film Festival explores unfamiliar territory
Among its other benefits, the Israel Film Festival takes even those of us familiar with the country to places and people we know only superficially, or not at all.
The Jews who influenced Sen. Al Franken
Alan Stuart “Al” Franken, satirist, comedy writer, talk-show host and now U.S. senator from Minnesota, was by turns reflective, ethnic and funny as he tackled the topic “Public Service: How the Jewish Tradition Has Influenced One U.S. Senator” during a recent evening at USC.
Getting the lay of the land
When Jennifer Thompson left her academic position in Iowa to join the Jewish Studies faculty at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), she encountered two problems.
Spielberg directs kids to ‘iWitness’ history
In a video, a Holocaust survivor remembers how he had to kill the family dog as he faced deportation to a wartime ghetto, where there would not be enough food for humans and none for animals.
Reflecting on 20 years of ‘Schindler’
If Hollywood were a monarchy, Steven Allan Spielberg would likely be its king.
Rice dissects American policies
For people with a palate for intellectual, social and physical nourishment, the annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA is a not-to-be-missed event.
Three films to focus on Israeli Air Force
Some 65 years after a band of foreign volunteers fought in the skies above Israel to assure the nation’s birth and survival, filmmakers are racing to bring their exploits to the screen before the last of the breed passes away.
SpaceIL: Israel’s race to the moon
One day in 2015, a small Israeli spacecraft will land on and reconnoiter the moon, joining the United States and former Soviet Union in the world’s most exclusive extraterrestrial club.
Holocaust’s enduring lessons
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) will be transplanted, at least in part, from Washington, D.C.’s National Mall to Los Angeles on Feb. 17.
Movie salutes the colorful Ed Koch
New York Mayor Edward Irving Koch, universally addressed as “Ed,” was a master of timing and promotion.
‘Lore’ sees Holocaust through German teen’s eyes
To help us grasp the enormity of the Holocaust, we have the testimonies of survivors, of liberators, even of bystanders, but what about the perpetrators and, even more, their children, who grew up worshipping Adolf Hitler? “Lore,” the movie, grapples with that complex question from the perspective of the title character, a 14-year-old girl (impressively played by Saskia Rosendahl), daughter of a high-ranking SS officer and his equally fanatical wife.
Petition to delete Israel-haters Facebook page draws immediate support
The long-standing Facebook war of words between pro- and anti-Israel partisans has heated up a few degrees with a petition to remove a particularly offensive “F… Israel” page.
‘Yossi’ gets second chance at love
Yossi, the central character in the new eponymous Israeli movie, has changed over the past 10 years, and so have Israel and the world. In 2002, director Eytan Fox introduced him in “Yossi & Jagger,” which became Israel’s highest-grossing film abroad, up to that time.
Oscar contenders focus on Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Doctor makes the case for a GSD cure
Dr. David A. Weinstein was working as a resident at Boston Children’s Hospital in 1994 when he encountered his first young patients with glycogen storage disease (GSD). He followed up on these and other cases and was asked to report on his findings at a GSD conference in 1998.
School kids help give their friend sweet support
Jonah Pournazarian is a bright, playful 7-year-old at Stephen S. Wise Temple Elementary School. He has a best friend, Dylan Siegel, loving parents, devoted teachers and an extremely rare genetic disorder.
Artists from inside the concentration camps
The Nazis gassed and murdered 1 million prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex, but they could not kill the human urge to create and leave behind a sign of their existence for future generations. Some 20 examples of the prisoners’ artistic legacy are on display in the exhibition “Forbidden Art,” continuing through Jan. 31 at UCLA Hillel and the neighboring St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.
Sally Ogle Davis, activists in Jewish arts and synagogue life, dies at 71
Sally Ogle Davis, a teenage television personality in Northern Ireland, chronicler of the famous and powerful in Hollywood, and activist in Jewish arts and synagogue life, died Dec. 11 in Seattle. She was 71.
Moshe Lazar, Sephardic Literature Scholar, 84
Professor Moshe Lazar was a Renaissance man and polymath whose studies ranged across the centuries, from medieval Sephardic life and writings to modern Hebrew poetry, according to his colleagues and students at USC.
