Move over Pharrell Williams — “The Voice: Israel” has got the real big name: Spielberg. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jessica “Jessy” Katz, 25-year-old nice of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and daughter of Playmount Productions president Nancy Spielberg-Katz, will be performing on the show’s third season, which debuts on October 8. Katz won her…
Getty Images At one point in the documentary “No Place on Earth,” Saul Stermer, now 93, who, with his family, spent 511 days hiding in two Ukrainian caves and escaped the Holocaust, smiles and says, “What a mother!” No wonder. His mother, Esther Stermer, who was 75 years old in 1942 when the Nazis came…
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg is establishing a Center for Advanced Genocide Research at the University of Southern California. The formation of the new center was announced in a press conference Friday. Its primary goals will be to investigate the conditions leading to genocides and how to intervene in time to prevent such mass violence and slaughter….
Director Steven Spielberg has several new projects in the works, including a film about the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. The movie will recount the true story of how in 1858 a young Italian Jewish boy was taken from his parents by authorities of the Papal States after a housemaid claimed to have given him an…
Well, rankings of the world’s most famous people from the past 6,000 years are in. Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman has beat out Ariel Sharon, Moses has an ever-so-slight lead over Muhammad and Jesus Christ is apparently the world’s number one Jew. The project, an endeavor of the Macro Connections group at MIT’s media lab, includes…
Steven Spielberg called on the world to act on the lessons of the Holocaust during a keynote address to a special UN General Assembly marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Mass graves don’t have to open up before we act,” he said. “It is a great accomplishment of our species that the testimonies [of survivors] can…
● The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe By Olga Gershenson Rutgers University Press, 290 pages, $32.50 As a teenager growing up in Ufa, Russia, I used to play piano in a Jewish music ensemble. Our group was once invited to play a prescreening concert at a local movie theater called Rodina (Motherland), built…
Israeli President Shimon Peres will award his Presidential Medal of Distinction to Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel and five other recipients. The awards were announced Thursday with a statement from Peres’ office. Spielberg is being awarded the medal “for his contribution to cinema over the past 50 years and specifically his unique contribution to the memory…
