“A Hard Day’s Night”
David Drimer explores the Jewishness of the famous Beatles movie. One Sunday night in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the world somehow changed. Almost 60 days after the Kennedy assassination, it broke America out of its national malaise. In the midst of the “British Invasion” – a slew of bands […]
Volodymyr Zelensky: From Rootless Cosmopolitan to Democratic Icon
Martin Elliot Jaffe profiles the Ukrainian Jewish President. “Both Ukrainians and Jews value freedom and they work equally for the future of our states to become to our liking—not the future others want for us—we know what it’s like not to have our own state and land and with weapons in hand at the cost […]
The Jews of Ukraine
Sue Fox recalls those Jews she met on her visit to Ukraine. World Jewish Relief is a British humanitarian charity that responds to international disasters, funds projects to meet the immediate needs of vulnerable communities, and secures sustainable livelihoods for those in poverty. The organisation was originally created to rescue refugees. Since 1989, WJR has […]
Prayer never ends
Prayer never ends. It’s like the sea and the sky, like an endless field or a song that never dies, like words that echo in the mouth of a canyon long after they’re spoken, like a heart filled to the brim with love, overflowing with love, spilling over the edge of a cliff, like an […]
Cinematic Story
Alex Gordon remembers his role in The Beast. I don’t like movies as a genre. I don’t watch movies, I don’t know actors, I prefer reading books. I belong to the minority of non-movie lovers. There are different minorities: religious, national, sexual. I belong to a cultural minority of film haters. And I was the […]
Ghosts
Elliot Gertel reviews the American sitcom Ghosts based on the British series with the same name. Ghosts, transposed from a British series to American TV by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, is the most-watched new sitcom on the CBS Network. In it, a young overworked New York couple, Samantha “Sam” (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), inherit a […]
Meeting the Mailers
Sue Fox remembers author Norman Mailer and members of his family. I last interviewed writer Norman Mailer, at home in Cape Cod, in 2007. I had interviewed him the previous year for Relative Values, with his son, John. They had written a novel – The Big Empty – together. John, was 29, film-star handsome – the […]
Be Brave
A new poem by Bruce Black. I hear You say be brave as the day begins and an unknown path stretches ahead of me. Or maybe it’s the voice of my father that I hear calling to me from the other side, from the olam habah, encouraging me to stand up to doubts and fears, […]
“Solomon & Gaenor” and #MeToo
Jaclyn Granick reviews Paul Morrison’s Solomon and Gaenor through new eyes. I logged into the Yiddish New York festival website last December to look at the curated film selection this year. The first film listed was Solomon & Gaenor. To my surprise, it included two non-English languages: Welsh and Yiddish. Welsh?! As Cardiff University‘s first […]
When Wisdom of the Catfish met the Gefilte Fish
In the first part of her memoirs, Carole Bent reflects on her Jewish upbringing and childhood. My Jewishness sits with me lightly until a word, a sight, or a slight pushes it to the front of my mind where it repeatedly pulses, demanding to be seen or heard. It is stubborn yet subtle, demanding attention […]