‘Fill the Void’ not on Oscar foreign language film shortlist
Parents from JCC shooting offer advice on coping
Holocaust, Jewish themes remain prominent among foreign Oscar offerings
The long forecast “Holocaust fatigue” among filmmakers and their audiences has not yet arrived, judging by the entries for 2013 Oscar honors by producers and directors in numerous countries.
In gear for Maccabiah Games
When Steve Pompan played on the U.S. tennis squad at the last Maccabiah Games in Israel, he was struck by the spectators’ tribal inclination to give advice to the players battling it out on the court.
Israel and Nov. 29
“The Vote,” the best show in town, opened at 7:45 p.m. on Nov. 29 and, after 23 acts, closed down 60 minutes later. During that one hour, speakers, actors, musicians, singers and dancers commemorated the day, 65 years ago, when the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.
Nan Tepper and Richard Horvitz star in Jeffrey Hatcher’s ‘Mrs. Mannerly’
UCI rejects divestment
A resolution passed by the UC Irvine undergraduate student council calling on the university to divest from companies that “profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine” has been rejected by the UCI administration. At the same time, leaders of the Orange County Jewish community denounced “the nonbinding resolution, drafted and introduced with no forewarning by a small group of students with a personal agenda and deliberated in the absence of students with opposing views.”
UC Irvine student divestment vote rejected by school officials
A resolution passed by the UC Irvine undergraduate student council calling on the university to divest from companies that “profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine” has been rejected by the UCI administration.
Films of the Holocaust and non-Jews
Two documentary films, each touching the Holocaust era and celebrating the courage and devotion of non-Jews, are screening in Los Angeles. The first is about Leopold Engleitner, bright-eyed and lucid at 107, who spent 11 years in and out of prisons and Nazi concentration camps, and, after a flight from Vienna to Los Angeles, is ready for his personal appearance tour.
Carmen Warschaw, Democratic activist, philanthropist, 95
Carmen H. Warschaw, passionate political activist, strategist, financial backer and “Jewish mother” to generations of Democratic office holders, died — fittingly — on Election Day, Nov. 6, after watching the television prognostications on the presidential race. She was 95.
Israel Philharmonic concert: Music, media and protesters
Loyola marymount commemorates Kristallnacht
On the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, brown-shirted storm troopers torched and looted hundreds of synagogues and destroyed 7,500 Jewish businesses throughout Germany and Austria in what is known as Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass.”
Israel Philharmonic: A lifelong commitment
The storied Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra 12 years before the rebirth of the Jewish state, and its music-director-for-life Zubin Mehta, will join in concert at Disney Hall on Tuesday evening, Oct. 30.
A scholar of iranian Jewry
The history of Iranian Jewry goes back nearly 3,000 years, so Nahid Pirnazar has a lot of ground to cover in her Oct. 21 lecture at the opening of “Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews,” a wide-ranging, five-month exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum.
David Siegel — A year in L.A.
In the early-morning hours of Sept. 12, this reporter was awakened by a phone call from a Jerusalem newspaper asking for details about a man named Sam Bacile.
Anti-Muslim filmmaker not “Israeli Jew”
Media misled in anti-Islam filmmaker story
Who Is Sam Bacile?
Vying for Jewish hearts, minds and votes
The battle for the Jewish vote is in full swing, with Democrats and Republicans deploying their most stentorian spokespersons.
Hollywood dybbuk invades suburbia
Democratic convention picks Rabbi Wolpe
Herzl: A visionary father of a nation
Theodor Herzl was an assimilated Viennese journalist who became the unlikely founder of modern Zionism and a main catalyst for the creation of the Jewish State of Israel.
Six decades later, fibbing flyer sees London Olympics
It took 64 years, with a detour to Israel’s War of Independence, but Mitchell Flint is finally getting to see the London Olympic Games, live and in person.
AJR’s Rabbi Gottlieb leaving academic posts, will shift focus to writing
Curing cancer: Nobel laureate Hershko on whether it’s possible
Fortuitously, Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology's Dr. Avram Hershko, co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was recently in Los Angeles, and the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), which supports his work, arranged an interview to provide an expert's view.
