Anne Joseph
By Anne Joseph
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Bosnia and Sarajevo
There are bullet holes on apartment blocks, civil buildings and places of worship. Even the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery are pockmarked. Located high on the hillside overlooking Sarajevo, the graveyard presented itself as the perfect frontline position during the city’s siege in the 1990s. Its graves bear silent witness to the Serbian snipers who…
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Art 100 Years of Art and Chaos at London’s Ben Uri Gallery
One hundred years ago, on July 1, 1915, a Jewish decorative art association called Ben Ouri was founded in the heart of London’s East End. It was led by Lazar Berson, a charismatic Russian Jewish émigré artist whose vision was to create a Jewish arts society that would support Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrant artists and craftsmen,…
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Film & TV Filmmaker Takes Orthodox Masturbation Into His Own Hands
How does a Haredi father educate his young son about masturbation? This difficult question forms the basis of Israeli filmmaker Ori Gruder’s extraordinary documentary, “Sacred Sperm.” The film, made with the support of the Israeli television station HOT-Channel 8 with world sales handled by Go2Films, is aimed at a secular audience. It has received numerous…
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Culture Could Israel’s ‘Fauda’ Be Television’s Next ‘Homeland’?
Israeli television has made some major contributions to the global television market in recent years. Shows such as “B’Tipul” and “Hatufim” have achieved worldwide acclaim, either in their original formats or as their Emmy award-winning adaptations, “In Treatment” and “Homeland.” Now, attention has turned toward “Fauda,” the first Israeli political action drama series to bring…
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Culture A New Arab Museum on the Periphery
“Our trip is canceled. The atmosphere in Sakhnin is very tense.” It was December 10, 2014, the night before I was due to visit the newly established Arab Museum of Contemporary Art, in Sakhnin, an Arab-Israeli city in the north of the country. I had received the phone call from the Haifa-based, Romanian-Israeli artist Belu-Simion…
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Film & TV How a German Jewish Refugee Became a Master of Film Noir
In London, the British Film Institute — the leading organization for film in the U.K. — is running a two-month season dedicated to the renowned German Jewish filmmaker, Robert Siodmak (1900-73). The centerpiece of this major retrospective of over 20 films is the re-release of “Cry of the City” (1948), a noir crime thriller that…
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The Schmooze Can ‘2000 Year Old Man’ Live Without Mel Brooks?
Photo: Blake Ezra Comedy history was made in 1961 with the creation of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s classic routine, “The 2000 Year Old Man.” Brooks played the oldest Jewish man in the world, interviewed by Carl Reiner in a series of skits that appeared on television and five award winning albums. Topics ranged from…
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The Schmooze How Jews Made Marriage Glamorous
“No man in Whitechapel drives a busier or a more paying trade than does the shadchan,” observed the writer Louise Jordan Miln in 1900. In fact, a ledger belonging to a shadkhen, or matchmaker, is one of the objects on display for the first time in “For Richer For Poorer: Weddings Unveiled,” the latest exhibition…
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