There’s nothing like a carefree luxury vacation where you visit Dachau, eat a Bavarian dinner at the beer hall where Hitler unveiled the 25-point Nazi party program, and drop by Wannsee, the elegant lakeside residence where the Holocaust was planned. At least that’s the idea behind Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: The Face…
They’ve largely disappeared as residents, but Russia’s Jews now have their own museum. Billed as the first Jewish museum in the country, the Moscow center opened recently following several years of planning. Exhibits are divided between two general themes, focusing on either Jewish practice or on Jewish history in Russia. Radio Free Europe reports that…
Bronzed workers forge a winding road through the hills leading to the Dead Sea; smiling politicians cut ribbons marking the National Water Carrier, chemical factories and a gleaming submarine; proud generals lecture an adoring audience on their latest military victories; Jewish athletes march at the Maccabiah Games — these images, known as “Yomaney Geva” (“Geva…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree In my household, Sundays are usually given over to two rituals: reading The New York Times and taking in a museum exhibition. I suspect your household is no different. But, as I explained recently to a group of George Washington alumni who had come together on a rainy Sunday…
Crossposted from Haaretz Near the door of Andreas Meyer’s home in Kfar Vradim hangs an old photograph of trees alongside a stream, Nahal Ga’aton, which cuts through the city of Nahariya. Opposite is a photo, from 1908, of Meyer’s grandfather and two uncles. Both images serve as a window into 90-year-old Meyer’s life and home,…
On a spring evening in 1903, in New York City’s Chinatown, a line snaked down Doyers Street from the Chinese Theatre as Manhattan played host to an improbable coming together of two immigrant communities: Chinese and Jews. They were queuing up for a Chinese-organized benefit performance for victims of the Kishinev pogrom that, the previous…
When we talk about the Enlightenment, or the Haskalah, in Europe, we have a general historical sense that all Jews were in ghettos and then the walls came down. One day pogroms, the next Einstein, Freud and Kafka. The period of time was indeed extraordinary, as Michael Goldfarb elucidates in his book “Emancipation: How Liberating…
This is the story of a brother and sister, Russian immigrants, who arrived at Ellis Island almost 90 years ago, knowing no English. Decades later, I, the brother, was invited back to Ellis Island as a composer of an anthem celebrating the immigrant experience, while my sister excelled in English and became a famous novelist….
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