Jewish life in France: Progress amid ongoing concerns
On March 19, Mohamed Merah, 23, attacked the Ozar HaTorah school in Toulouse in southern France, killing three students and a rabbi.
A close encounter with Steven Spielberg’s dad
For Arnold Spielberg's birthday in the late 1950s, his wife, Leah, gave him a Brownie movie camera. He had little chance to enjoy the present because it was immediately appropriated by his 13-year-old son, Steven.
Documentary traces changes in kibbutz life
Back in the 1930s and ’40s, when Diaspora Jews desperately needed a symbol of Jewish strength and pride, the brawny, sunburned kibbutznik became the poster image for the new Jew emerging in Palestine.
A conversation with Anne Frank’s cousin
Generations of readers, theater patrons and movie goers have been touched and moved by “The Diary of Anne Frank,” but perhaps no one was more astonished by the adolescent girl’s deep inner life – while in hiding from the Nazis – than Anne’s father.
Music transcends darkest hours in ‘Willesden Lane’
Malka and Abraham Jura faced a Solomonic decision in late 1938, as the Nazis were tightening the vise on the Jews of Vienna. The couple hoped to send their three daughters to safety but were able to wrangle only one place on the Kindertransport ferrying a limited number of Jewish children to London. After much agonizing, the Juras decided to give the spot to 14-year-old Lisa, a remarkable piano prodigy.
Hershey Felder’s two Los Angeles theater turns
Hershey Felder is a prolific performer, writer and composer, but he is setting a new personal record with world premieres of two plays at different Los Angeles venues.
From Yeshiva to the Oscars [SLIDESHOW]
Once upon a time, Marvin Hier, an Orthodox rabbi and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, decided to make a documentary film about the Holocaust.
Judea Pearl wins award for work in artificial intelligence
Judea Pearl, co-founder of the Daniel Pearl Foundation and an internationally renowned expert in computer science, will receive the Turing Award, known as the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” for his path-breaking innovations in artificial intelligence — the discipline probing the partnership between humans and robotic machines.
Family-focused stories at forefront of Israel Film Fest
It’s springtime in Los Angeles, which means raising the curtain on the 26th Israel Film Festival, this year displaying a colorful palette of more than 30 feature movies, documentaries, TV shows and student shorts.
Larry Greenfield to head JINSA
Larry Greenfield, a Los Angeles-area native, has been named national executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington, D.C., JINSA president David Ganz has announced.
Hershel Walfish, leading Orthodox cantor, 89
Hershel Walfish, a leading Orthodox cantor and survivor of several Nazi concentration camps, died Jan. 24 at 89, following a lengthy illness.
Israel’s entry to Oscars does not plan to become a ‘Footnote’
Joseph Cedar has made four movies during his 11-year career, and the first three have represented Israel in the Oscar races for Best Foreign-Language film.
CSU system debates restarting Israel study abroad programs
During the past few months, top California State University administrators, who oversee 23 campuses with 420,000 students, were spending a good deal of time wrestling with upcoming draconian state budget cuts and protesting students, yet they set aside some time to consider whether the largest four-year college system in the United States should restart its study abroad program in Israel.
Amid memories, cemetery documentary imparts lesson of Jewish survival
The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery is 130 years old and has survived the kaiser’s imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, and, astonishingly, the Nazi regime.
Judea Pearl, father of slain WSJ reporter, is a leader in artificial intelligence
A man arrives at an airport for a flight, and as he goes through security the agent asks some questions.
Agnieszka Holland: Grappling with humanity’s contradictions
Agnieszka Holland, director of “In Darkness,” has always been intrigued by the contradictions and extremes of human nature.
Surviving a descent into ‘Darkness’
In the run-up to the Academy Awards last year, when not a single domestic or foreign film entry touched on a Holocaust or Nazi-era theme, I speculated that this particular genre had probably run its course.
Klein Halevi speaks at UCLA on Israel’s foes, friends
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s constant Holocaust denial is not only a personal obsession, but also part of a larger policy by the Iranian president, according to Yossi Klein Halevi, the influential Israeli-American journalist, writer and commentator. Ahmadinejad’s calculation is that if he succeeds in discrediting the Shoah, “he will undermine the basis of Western support for Israel and that the Jewish state will eventually disappear,” Halevi said.
