Join in the discussion on Rabbis Roundtable, where rabbis of different denominations and affiliations come together to discuss and debate the important issues facing the Jewish community.

On this second episode: rabbinic sex scandals, Black-Jewish relations, LGBT inclusion, Brit Hume & Tiger Woods.

Moderated by R’ Dr. David Flatto, and featuring R’ Marci Bellows, R’ Aubrey Glazer, R’ Steven Pruzansky and R’ Steven Kane.

Dating gets confusing when Amir asks out Reut’s younger sister, Nati hijacks Amir’s internet dating account and gets into a pickle, and Yifat goes on a blind date with a not-so-mysterious stranger. Hodaya gets in trouble.

Watch the Promo:

Episode three of The Salon has arrived!

Hosted by Forward editor Jane Eisner, with Mediaite.com’s Rachel Sklar, The Salon is where Jewish women tell us what they really think about the subjects that really matter.

On this episode, award-winning novelist Dara Horn, acclaimed comedian Ophira Eisenberg, and JOFA executive director Robin Bodner tackle what to call Orthodox female rabbis, modesty as fashion trend, women in the Jewish work force, an atheist-feminist siddur, and more!

The Salon is a joint production between The Jewish Channel and The Forward. If you have any thoughts on this episode or other topics you’d like to see addressed on The Salon, please send us an email at thesalon@tjctv.com.

Riveting, inspirational and fact-based, this beautifully acted drama chronicles the courage of a young Jewish woman who risks everything by concealing a wounded resistance fighter in her family’s home just prior to the Nazi invasion of Denmark.

As the American West opened up, waves of Jewish immigrants tested the promise of the American dream. But was it possible to remain a Jew in the American wilderness?

This fascinating and in depth documentary explores the roles Jews played on both sides of the Civil War. It also offers insight into Ulysses S. Grant’s infamous General Order #11, which was designed to expel Jews from their homes and businesses without cause.

Keeping kosher, both literally and figuratively, becomes an issue on episode 04 of Srugim.

Hodaya starts dating her non-religious crush, which puts her into some, um, compromising situations.

Meanwhile, Nati suspects that his friend who runs a food stand is lying about his kosher certification, and struggles with whether to report him to the authorities.

And Yifat pursues a date with one of her clients—even after he warns her that when he dates women he expects things to get physical.

The plot thickens on episode 03 of the hit show Srugim. Hodaya meets a handsome stranger on the bus, who isn’t religious and assumes she isn’t either. Will she refute his advances or cave in to curiosity?

Amir needs a huge favor, but would any woman be willing to do what he asks? Reut might just be up for the challenge.

Meanwhile, increasingly frustrated by Nati’s mixed signals, Yifat finds a way to profess her love for him — if he’s open enough to see it…

Five modern Orthodox singles balance the search for love with religious observance in Israel’s hit series Srugim.

On episode 02, relationships deepen and get more complicated as the female protagonists, Yifat, Hodaya and Reut, get to know their new friends and potential romantic partners, Nati and Amir, better.

Nati, a surgical resident, seeks refuge from his busy, bachelorhood existence in the stocked refrigerator and private washing machine at Yifat and Hodaya’s place. But will his overtures cost Hodaya a relationship with an Air Force pilot? Meanwhile, Nati’s roommate Amir searches for a hidden message when Reut calls him to fix her broken bed. And Yifat’s roommate, Hodaya, goes into crisis mode when her waning religious observance starts to affect her relationship with her grandmother.

Watch the Promo:

Meet the singles of Srugim, the most popular dramatic series in Israel, as they fall in and out of love and like in the Jerusalem neighborhood known as The Swamp. Best friends and roommates, Yidat and Hodaya fight over — what else – boys, while their friend Reut decides whether to marry her boyfriend after a less-than-romantic proposal. Yifat crushes on Nati, a doctor – will Hodaya steal him away? Nati’s roommate Amir, recently divorced, is intrigued by Reut.

Watch the Promo, “Yifat Hearts Nati”:

Watch the Promo, “Srugim’s Coming to America”:

Watch the Promo, “Yifat Hearts Nati”:

TJC is proud to present the U.S. Television Premiere of Srugim, the most talked-about series on Israeli TV!

Applauded for its true-to-life and nuanced portrayal of the modern-Orthodox community in Israel, Srugim follows five single friends looking for love in Jerusalem, while adhering to a religious lifestyle. (The title “Srugim” refers to the style of knit skullcap that is often worn by modern-Orthodox men in Israel.)

Rave reviews describe the series as “groundbreaking” (Israelity.com), “refreshing and clever” (Jerusalem.com), and “hugely popular among religious and secular Israelis alike” (Ynet News).

The 15 complete episodes of “Srugim” Season 1, with English subtitles, will be available in the TJC Original Series category beginning February 1st, 2010, with the U.S. premiere of Episode 1. Subsequent episodes will be available each week, with episode 2 premiering February 10th, episode 3 premiering February 17th, episode 4 premiering February 24th, and so forth. Each episode will be available for five weeks at a time.

Srugim 01. U.S. television premiere of Israel’s most popular dramatic series! Meet roommates Yifat and Hodaya, and their friends Reut, Nati and Amir — five modern-Orthodox singles looking for love in Jerusalem as they approach the big 3-0. Premieres February 1st!

Srugim 02. Relationships get more complicated on Israel’s hit dramatic series! Nati seeks refuge from bachelorhood at Yifat’s place, but will she get the wrong idea? Hodaya faces a religious crisis, while Amir reads into Reut’s request that he fix her bed. Watch a new episode every Saturday night on TJC!

