JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
That’s Sir Simon Schama to you. On February 5 Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, knighted Schama, the 73-year-old historian and Columbia University professor, for his contribution to history, the Western Telegraph reports. Schama is the author of books on the history of art, France, England, the Netherlands and the American Revolutionary War. In 2013…
Three of the United Kingdom’s most prominent Jewish authors stepped forward yesterday to condemn anti-Semitism in one of the country’s leading political parties. In a Letter to the Editor published in The Times, Simon Schama, Howard Jacobson and Simon Sebag Montefiore criticized the Labour Party, led since 2015 by Jeremy Corbyn, for failing to check…
Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief advisor, now returned to his previous post as executive chairman of Breitbart News, has long drawn accusations of anti-Semitism, as well as impassioned defenses against the charge. Now, a new complication has emerged in the debate. Bannon, upon being named to the top spot of the Politico 50 —…
‘What do you see?” asked the French-born photographer Frédéric Brenner while showing me his new book, “An Archeology of Fear and Desire,” during a recent interview in the Manhattan offices of one of his longtime funders, the Revson Foundation. His photography books, among them 1996’s “Jews/America: A Representation” and 2003’s “Diaspora: Homelands in Exile,” with…
I may have gone too hard on my bubbe in a blog post last week. As it turns out, she may not have been at fault for my abysmal score on Thirteen-WNET’s Yiddish quiz, created in honor of Simon Schama’s five-part series, “Story of the Jews.” In fact, my poor score may not even have…
How well did your bubbe train you? Apparently, mine fell down on the job. I answered only 8 out of 15 questions correctly on a new survey meant to test your knowledge of classic Yiddish terms and phrases. “You need a bissel more of work to be a maven in the mame-loshin!” the results read….
There are several moments in Simon Schama’s new five-part documentary series, “The Story of the Jews,” when the British historian’s stiff upper lip begins to wobble. Schama says the series would not have worked if he had not made it personal. “I wanted it to be hot television, not cool television,” Schama said as he…
PBS this spring will air “The Story of the Jews” with Simon Schama, a five-part documentary that examines the impact Jewish culture has made on the world. Schama, an historian and award-winning writer, visits Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Israel and Spain for the series, which was broadcast last year on the BBC to rave reviews. Along…
