Jewish Enterprise
14:59 11 October
in 2010 July-August
“Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night’s Jews!”...
Author: Symi Rom-Rymer
A Boy Named David
by Symi Rom-Rymer David, the recently released feature film directed by Joel Fendelman and written by Fendelman and Patrick Daly, sets out to tell one story, but ends up telling two. The first is about the accidental meeting of two boys, Daud and Yoav, one Muslim,...
Roma Life Today
Since the mid-1970s and early 1980s, Roma activists and groups such as the International Romani Union and Roma National Congress have worked to transform the scattered Roma into a cohesive political force. Nevertheless, the Roma remain fragmented and continue to face social exclusion, extreme poverty...
Roma in the Holocaust
What Jews call the Holocaust, the Roma (also known as gypsies) call Porrajmos, their “devouring.” Between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma were murdered by Nazi Germany and its sympathizers during World War II. Despite the enormity of these numbers, the Roma experience during the Holocaust is...
Hate Speech in the Netherlands
by Symi Rom-Rymer Last week, popular far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders was acquitted of all charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. The allegations made against him were based on his provocative statements that likened the Koran to Mein Kampf and called Islam a fascist religion. The...
Shuttering Yale's Center on Anti-Semitism
By Symi Rom-Rymer Yale University announced yesterday that it is closing its Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA). According to Thomas Mattia, an official from the university’s Public Affairs office, the center is being closed down because it “was found in its routine faculty...
Is NPR Anti-Israel?
by Symi Rom-Rymer It’s practically impossible for a news organization, especially one like NPR, that is considered left-of-center, to cover the Middle East conflict and not to be accused, by someone, of being anti-Israel. A quick Google search shows that people across the spectrum have taken issue...
Lars von Trier Acts Up…Again
By Symi Rom-Rymer This past week at the Cannes International Film Festival, Danish film director and provocateur Lars von Trier announced in a press conference for his most recent film, Melancolia, that he understood Hitler and that Israel was a “pain in the ass.” These comments...
Bosnian Jews and the Siege of Sarajevo
By Symi Rom-Rymer People have wrestled with the question of what drives human beings to commit genocide since the end of the Holocaust. Less often considered is the flip side: Why do some societies subsumed by violence not lead to genocide? A paper recently presented at the...
Celebrating Bin Laden's Death
By Symi Rom-Rymer When President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden in the late hours of May 1st, the country breathed collective sigh of relief. Spontaneous celebrations broke out in front of The White House, at Ground Zero and in Times Square. College students...