JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
With his iconic black beard, stately tuxedo, imposing physique and stern visage, there was no mistaking him for anyone else, and I was delighted when he motioned me to come over and join him for a coffee and sachertorte. “Again they are sullying my reputation,” he protested. “One recollection scribbled more than a century ago…
Natalie Portman made headlines this month when she told the host of “The Tonight Show,” Jimmy Fallon, that she would be decorating her home with a Christmas tree for the first time this year, thus fulfilling “every Jew’s secret wish.” But Portman is far from the first high-profile Jew to deck the halls. In fact,…
Anyone who came of political age in the 1980s or 1990s and followed Israel closely will have complex feelings about Shimon Peres. Like so many great democratic leaders, he was also a politician, and in the thick of the country’s internal battles he was never seen inside his own country through the same lens as…
Just think of Theodor Herzl and what do you see? A long, lush, black beard. There it is on Herzl’s prophetic profile staring out from the hotel balcony in Basel pointing Zion-ward. There it is again groomed in three-quarter portrait, a flowing beard fit for a modern day Moses. No better icon of the Zionist…
“Britain has been all she could be to Jews” — a recruitment poster issued at the beginning of World War I reads — “Jews will be all they can to Britain: Join the special Jewish unit.” At the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, it was the policy of the established Jewish community in Britain…
The idea that the trial of Alfred Dreyfus inspired Theodor Herzl to write “The Jewish State” is “simply not true,” Shlomo Avineri declared in a pointed, fluent, and well-received lecture that opened the first full day of London’s Jewish Book Week on February 23. Discussing his biography of the father of modern Zionism, “Herzl: Theodor…
President Barack Obama will embrace Jewish history while skirting the morass of West Bank settlements when he visits Israel this week – a selective itinerary laden with diplomatic signals. The tour, running from Wednesday to Friday, is meant to warm Israelis to the cool-tempered, second-term Democratic leader who is prodding their rightist prime minister, Benjamin…
“It Is No Dream” is a biographical documentary about the life of Theodor Herzl. The good news is it isn’t a nightmare, either. Filmmaker Richard Trank does a better-than-decent job telling the story of the father of Zionism. He integrates contemporary footage of places where Herzl lived and visited with archival footage in an interesting…
