‘Nazi Menace’ Serves as Timely History Lesson
Hett usefully observes that by studying history, perhaps we are not condemned to repeat it.
Hett usefully observes that by studying history, perhaps we are not condemned to repeat it.
\”We wanted to use four [American] towns as examples to get to know people — those who fought and those who stayed at home — and to get to their experiences as it happened.\”
The result is Burns and co-director Lynn Novick seeing the war as it was unfolding through the eyes of soldiers from Mobile, Ala.; Sacramento; Waterbury, Conn., and Luverne, Minn., to show, in so many ways, the ongoing hellishness of even a necessary war.
The American Jewish community is one of the most learned and sophisticated communities in Jewish history – in everything except Jewish texts. As Jews, we are illiterate.
Trio of films offers eclectic choices.
Don\’t have time to shlep to a museum? Too tired to remember if the free museum day is the first or second Tuesday of the month?
From 1992 through the present, a remarkably consistent 50 percent of Jewish voters have called themselves Democrats, roughly one-third independents and 16-18 percent Republicans.
If the controversy pumps up \”Heart,\” its Jewish filmmaker, Louis Schwartzberg, isn\’t taking advantage.
Julie Sandorf recalls her immigrant grandparents telling her that they learned to be Americans at the public library, where they improved their English and learned more about American culture.
Later that same day in Orange, we popped in to some of the antique shops that radiate from the central plaza. In a world of eBay, even antique stores seem antique. In one store, I thumbed through a stack of old advertising posters, and out fell a red-white-and-blue sheet, the size of a movie theater lobby card, depicting a silhouette of a soldier against an American flag, printed with the words \”Operation Desert Storm 1990-1991.\” It was $7.50.\n\nThe fact that relics of the last war are already collecting dust alongside World War II-era Japanese ammo belts ($60) and war bonds calendars ($24) made me wonder how, 10 years hence, we\’ll regard Gulf War II. Will it resonate with world-shifting portent that World War II mementos do? Or will it seem by comparison to today\’s war somehow small, eclipsed in our mind by more immediate threats and darker developments?\n\nAs soon as we returned to the car and turned on the radio, the answer seemed clear. U.S. soldiers had encountered some fierce resistance — several had been killed, many others taken prisoner. By Monday, there were reports of more missing, of Iraqi troops using guerilla tactics to inflict casualties. Areas that the Army initially announced in coalition control were now in the midst of firefights — I know, because I\’ve watched several unfold on TV with surreal intimacy.
As long as the Jewish people lives, it will generate a living culture, and as long as that culture values the written word, Jews will write books.