Book Review | The Failure of Impartiality
Barack Obama’s transformation from youthful and eloquent U.S. Senate candidate to prime-time sensation and putative presidential timber came at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
What’s So Funny About Jewish Humor with William Novak
Jewish jokes are a precious commodity and a special part of our heritage. Some of the best ones are worth looking at as succinct and entertaining expressions of our values. William Novak, co-editor of The Big Book of Jewish Humor, in print since 1981, explores some of the values behind the jokes and how they can be treated as secular Jewish texts. From well-known classics to relatively obscure examples, there is some history, commentary and plenty of laughs.
Mank: A Heroic Tragedy With No Tragic Hero
No one enjoys looking in the mirror more than Hollywood, and no one does it better—as vastly entertaining show-biz movies like Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood can all attest. Now comes Mank, David Fincher’s loving and atmospheric re-creation of 1930s Hollywood.
When Children Rescue Children
It’s a rare treat to discover a film that appeals across the generations, but The Crossing is a perfect example. This movie is true family-friendly storytelling. Set in 1942 Norway, during the third year of the German occupation, this is a particularly poignant and uplifting tale of ordinary youngsters rising to the challenge of rescuing Jewish children during a brutal period of history.
A Soundtrack of the Jewish People
Moment spoke with a diverse array of musicians, scholars and music lovers to gather together music with Jewish significance. The result is a rich tapestry of genres evoking the breadth of Jewish spirituality, culture, and history.
Calling All Music Lovers: Tell Us About Your Favorite Jewish Songs
For Moment’s latest issue, we embarked on an ambitious year-long undertaking—talking with a diverse array of musicians, scholars and music lovers—to gather together music with Jewish significance. Now, we want to hear from you.
Poem | I Hold my Breath
1.
I keep calling up Weather to ask
if it’s going to rain, though I’m standing
at the window and can see
the staccato drops already falling.
We were to...
Fiction | Call Me Gefilte
His children relocated him from the small Greenwich Village apartment where he and his late wife, Susan, had raised their family, to the Scarsdale Sinai Home, for a short time on the assisted living unit and then to the Alzheimer’s floor.
Jewish Museums Leap Into the Covid Void
If there’s one thing museums have learned from the pandemic that forced them into cyberspace, it’s that the audience that is hungry for what they have to offer—whether lectures, courses or archival treasures—is much larger than they knew.
Jewish Film Festivals in the Time of Corona
With all of the challenges that have come during this pandemic, there is a field in the Jewish world that continues to thrive.
Book Review | A Writer Winks at Her City
Every movie I watch now is a movie about an entire cast of people who seem to not have cancer, or at least this is, to me, its plot,” Anne Boyer observes in The Undying, her recent Pulitzer Prize-winning inquiry into cancer.
Book Review | A Spymaster Breaks His Silence
When you start reading a memoir by a former spy, you always hope for descriptions of bloody assassinations, break-ins into banks and embassies, and heart-pounding high-speed chases.