The Iraqi Jewish Archive, as the Forward explored in a recent series of articles, has significant symbolic meaning. To Iraqi Jews and their descendants, exiled from their home country starting in 1950, the archive, a trove of artifacts brought to the United States for restoration in 2003, represents the rich communal life and history they…
If you’re a graduate of the traditional Jewish summer camp system, you probably think of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the Temple, as “Holocaust Movie Day.” Observant Jews dwell on mourning on the Ninth of Av. Not only do we fast and refrain from any bodily pleasures, but…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As soon as the film version of “Fiddler on the Roof,” based on the stories of the classic Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, came out in movie theaters in 1971, my family and I went to see it. I thought it was wonderful, especially the songs. I learned…
In 1987, Marcello Saloman Imach, a 22-year-old swimming instructor stepped into a gym in Buenos Aires, stamped his feet and did something his Jewish mother could never have imagined. He started sumo wrestling. Sumo is Japan’s national sport, wherein two, overweight and underclad fighters (rikishi) try to force each other out of a ring or…
Deposition 1940-1944: A Secret Diary of Life in Vichy France By Léon Werth; edited and translated by David Ball Oxford University Press, 368 pages, $34.95 The French Jewish novelist and essayist Léon Werth spent World War II, buffeted by history but shielded from its worst consequences, chronicling the passivity, inertia and gradual political awakening of…
This is the final installment in a series on the Iraqi Jewish Archive, a trove of items from Iraq’s exiled Jewish community currently in the United States. Previously, we examined the recent history of Iraqi Jews, the archive’s restoration and the complex argument over its ownership. Catch up with part one, “The Last Relics Of…
This is the second article in a series on the Iraqi Jewish Archive, a trove of items from Iraq’s exiled Jewish community. In “The Last Relics Of Iraq’s Jewish Past Are In America. Should They Be Returned?” we explored the tumultuous 20th-century history of Iraqi Jews and the fight to return the archive to its…
This is the first of three articles on the Iraqi Jewish Archive. Next, read part two, “In Exile, Iraqi Jews Are Desperate To Reclaim Their Artifacts — But So Is Iraq,” and part three, “The Iraqi Jewish Archive Could Reshape Foreign Policy. But Its Future Is Uncertain.” On a leafy parkway in the Jamaica section…
צוליב דעם וואָס ס׳רובֿ פּאַריזער אַשכּנזים שטאַמען פֿון פּוילן, קומט די ליטוויש־ייִדישע קולטור נישט אָפֿט צו רייד
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