The great French film director Jean-Luc Godard called Ben Hecht a “genius” who “invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood today.” Yet most modern American Jews have likely never heard of Hecht, despite his eminence as a playwright, best-selling novelist and screenwriter of a host of Hollywood film classics.
American Jews may not know their way around the Talmud or much about Jewish history, but they sure do excel at soul-searching and have for many, many years. In the late 19th century, in the mid-20th and again in our own day, taking the community’s pulse—and finding it weak and listless—has been a common pursuit and a constant refrain.
With publication of the second and final volume of his monumental biography of Saul Bellow, Zachary Leader, a professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton in London, has completed a decade-long immersion in Bellow’s life and letters.
Famed Israeli author Amos Oz has passed away today, aged 79, after a short battle with cancer. Perhaps the most renowned Israeli author, Oz’s work has been translated into 45 languages and won dozens of awards, including the prestigious Goethe Prize and the Israel Prize for Literature. Oz was also an activist, repeatedly advocating in favor of the two-state solution and calling for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
An updated list of Jewish movies streaming on Netflix—including everything from Jewish comedies to dramas to documentaries.
Director Luca Guadagnino announced that he is planning to adapt Bob Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks for the screen.
I’ve been doing some tourism in South Carolina and…reading menus.
“How do you know who you are, if you don’t understand where you come from?” Nora Krug asks toward the beginning of her stunning visual memoir, Belonging: A German Reckons With History And Home.
