An indelible memory of France’s 1968 social upheaval is the diminutive red-haired German Jew, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, nicknamed “Danny the Red,” popping up gleefully at student protests and shouting to the crowds. A sympathetic new biography by tabloid journalist Emeline Cazi, “The Real Cohn-Bendit” (“Le vrai Cohn-Bendit”) from Editions Plon, explains that Cohn-Bendit was born to…
It’s Passover time, and a heady mix of liberation, freedom and matzah fills the air. While we recount the tale of the Children of Israel’s escape from Egypt, a strange inversion of this story unfolds in France. In this nightmare exodus, the Israelite (a non-Jewish klezmer clarinetist) flees Egypt (Moldova) and makes it to the…
For visitors to the New York Jewish Film Festival, a must-see on January 18-20 is a new hour-length documentary, “Leon Blum: For All Mankind” about the French socialist politician. Written by Blum’s grandson Antoine Malamoud and directed by University of Alabama Professor Jean Bodon, the film offers a mere sketch of an eventful life, and…
The endemic antisemitism of the French has been a staple of modern Jewish public discourse and sober analysis for nearly as long as there has been modern Jewish public discourse. It’s commonly viewed as a continuum stretching back at least to the Dreyfus Affair, more than a century ago, and continuing right on up to…
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