Stormin’ da castle: Tony Curtis in Hollywood

By Adam Kirsch
Published on December 30, 2008

Curtis doesn't fully appreciate how much his on-screen allure owed to his being Jewish

Doctor with ‘healing hands’ helps kids from Iran to L.A.

By Amy Klein
Published on January 17, 2008

When Ralph Salimpour was six years old in Esfahan, Iran, he had malaria -- a blood disease spread by infected mosquitoes that kills millions of people in the developing world every year.

He’s Wandered the Earth an Exiled Man

By Jay Michaelson
Published on March 3, 2005

"Chronicles: Volume One" by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster), $24.

Toward the end of last year's rambling, barely coherent film "Masked and Anonymous," Bob Dylan, its masked and anonymous star, spoke in voice-over one of his most direct and self-revelatory addresses. Fittingly, it was about the limits of what we are allowed to know:

Comic Book Icon Battles Everyday Life

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on August 14, 2003

In the biopic "American Splendor," cranky comic book icon Harvey Pekar frets in the supermarket. "This may be the shortest line, but I'm taking a risk because it's an old Jewish lady," he says. When the woman argues with the manager, he storms out of the store.

All That Glitters Is Golda

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on April 30, 2003

When Renee Taylor was growing up in the Bronx, her relatives described packaging matzah for Palestine with Golda Meir in the 1920s.

The Holocaust and Rock ‘n’ Roll

By Scott Benarde
Published on April 4, 2002

One of the first things Gene Simmons reveals in his new autobiography, "Kiss and Make-Up," is that he is the child of a Holocaust survivor.

Still a ‘Hero’

By Michael Aushenker
Published on February 21, 2002

Robert Clary doesn't really enjoy sitcoms. Even though he played the French sidekick on one of television's most unusual sitcoms, "Hogan's Heroes," the POW situation comedy (1965-71) set during World War II.