Postcards From Hell: Nazi-era documents shed light on fate of families
After arriving by cattle car at Auschwitz, many Jews were handed postcards, with the uniform message thoughtfully prepared by the Nazis.
Tracking a Warsaw ghetto fighter
I met Leon Weinstein, hale and hearty at 101, three months ago and listened to his dramatic recollections as a fighter and survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the bravest chapters in modern Jewish history.
Broadcast journalists receive Bill Stout award
Some 250 veterans of numerous journalistic triumphs and embarrassments gathered on Oct. 18 to relive the brave old days, toast their colleagues and wonder what the future held for their breed.
Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance architects threaten to quit
The architects of the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem have threatened to resign, two weeks before the scheduled start of construction.
First-known Hitler Writing on ‘Jewish Question’ Displayed
Ten months after the end of World War I, a 30-year-old German army veteran wrote a two-page letter in which he explained the Jewish question on what he called a “rational” and “scientific” basis.
Meet David Siegel, L.A.’s new Israeli consul general
David Siegel, Israel’s new consul general for the southwestern United States, along with his wife, Myra, and their three kids, arrived in Los Angeles on a Monday in late August and hit the ground running.
Multimedia show explores Gershwin’s genius
Rather than compose “Porgy and Bess,” what if George Gershwin had instead scored the opera “Dybbuk and Leah”?
Eichmann revisited at Loyola Law School
In the midst of World War II, when a German general demanded that a noted Jewish radar expert be exempted from deportation to help the Nazi war effort, SS Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann icily replied that as a matter of principle he could not make any exceptions in ensuring the success of the Final Solution.
Peretz’s tales of caring inspire actor
Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Leib (I.L.) Peretz died almost a century ago, but the works of the two giants of Yiddish literature live on in film and on stage.
Two Yiddishe Boys and a Bissel of Berlin
About a dozen years ago, actor Mike Burstyn auditioned in New York for the role of Al Jolson in the national touring company of the musical “Jolson.” While waiting for a decision, he flew home to Los Angeles and on landing at LAX decided to stop by the nearby Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary and visit the grave of the legendary jazz singer.
‘Rachel Corrie’ on stage: agitprop or art?
“The American Jewish community has a problem keeping silent,” says scholar Michael Berenbaum, and he ascribes the “problem” to guilt over our collective failure to speak up during the Holocaust.
Priest, born Jewish, is ‘Torn’
In the opening scene of the documentary “Torn,” an official asks an elderly man for his name, and he replies, “Romuald-Jakub Weksler-Waszkinel.”
A diplomatic partnership
When Jacob Dayan — along with his wife, Galit, and their three children — arrived in Los Angeles in October 2007 to take up his post as Israel’s consul general for the southwestern United States, L.A. got two activist diplomats for the price of one.
Gogol, Chekhov ... Sholem Aleichem — Russia’s other great author
Despite a long life of distinguished writing, it’s not without irony that Sholem Aleichem today is probably known to most people as the guy who wrote the story behind “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Growing up in Jewish Boyle Heights
“Boyle Heights wasn’t just a geographical term, it was a mind-set.” So says Abraham (Abe) Hoffman, and he should know.
Spinoza’s Crucible: Faith, Reason Spar in ‘Jerusalem’
Some theater patrons prefer to switch off their brain cells and watch a light-hearted play, while others opt for strenuous mental exercise.
Technion professor engineering a social conscience in developing countries
After he tired of prospecting for gold in his native Canada, Mark Talesnick moved to Israel, where he did exploratory drilling for the proposed Mediterranean-Dead Sea (Med-Dead) Canal project and founded the national ice hockey team.
French film asks, what’s in a ‘name’?
Baya Benmahmoud, the heroine of the French film “The Names of Love,” gives new meaning to the concept of political activism. A fervent, if rather naïve, left-winger whose guiding motto is, “Make love, not war,” her mission is to convert right-wing politicians to the correct ideology by sleeping with them. “I am a political whore,” she announces proudly when she meets Arthur Martin, a 40-ish, uptight ornithologist, who rambles on about bird diseases when Baya inquires whether they should make love at his or her place.
