In the dark days of the Cold War, photographer Bill Aron, the son of a Russian émigré to Philadelphia, traveled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, Leningrad, and Minsk, he took portraits of refuseniks— Soviet Jews who were demanding their freedom— as well as photographs of the Jewish synagogues and those worshipping there. Starting Nov….
After over a decade of delay caused by money problems, competing narrative visions and the COVID-19 pandemic, the $484 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles has finally opened to the public. The Academy heralds its new museum as the most important institution devoted to filmmaking in the world, and one visit bears…
The Jewish museum will be the first in the nation's capital
I sat down across from Renee Firestone and asked her about her life during the Holocaust. The conversation flowed: what her life was like before the war, and how she endured Auschwitz. The small, spirited 97-year-old survivor was direct and honest, answering personal questions with powerful details—all the more remarkable because the real Renee Firestone…
Half a century after their heyday, the Catskills are having a moment. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” recently devoted the bulk of a season to the Jewish Alps’ tummling past. The passing of comedian Jackie Mason recalled a bygone era, when families fled urban sprawls to get some mountain air and kibbitz with their coreligionists in…
The last 16 months have felt like an apocalypse movie at many points — a global pandemic, the attack on the Capitol, a massive drought and widespread forest fires in the Western U.S., even those murder hornets that briefly made headlines. Yet to artist and architect Daniel Toretsky, the catastrophes felt familiar; Jews have faced…
It’s been over a year since Vic and Linda Milhoan were in a museum. This week, they were some of the first visitors to step foot in the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco since the pandemic forced it to close last year. “It’s such an opportunity,” said Linda Milhoan, who’s been a member of…
History fated Emile Zola and Alfred Dreyfus to forever be footnotes in each other’s stories. Dreyfus, a military officer wrongly convicted of treason, sparked an antisemitism scandal that split French society into factions. Zola, the celebrated writer who penned the famed pro-Dreyfus open letter “J’Accuse,” would face legal trouble of his own for doing so….
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