Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Irene Katz Connelly
By Irene Katz Connelly
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Culture Shira Haas talks collaging, quarantine routine, and learning Russian for her latest film
Shira Haas and Ruthy Pribar wanted to make sure I wasn’t filming our interview. That’s because they were curled up on a couch in Pribar’s Tel Aviv apartment, sharing the same blanket. They may be two of the Israeli film industry’s most exciting up-and-comers, and they certainly spent much of the last year racking up…
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Culture This nonagenarian knows more about the cellphone than you — because he invented it
After working from home for over a year, I still have no idea how Zoom backgrounds work, which means the various strangers I interview can look past me to see my ailing succulents, unopened prestige cookbooks and a childhood’s worth of participation trophies. Unlike me, a supposed “digital native,” Martin Cooper is old enough that…
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Culture Why do we keep turning Holocaust survivor stories into self-help books?
On a recent segment of “The Today Show,” a cadre of well-coiffed hosts discussed the life of Eddie Jaku, a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor and the author of “The Happiest Man on Earth,” a memoir about his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Grainy photos of concentration camp prisoners alternated with clips from an interview with Jaku and videos…
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The Schmooze Did a celebrity chef rip off Russ and Daughters’ design?
Update, 6/6/21: As of Thursday, both parties have removed their original posts and arrived at an amicable resolution. After representatives from The Borscht Belt clarified that the design process had been outsourced to another company, and that its owners, including Nick Liberato had not been personally involved, Russ and Daughter posted on Instagram wishing “Nick…
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Culture When a family is separated by 200 meters — and the occupation
This is the nightly ritual that lies at the heart of “200 Meters.” Mustafa, the film’s fatherly protagonist, steps onto his balcony and flicks the light switch on and off. From their bedroom in a nearby apartment building, his three young children can see the lights flashing, and they eagerly reply in kind. These two…
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Culture How a Holocaust survivor thrived in an art world that didn’t want her
Against all odds, Mila Gokhman has made a life full of flowers. “The main things in my life are flowers and trees,” the artist, 87, said in an interview. She was speaking from Los Angeles, where she lives today. But we were talking about an artistic journey that took place in another country entirely. Born…
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Culture A century after Woolf asked for a room of her own, Deborah Levy wants the whole house
“Real Estate,” Deborah Levy informs us in her memoir by that name, is not a gender-neutral term. The word “real” derives from the word Latin “rex,” or “king;” in Spanish, “real” still carries that meaning, because monarchs once owned all the land in their domains. Today, the phrase denotes residential property, yet its etymology nods…
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Culture Babi Yar is a site of Jewish death. With a new synagogue, this architect vows to ‘bring back Jewish life’
On the haunted ground of Babi Yar, the walls of a synagogue are opening and closing like the pages of a pop-up book. Over the course of two nights in 1941, SS officers and their local Ukrainian allies murdered almost 34,000 Jews at this ancient ravine, perpetrating one of the largest and most infamous massacres…
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