Books to Give—and Read
These 2021 releases justify their shelf space.
Book Review | The First Covid Comedy
As Jonathan Safran Foer pioneered the 9/11 novel, so Shteyngart does for COVID.
Oh, I Remember the Black Birch: Play Reading and Talkback with Velina Hasu Houston & Keren M. Goldberg
This program is part of the 2021 Moment Theater Festival.
In the Autumn of 1941, 18-year-old Brina Berman, a Jewish Polish young woman from Warsaw, finds herself alone in Kobe, Japan, having traveled halfway across the world following the Nazi invasion of her hometown and murder of her family. Thus unfolds a little-known true story of what happened to Jewish refugees when Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara was stationed in Kovno, Lithuania and wrote transit visas to Japan, saving thousands of Jews who were running from the advancing German army. Seen through her many struggles in Kobe, Brina is surprised to find an established Jewish community and nurturing Japanese residents and organizations working to support the arriving Jewish refugees.
The cast, director, and playwright of Oh, I Remember the Black Birch discuss their new original play about a young Jewish woman struggling in a new country and finding community during the Holocaust. Playwright Velina Hasu Houston is also in conversation with producer and dramaturg Keren M. Goldberg about the journey of Oh, I Remember the Black Birch which is inspired by true events.
Visual Moment | Judy Chicago’s Revolutionary Art
Judy Chicago always wanted to be an artist. “From the time I was a child,” she writes in her 2021 autobiography, The Flowering, “I had a burning desire to make art.”
Israel’s 2022 Oscar Submission: Let It be Morning
Based on the novel by Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua, Let It Be Morning is Israel’s official submission to next year’s 94th Academy Awards, in the “Best International Feature Film” category.
Staff Picks: From ‘Mrs. Maisel’ to ‘Of Mice and Men’
What we’re reading—and watching—this week.
‘In the Heights’ Explores the Universal Longing for a Homeland
In the Heights is a love letter to Washington Heights, an upper Manhattan neighborhood that is home to a large Dominican and Puerto Rican population.
The Story of ‘Paddington Bear’ Was Inspired by the Kindertransport Children
Bond was particularly touched to see the children arriving in Reading Station, a transport center in Berkshire, after long journeys from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia or Poland in 1939.
The Fifth (Jewish) Beatle with Walter J. Podrazik and Harry Castleman
Walter J. Podrazik and Harry Castleman, authors of All Together Now – the first complete Beatles discography 1961-1975, discuss Brian Epstein, the Jewish record store owner who discovered and managed the Beatles.
In ‘Honeymood,’ Wedding Night Balagan
In Honeymood, director Talya Lavie makes piercing observations about fraught relationships, family tensions, marital doubts, lingering affections for past loves and the challenges of long-term partnerships. Thrown into the mix is a mysterious ring with a sensitive past best kept secret—which, of course, it would not remain.
The First Blockbuster Art Exhibition of Our Time
A new exhibition highlights the story of how some of the world’s most iconic European paintings left Germany immediately after World War II and ended up touring the United States in what became the first blockbuster art exhibition of our time.