Daniel Witkin
By Daniel Witkin
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Film & TV Alex Ross Perry’s Tale Of Quiet Desperation — And People Who Won’t Shut Up
“Some people would find it stifling or, you know, contained, but I love it. It’s thrilling, for my whole life to exist in one small zone,” Nick muses to Naomi, a visitor from out of town shortly into Alex Ross Perry’s “Golden Exits.” Like Nick, the film is nestled snugly into a well-defined portion of…
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Culture In Two Films, Opposite Sides Of The Holocaust’s Intergenerational Trauma
In the opening shots of Chantal Akerman’s 1980 film “Dis Moi” (or “Tell Me”), the director shows herself unhurriedly traversing the streets of Paris. Set against these disarmingly low-key images, we hear a conversation between the director and her mother, Natalia, or Nelly, who lost her own mother – Chantal’s grandmother – in the Holocaust….
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Culture In Israel and New York, Jews Do Battle In Conversation
It’s often said that Jews are a particularly talkative bunch — “the most verbal group in human history,” according to Alfred Kazin in his 1969 review of Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” itself a work of Semitic logorrhea par excellence. This is a pervasive idea, based on a certain reading of Jewish history. In the beginning…
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Culture How A Master Of Yiddish Cinema Became a Mysterious Roman Prince
By the time of his death in 1965, few would have taken Michal Waszynski for the director of one of the classics of Yiddish cinema. He had been living a surpassingly posh life in Rome, inhabiting a gorgeous urban estate with a social circle that included many of the luminaries of Hollywood and Italian cinema,…
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Culture Jessica Cohen, Rebecca Solnit Longlisted For 2018 PEN Literary Awards
PEN America has announced the longlists for the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards. The Awards cover fiction, essays, translation, and more, and will bestow almost $315,000 on a handful of lucky littérateurs. “Sonora” author Hannah Lillith Assadi was nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Raised in Arizona by a Jewish mother…
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Culture Düsseldorf To Host Exhibit On Holocaust Refugee Art Dealer, In Turnabout By Mayor
An exhibition about Jewish art dealer Max Stern is once again on to be held at the Stadtmuseum in Düsseldorf, Germany, The New York Times reports. The news comes after Düsseldorf mayor Thomas Geisel reversed his own controversial decision, made in November, to cancel the show. It was set to open in February. The exhibition…
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Film & TV Movie News: Best Under-The-Radar Films Of 2017, Guillermo Del Toro Goes Biblical
One little-discussed aspect of all of the problems in the world is that they can distract people from the news about movies. The world is an endless conveyor belt of horrors, and this can keep one from finding out about what films exists. The Forward considers it a mission to help remedy this; read on…
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Culture The Best Films You Missed In 2017
It’s the time of the year when people give prizes to movies, yet the vagaries of the hype machine mean that some worthy films are less-discussed than others. This doesn’t mean that you can’t seek them out for your own viewing pleasure. Here are four nice movies you probably missed this year that deserve a…
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News Dutch Jews grapple with ‘weaponization’ of their fear following attack on Israelis
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Opinion Almost all voting groups shifted toward Trump, except American Jews. Why?
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News What a Secretary of State Marco Rubio would mean for American Jews and Israel
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Fast Forward ‘Antisemitic hit-and-run squads’: Amsterdam temporarily bans demonstrations after Israeli soccer fans attacked by street mobs
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish וואָס איז געווען דאָס ערשטע לשון אויף דער גאָרער וועלט?What was the first language on earth?
דער רוימישער אימפּעראַטאָר פֿרעדעריק דער צווייטער האָט געזוכט אַן ענטפֿער צו דער פֿראַגע אויף אַ וויסנשאַפֿטלעכן אופֿן.
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Fast Forward Federal judge temporarily blocks Louisiana’s law requiring classrooms to display Ten Commandments
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Theater They created a musical about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Today’s activists are listening
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Opinion Voters elected Hitler because they liked his fascist promise. Trump’s reelection repeats that history
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