Wiesenthal Center Gets Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic Screed
“An anti-Semitism based on reason must lead to systematic combatting and elimination of the privileges of the Jews… The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must be the irrevocable removal of Jews in general.”
Why can’t California students go to Israel?
How do you nudge the largest four-year college system in the United States to change its mind and greenlight its students for study at Israeli universities?
Dodgers continue support for Maccabiah games
The Los Angeles Dodgers will again underwrite the baseball tournament at the Maccabiah games in Israel, according to an announcement from the Maccabiah Organizing Committee. Frank McCourt, though occupied with ownership of the team and a contentious divorce, said, “Our sponsorship hugely enhanced the baseball experience at the 18th Maccabiah Games in 2009, and the Dodgers are proud to continue our close association with the Jewish Olympics.
‘LUV’ Endures
Murray Schisgal’s comedy “LUV” is, as the alert reader might suspect, about love, even passionate love, but don’t expect any moon in June or till death do us part nonsense. Actually, “LUV” works best as an anti-love play, and, after seeing it, any starry-eyed boy or girl might opt for a celibate life of devotion, if only their parents would let them.
L.A. Consulate’s Yom HaAtzmaut program: Entertainment, pols, supporters
Twelve national and international television crews, plus another dozen photographers and print reporters jostled for positions Tuesday evening May 10 to cover the Israel Independence Day celebration hosted by the country’s Consul General Jacob Dayan in Los Angeles.
Foreign fighters for Israel’s indepedence recall life-changing experience
For Ira Feinberg, what he calls the "pinnacle of my life's experiences" took place 63 years ago. Feinberg was a 17-year-old New Yorker when he joined the elite troops of the Palmach force fighting in Israel’s War of Independence. “No other experience in my life had such meaning as this period serving in the first army to fight for the Jewish people and for the independence of the State of Israel,” he says in the film, adding that “Nothing comes close to it.”
Deceiving the audience and the self
“The Führer Gives the Jews a City” must rank as the oddest film fragment in cinematic history.
AJU women to honor filmmaker Mazursky
Filmmaker Paul Mazursky will be honored with the Burning Bush Award by the University Women of the American Jewish University (AJU) at the group’s author-artist luncheon on May 3. Sharing the stage at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be Marion Goldenfeld, who will receive the Woman of Achievement Award.
‘My Brother’s Keeper’ keeps soldiers’ story alive
When Israel fought its War of Independence, there were no embedded TV cameramen, and even combat newsreel photographers were practically nonexistent. The newly created state had more important matters to worry about. More surprisingly, there have been hardly any movies celebrating the near miraculous victories of 1948-49, and, later, of the Six-Day War in 1967.
Israeli astronaut’s story highlights Jewish film fest
The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival returns to town for the sixth year May 5-12 with a diverse menu of 26 feature movies, documentaries and shorts. “Our films are not just SELECTED, they are chosen,” festival director Hilary Helstein said. Her picks cover such themes as tradition and identity, conflict and issues, history and legacy, and inspiration.
Holy land revealed
With the introduction of photography in 1839, pioneer practitioners of the nascent medium flocked to the Holy Land, expecting the glorious biblical scenes imagined by Renaissance painters, but finding instead mainly dusty villages and a largely ramshackle Jerusalem.
‘Schindler’s List’ producer to mark belated Bar Mitzvah at Auschwitz
Branko Lustig, 78, two-time Oscar-winner for “Schindler’s List” and “Gladiator,” will celebrate his bar mitzvah on May 2 at Auschwitz, in front of Barrack 24. He missed his rite of passage as a 13-year-old because at the time he was a prisoner in the very same barrack, having been deported from his Croatian hometown to the death camp when he was 10.
Films of triumph and despair
When Israel fought its War of Independence, embedded TV cameramen were unknown and even combat newsreel photographers were practically non-existent. The newly created state had more important matters to worry about. More surprisingly, there have been hardly any movies celebrating the near miraculous victories of 1948-49, and later of the Six-Day War in 1967.
Concert honors Bat Mitzvah
It’s not every Jewish girl whose parents commission a new work by a renowned classical composer for her bat mitzvah, but then Dora Schoenberg’s lineage made a musical tribute all but mandatory.
