By Dikla Tuchman, JTNews Correspondent Christopher Huh is not Jewish. He has no European heritage and he’s not even old enough to drive. But like thousands of other non-Jewish young people over the last 70 years, Huh, a 14-year-old Korean-American, became deeply affected by the historical account of the Holocaust.Continue Reading
By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent “I felt he’d found my letters, and read each one out loud…” You know why you love that song, “Killing Me Softly.” It’s not just the unabashedly confessional lyrics. It’s that heart-tugging tune that reached up into your life when you didn’t even know youContinue Reading
By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent “I felt he’d found my letters, and read each one out loud…” You know why you love that song, “Killing Me Softly.” It’s not just the unabashedly confessional lyrics. It’s that heart-tugging tune that reached up into your life when you didn’t even know youContinue Reading
By Robert Gluck, JNS.org Film historian Bob Birchard describes an anti-Jewish prejudice in American culture that existed well into the 20th century, not at the level of the Nazi desire to exterminate the Jews, but rather looking down upon Jews as inferior to the mainstream Protestant class that developed inContinue Reading
By Tori Gottlieb, Special to JTNews New Century Theatre’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial opens tonight, April 5, at the INScape Arts Building. JTNews spoke with Darragh Kennan, the company’s artistic director who will also be leading the cast as Josef K., to discuss the play and NCTC’s goalsContinue Reading
By Charlene Freadman Kahn , JTNews Correspondent “Bubby’s Kitchen” is opening in Kirkland, but it’s not a restaurant. It’s a one-woman musical presentation created and performed by Shira Ginsburg, a cantor, mezzo-soprano, and proud granddaughter of “Bubby” Judith Ginsburg. The one-run show plays at the Kirkland Performance Center on AprilContinue Reading
By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent He was a force to be reckoned with, this large-voiced man, the composer Bonia Shur. When Shur died last August at the age of 89, Rabbi David Ellenson, president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, paid him tribute for having “composed for andContinue Reading
By Michael Fox , Special to JTNews The unexpectedly lovely documentary “Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story” reminds us what an unequivocal Israeli hero looks like. A portrait of the life and times of the only Israeli casualty of the stunning long-distance rescue of the Jewish hostages at Entebbe inContinue Reading
By Dikla Tuchman , JTNews Correspondent “When Moses was in Egypt land, let my people go…” The haunting words of this recognizable Passover hymn take on new meaning in the highly acclaimed dramatic play by Matthew Lopez, “The Whipping Man.” Hard as it is to believe, over 100 years beforeContinue Reading
By Dikla Tuchman , JTNews CorrespondentContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick , Editor, JTNews Remember that scene at the end of “The Graduate” when Elaine has skipped out on her wedding and fled with Benjamin Braddock on a city bus? The look on their faces — Katharine Ross in her white veil, Dustin Hoffman sweaty and with hisContinue Reading
By Erin Pike, Special to JTNews In 1999, Israeli-born Itai Erdal moved to Vancouver, B.C. to pursue a film career. A year later, he found out his mother had been diagnosed with lung cancer and had nine months to live. Erdal returned home to care for her and to filmContinue Reading
By , JTNews Correspondent Everyone’s got their eyes on Izzy Grossman (Carol Sage Silverstein, lower left), the young woman who’s trying to decide between two suitors: A suave writer from New York or the pickle peddler from the Lower East Side. Izzy’s dilemma propels “Crossing Delancey,” a play by SusanContinue Reading
By Rob Eshman, other LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — No one sends out press releases to announce that something is not anti-Semitic. That’s why this morning’s media is full of reports that host Seth MacFarlane’s Oscar performance last night was just shy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech. The Anti-Defamation LeagueContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews As the Seattle Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 18th year, it has a new home under the auspices of the Stroum Jewish Community Center and a greater focus on the arts. Plus, for some reason this year, a fascination with all things French. We’ve gotContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff , Associate Editor, JTNews If Jewish sons have mommy issues, then Jewish dads have daughter issues. This phenomenon crosses time zones and national boundaries, as proven by the Seattle Jewish Film Festival’s opening night flick, “The Day I Saw Your Heart.” The festival has strong representationContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick , Editor, JTNews What do you do when your family hates you for what you are? If you’re lucky, you get out. That’s what happens to Assaf at the start of “Melting Away,” a teenage boy who disappears after his father, upon finding women’s clothes hidden inContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff , Associate Editor, JTNews “A Bottle in the Gaza Sea” (Une Bouteille à la Mer) has been billed by some critics as a Palestinian-Israeli Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, our young protagonists — Tal Levine (Agathe Bonitzer), a French teenager who has made aliyah with her family,Continue Reading
By Michael Fox , Special to JTNews Animated movies, even more than live-action films, invite us to lose ourselves in a wholly invented world. French-Jewish filmmaker Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux’s deliciously delirious feature, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” is set in a real time and place — Algeria in the 1930s,Continue Reading
By Michael Fox, Special to JTNews If anyone still thinks comic books — or graphic novels — are strictly child’s play, a few minutes with Parisian cartoonist Joann Sfar will erase that misconception. San Francisco filmmaker Sam Ball’s evocative and marvelous documentary, “Joann Sfar Draws From Memory,” introduces us toContinue Reading
