Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s Holocaust film “In Darkness” has been nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign language category. Welcome to the Sundance synagogue. Yehoash’s classic Yiddish translation of the Bible is now available as a mobile app. Montreal’s Segal Centre for Performing Arts has appointed Audrey Finkelstein to head the Dora Wasserman Yiddish…
Joseph Cedar’s film “Footnote” has been nominated for an Oscar in the foreign language category. Leonard Cohen has a poem in this week’s New Yorker. Joshua Cohen writes about smuggling a suitcase full of books to Berlin. A British publisher wants to reissue “Mein Kampf” in Germany, but the Bavarian copyright holders are having none…
David Mamet is looking for a Hebrew teacher. Leonard Cohen talks about romance, poetry, suicide, music, Sergio Leone and cigarettes in a 1988 BBC interview. On Conan O’Brien, David Cross called a producer of “Alvin and the Chipmunks” “the personification of what people think about when they think negatively about Jews.” Andrea Strongwater paints the…
To the delight of James Joyce scholars everywhere, the work of the great Irish author is no longer under copyright. The New Yorker excerpts the letters of Joseph Roth. It’s Judaican’t, “showcasing unfortunate Judaica and Jewish gifts.” J.J. Gould appreciates Czechoslovakian dissident Josef Skvorecky, who explained why totalitarians hate jazz. Elke Reva Sudin brings her…
Meet Julius Schmidt, America’s first condom tycoon. The Jewish Star profiles Footsteps, an organization that helps people leaving the ultra-Orthodox community. Joseph Herscher is the Rube Goldberg of Brooklyn. Read “The Hobbit,” in Hebrew. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit from the collection of Leo and Gertrude Stein is [coming to New York]…
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the infamous Wannsee Conference, where the Nazis arrived at the Final Solution. Germany has a brand-new English-language Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Voice From Germany. Photographer Aaron Weiner (featured on The Arty Semite here) talks about “Cycles of Violence,” his photo-collage response to 9/11. The Brooklyn Museum displays early…
An enormous cinema complex is being planned for the port of Tel Aviv. Daniel Retter, an immigration attorney from the Bronx, has written the first index to the Talmud. Music students at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance are working to restore lost Jewish compositions. Apparently, the beardless Matisyahu is still generating controversy thanks…
Forward artist-in-residence Eli Valley interviews Drew Friedman, author of “Old Jewish Comedians: a Visual Encyclopedia.” The Klezmatics are scheduled to appear on Conan O’Brien tonight. Tune in! If you’re in New York, celebrate the second night of Hanukkah at Southpaw with The Shondes, Yiddish Princess and Schmekel. The New York Times talks up the Sephardic…
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