Early Holy Land photos surprise viewers in 1800s
With the introduction of photography in 1839, pioneer practitioners of the nascent medium flocked to the Holy Land, expecting the glorious biblical scenes imagined by Renaissance painters, but finding instead mainly dusty villages and a largely ramshackle Jerusalem.
Sidney Lumet, Director, 86
Director Sidney Lumet, who started his career as a child actor in the Yiddish theater and whose films examining social justice in America stand as landmarks of his craft, died April 9 of lymphoma at his New York City home. He was 86.
A peek at ordinary lives in modern Russia
What happens to members of a generation when all the seemingly immutable verities of their childhoods are turned upside down? Suppose you are in your late 30s or early 40s and are suddenly told that everything you learned in school about American democracy and its Founding Fathers was a lie. Such abstract questions seem ready-made for a seminar at an American Psychological Society meeting but come to vibrant life in the documentary “My Perestroika.”
Abraham unlocks nuances of Shylock in ‘Merchant’
F. Murray Abraham’s performance as Shylock, praised by New York critics as the greatest in memory, owes much to the fact that the actor is almost invariably taken as Jewish. That pardonable error, he says, is central to his portrayal of the much-vilified Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” which opens April 14 on The Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
Ameinu head to lead L.A. seminar
Though Labor Zionism, at one time Israel’s dominant political force under David Ben-Gurion and a major voice in the American Jewish community, no longer wields its once-muscular power, it is not dead and is even showing signs of revival and rejuvenation.
Women journalists to speak to changing Middle East
The protests sweeping the Middle East are driven by a second revolution — the empowerment of Arab women.
Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchok Meir Helfgot to play Saban Theatre
Arranging a concert program is like planning a dinner, says Itzhak Perlman, calling from New York. First comes an appetizer, then the main course, and finally something to clear the palate.
Love on the fringe
Israel’s “The Matchmaker” headlines the sixth annual Santa Barbara Jewish Film Festival, taking place April 7-10. The opening night film, which was also spotlighted on the first night of Los Angeles’ 25th Israel Film Festival in October, has garnered two Ophirs — Israel’s equivalent of the Oscars — for best actor and best actress. But don’t expect a heartwarming shtetl romance or a Hollywood-ish “Father of the Bride” comedy.
Israel’s bad boy of cinema gets L.A. fest
“My country, Israel, is full of contradictions and volcanic eruptions. We fluctuate between extremes. One morning you say peace is at hand and all problems will be resolved. The next day, it’s the apocalypse.” The thumbnail description comes from Amos Gitai, who, more than any other Israeli filmmaker, has explored the emotional peaks and valleys of his people in more than 40 feature films and documentaries.
Jews and Oscars: The Night’s Minyan [SLIDESHOW]
In the opening montage of Sunday’s Academy Award ceremony, hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway played with a dreidel, which proved to be a good omen that a good night awaited Jewish talent.
This is not Israel’s year in the Oscar races
“The Human Resources Manager” struck out early in the best foreign-language film competition, while the documentary feature “Precious Life” was short-listed among the 15 semi-finalists but didn’t make the final five cut. However, still in the running is “Strangers No More” in the documentary short category.
Amid turmoil, Wieseltier sees clear path in Middle East
You have to sympathize with public speakers asked to deliver carefully prepared lectures on the situation in the Middle East, where events have a habit of overtaking incisive scholarly analyses. So it befell Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, prolific writer and all-around public intellectual, who was the speaker at the ninth annual Daniel Pearl Lecture at UCLA last week.
End of the line for Holocaust-themed films?
Is the Holocaust passe for Hollywood and the world’s filmmakers? This is the first year in at least half a century that not a single Oscar or Golden Globe entry has focused on the horrors of the Shoah.
‘Brooklyn’ mines pathos, humor of 1st-gen journey
The original title of Jake Ehrenreich’s show-in-the-making was a rather bland “Growing Up in America,” but, fortunately, it will open Feb. 16 at American Jewish University under the more pointed title, “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn.”
How the title change came about is described by his director, Jon Huberth, in the companion book to the show.
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May 17-23, 2013
What does it mean to be your brother's keeper? Lessons from the Cleveland kidnappings
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