Favorite Jewish Movie Scenes of All Time
The wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof is one of my favorite Jewish moments on film. The scene is drenched in family, nostalgia and an aching foreknowledge of the Holocaust.
My Lunch With Woody
On a bright September day, an unlikely trio met for lunch to discuss art, politics and culture. Having published an unauthorized biography of Woody Allen last year, I couldn’t wait to have lunch with him for the first time.
Jewish Movie Roles Played by Non-Jewish Actors
Film icon Charlie Chaplin starred as the Jewish barber in The Great Dictator, a 1940 political satire that Chaplin wrote, produced and directed. The film, including Chaplin’s parody of Hitler, was a direct response to the Nazi Party’s false assertion that Chaplin was Jewish—and the banning of all of his films.
Moment staff picks: Jewish Movies to Watch on a Rainy Day
For pure cheesy pleasure, I’d go with The Ten Commandments, which frightened me so much as a child that I was actually taken out of the movie theater. I’m tougher now and, besides ever since taking my own kids on the Paramount Pictures tour that explained how the filmmakers used pre-CGI techniques to part the Red Sea, I’ve wanted to watch the thing through properly with lots of use of the pause button.
Favorite Movie Rabbis
In Barbra Streisand’s musical Yentl, Nehemiah Persoff, a World War II veteran originally from Jerusalem, plays Rebbe Mendel. Mendel secretly gives Talmud lessons to Yentl (Streisand), a young girl living in a late 19th century Polish shtetl at a time when women are barred from religious study. Yentl ultimately disguises herself as her late brother in order to enter a religious school, where drama ensues.
What We’re Reading | Lucky Broken Girl
It’s not every day that an adult in her mid-80s can read a book meant for fifth-graders (ages 10-11) and be reduced to tears.
Poem: Ninth of Av
The day you left was the Ninth of Av, / a day of grief, the Temple destroyed.
The Kinsey Sicks: ‘Putting the Rage in Outrageous’
The Kinsey Sicks, a dynamite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, explode on Theater J’s stage for a limited run of their new politically charged show Things You Shouldn’t Say, saying and singing anything they damn well please.
Orthodox Rap Star Nissim Brings Judaism to Hip Hop
“Rabbis were telling me that if I have a gift like that, I shouldn’t sit on it. But I felt that rap was going to lead me away from my spirituality.”
The Lost Magic of the Wooden Pickle Barrel
Blond and rather slender for its type, a pickle barrel stands by the takeout counter of the famous Washington, DC delicatessen Wagshal’s. Lined with plastic, it may satisfy a certain nostalgia but amounts to no more than a storage unit on the bulk-bin grocery aisle—a pale iteration of the big-bellied, oak casks I remember from my childhood.
Jewish Word | Golem
Although such comparisons remain rare, for Jews and non-Jews the golem serves as a concept uniquely suited to expressing the fears and insecurities of the modern era. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in 1984, “The golem story appears less obsolete today than it seemed one hundred years ago. After all, what are the computers and robots of our times if not golems?”
Who’s Afraid of Dorit Rabinyan?
Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan was enjoying a peaceful afternoon at home on December 30, 2015, when a phone call from an old friend, Haaretz journalist Or Kashti, changed her life. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “It may be the biggest story I will ever break.” “Good for you!” replied Rabinyan. “No,” said Kashti quietly, “it is very good for you.”