While Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order” universe has had its share of legendary Yids from Jerry Orbach’s Lenny Briscoe to Steven Hill’s Adam Schiff (the fictional DA, not the the expected chairman of the House Intelligence Committee), “Law & Order: SVU,” the only show left running, has been noticeably lacking in the Jew department since…
On December 2, Sir Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, married the lawyer Anya Deutsch in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony in downtown New York, to the strains of the theme from Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” played by an orchestral ensemble. On such a joyous occasion, one might wonder about the choice of…
Oy vey! We had to wipe a little shmutz off our tchotchkes, but you better bissel–gornisht–treyf believe it — the second season of Amazon Prime’s smash-hit show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is just as bagel as ever. Jews! If you enjoy the tempo of crack-cocaine addicts, or podcasts played at 2x speed, you will enjoy the…
Forty years ago this fall, an unassuming yet groundbreaking CBS-TV series called “The White Shadow,” about an inner-city high-school basketball team coached by a former white NBA player, made its debut, bringing the realities of racism, alcoholism, drugs, gang violence, domestic violence, student violence against teachers, student sex with teachers, teen pregnancy, teen death, sexually…
As in his earlier hit “Body and Soul” (1948), John Garfield’s final film “He Ran All the Way” (1951) begins with the actor waking up from an apparently very unpleasant dream. While the return from a nightmare is not an uncommon twist in those older Hollywood movies that veer into darker territory — the familiar…
On November 26 Stephen Hillenburg, the unassuming marine biologist who reached millions with his cartoon creation SpongeBob Squarepants passed away from complications of ALS. Hillenburg was 57. Eternally optimistic, absorbent, yellow and porous, Hillenburg’s signature creation truly needs no introduction, nor does his permanent residence in a pineapple under the sea. But how did such…
Filmmaker David Anton’s latest documentary for PBS is, like its subject, a family affair. Anton filmed “Hanukkah: A Festival of deLights” an hour-long special premiering Sunday November 25 on New York’s WLIW, with his father, retired rabbi Marvin Antonofsky, interviewing most of the movie’s subjects. “For me to be able to do a project like…
A welcome, if counterintuitive, symptom of the age of Netflix has been the revival of old Hollywood careers. It may have all started with 2015’s “Grace and Frankie” which gave a starring platform to Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, whom studios had tended to neglect or bury in grandma roles. In “Grace and Frankie” Tomlin…
The Israeli documentary “Family in Transition” has a happy ending. Sort of. The film, directed by Ofir Trainin, is about the Tzuk family — father Amit, mother Galit and their four children — who live in Nahariya, Israel’s northernmost coastal city. Amit and Galit run a successful software design and programming firm. But four years…
Nathaniel Kahn, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “My Architect” about his relationship with his architect father, Louis Kahn, thinks we’re confusing value with asking price. Over the last few years, Kahn infiltrated auction houses, the private galleries of well-heeled collectors and the grubby or extravagant studios of contemporary artists to get a panoramic view of…
Robin Hood is well known as a defender of oppressed populations. But one aspect of his story that has mostly been lost to time, however, is his role as protector of Jews, who figured prominently in ballads and dramatic texts that began appearing in 15th- and 16th-century England. Aside from his fundamental mission of tikkun…
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