Masha Leon
By Masha Leon
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News Paying Tribute to a Master Yiddishist
During an intermission of the Gotham Chamber Opera’s October 17 performance of excerpts from Handel’s “Ariadne Unhinged” and the duet from Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers,” hosted by British consul-general Sir Philip Thomas at his home on Manhattan’s East Side, Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein of the Watergate exposé) told me, “My great uncle Itzev-Isidore…
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News Looking Anew at Bulgaria’s Jews
A must-see documentary, “The Optimists: The Story of the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews From the Holocaust,” by filmmakers Jacky and Lisa Comforty, premiered October 10 at the Center for Jewish History. It is the most recent cinematic tribute to the Bulgarians for their heroic efforts on behalf of their fellow (Jewish) Bulgarians. The first…
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News Incubators of Antisemitism
Dennis Gansel’s riveting film, “Before the Fall (Napola),” sheds light on the little-known Napolas, acronym for Nazi National Political Academies — elitist ideological greenhouses with perverted curricula and barbaric military and physical training that shaped young Germans into “future gauleiters for [such anticipated Reich conquests as] London and Capetown.” It is Berlin, 1942. Against his…
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News ‘Fiddler’ Director Tells All
‘For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a Jew,” writes film director-writer-producer Norman Jewison in his just-published autobiography, “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me” (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press). “When I was 6, I started going to the Kenilworth synagogue, in the Beach area of Toronto, with my…
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News Walesa Reminisces at the 92nd Street Y
‘Communism fits Poland like a saddle on a pig,” Lech Walesa said in a September 28 conversation with James F. Hoge Jr., editor of the journal Foreign Affairs. Their talk was held at the 92nd Street Y in honor of the 25th anniversary of Poland’s Solidarity movement. A white-haired, avuncular Walesa peppered his comments with…
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News Celebrating a Medical Landmark
“We are seeing a struggle between those who value science wherever it leads… and those who truly would like to turn the clock back,” Senator Hillary Clinton said. Clinton was the keynote speaker at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine 50th Anniversary Gala, held September 18 at The Waldorf-Astoria. “I’m worried that there are…
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News ADL Honors Polish President
‘This is a special moment… full of honor, so full of hope,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, as he presented the ADL’s Distinguished Statesman Award — a menorah designed by Israeli artist Yaacov Agam — to Aleksander Kwasniewski, president of Poland. An emotional Foxman added: “To be a child of Poland,…
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Culture Women Trailblazers Honored
“I am convinced that there is a place in hell for women who do not help each other,” honoree Madeleine Korbel Albright said at the September 7 Women Who Changed the Landscape for Women dinner. The event was held at The Waldorf-Astoria and was sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Women. “When I…
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