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.
Opinion | Politicians Love Jerusalem—But What About Jerusalemites?
Once again, our city has been taken over by jealousy. Once again, it has been reduced to little more than a humiliated pawn in the hands of politicians who, in their attempts to own this city, are willing, quite literally, to let her die.
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.
Malta: A Hidden Gem With a Rich Jewish History
The total population of Malta is 430,000, including about 150 Jews, most of whom live on the main island and make up one of the smallest active Jewish communities in the Mediterranean.
The Strange Tale of the First Arab Journalist to Visit Israel After the ’67 War
Among those disembarking the Scandanavian Airlines flight on July 23 1967 in Tel Aviv, was a thin, bearded man in his 30s named Waguih Ghali. Like the other passengers, he walked into Lod airport—and stopped at the passport control counter. “You mean,” the clerk said, double checking that he had heard correctly, “that you are Egyptian?”
The Future of the Jewish Deli
Sitting in a tiled restaurant in Dupont Circle with a glass bowl of pickles and rhubarb, it’s daunting to imagine the future of the Jewish deli.