Srugim 03. The plots thicken and boundaries are tested. Hodaya meets a handsome stranger on the bus — will she cave in to curiosity? Amir’s divorce puts his job in jeopardy, so he hatches a plan with Reut, and Yifat finds a way to confess her feelings for Nati…if he’s open enough to see it.

Srugim 04. Kosher observance is tested in more ways than one. Hodaya starts dating her non-religious crush, which puts her into some compromising situations. Nati suspects the hospital cafeteria’s kosher certification, and Yifat pursues a date with one of her clients.

Srugim 05. Dating starts to get really confusing when Amir asks out Reut’s younger sister, Nati hijacks Amir’s internet dating account and gets into a pickle, and Yifat goes on a blind date with a not-so-mysterious stranger. Hodaya gets in trouble, will she go too far this time?

Srugim 06. Things get complicated between Amir and his ex-wife; Reut won’t take no for an answer from a reluctant Torah reading tutor; Nati reconnects with an old flame, causing Yifat to rethink her feelings, but will he make a terrible mistake?

Go beyond the headlines with the people who write them! In this first installment of With The Editors, Ami Eden of JTA is joined by editors of leading Jewish publications for a hard-hitting discussion about the stories buzzing through the Jewish world.

Guests Alana Newhouse of Tablet Magazine, the Long Island Jewish Star’s Mayer Fertig, Jewcy.com’s Lilit Marcus, and MyJewishLearning.com’s Daniel Septimus tackle Jewish revenge fantasies, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” vs. “Seinfeld,” Bibi 2.0, attempts to kill stories and more!

An exciting new TJC Original Series takes you beyond the headlines with the people who write them!

Editors of leading Jewish publications from across North America discuss the stories making Jewish news and their significance to the Jewish community. Moderated by JTA’s Editor-in-Chief Ami Eden.

WATCH THE PROMO:

Episode 02: Tablet Magazine’s Alana Newhouse, Jewcy.com’s Lilit Marcus, Andrew Silow-Caroll of the New Jersey Jewish News, and the Long Island Jewish Star’s Mayer Fertig join host Ami Eden to tackle the Yiddish language takeover, the changing Orthodox vote, Jewish boxing champs, and more!

Episode 01: On the first episode of With The Editors, guests Alana Newhouse of Tablet Magazine, the Long Island Jewish Star’s Mayer Fertig, Jewcy.com’s Lilit Marcus, and MyJewishLearning.com’s Daniel Septimus tackle Jewish revenge fantasies, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” vs. “Seinfeld,” Bibi 2.0, attempts to kill stories and more!

The Salon — Jewish women discuss! Hosted by Forward editor Jane Eisner, with Mediaite.com’s Rachel Sklar.

From the latest episode:

The first-ever television show about Jewish women’s issues, The Salon brings together women from across the spectrum of Jewish life for lively discussion about a range of topics affecting Jewish women.

If you’re thinking about it, we’re talking about it!

Episode 03: The panel takes on Orthodox female rabbis, modesty as fashion trend, an atheist-feminist prayerbook, and more! Featuring JOFA’s Robin Bodner, award-winning novelist Dara Horn, and the always funny Ophira Eisenberg!

Episode 02: Hadassah president Nancy Falchuk, comedian Judy Gold and filmmaker Lacey Schwartz join Jane and Rachel to discuss the return of Sarah Palin, recent controversies over breast cancer prevention, Israeli supermodels, and dolls made just for Jewish girls.

Episode 01: On this first episode of The Salon, Host Jane Eisner leads a panel of distinguished guests in the first-ever Jewish women’s issues discussion on television! Guests include American Jewish World Service president Ruth Messinger, Mediaite.com editor Rachel Sklar, journalist Lynn Harris, and AskMoses.com editor Bronya Shaffer.

WATCH THE PROMO:

Back by popular demand, Rabbis Roundtable is the only place on television — and one of the few places at all — where pulpit rabbis of different denominations engage in open discussion and debate about the issues facing the entire Jewish community. Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Post-denominational — all viewpoints have a place around the table.

Moderated by R’ Dr. David Flatto, professor of law, history and religion at Penn State University.

Rabbis Roundtable Episode 01. On the first episode of Rabbis Roundtable, rabbis of different denominations share their perspectives on being Jewish during Christmas, the role American Jews should play in Israeli politics — including the struggle to redeem captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, conversion and Jewish survival, and more!

Rabbis Roundtable Episode 02. On the second installment of Rabbis Roundtable, a diverse group of Rabbis discuss rabbinic sex scandals, Black-Jewish relations, LGBT inclusion, Brit Hume & Tiger Woods. Featuring host R’ Dr. David Flatto, with guests: R’ Marci Bellows, R’ Aubrey Glazer, R’ Steven Pruzansky and R’ Steven Kane.

WATCH THE PROMO:

Welcome to The Salon – The first ever Jewish women’s issues TV show! Hosted by Forward editor Jane Eisner, with Mediaite.com’s Rachel Sklar.

This second episode features Hadassah president Nancy Falchuk, comedian Judy Gold and filmmaker Lacey Schwartz discussing the return of Sarah Palin, the woman arrested for wearing a prayer shawl at the Western Wall, Breast cancer controversies, Israeli models and more!

The Salon is a joint production between The Jewish Channel and The Forward. If you have any thoughts on this show, or other topics you’d like to see addressed on The Salon, please send us an email at thesalon@tjctv.com.

On this first episode of The Salon, Host Jane Eisner, editor of The Forward, leads a panel of distinguished guests in the first-ever Jewish women’s issues discussion on television!

Guests include former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, now head of the American Jewish World Service; journalist Lynn Harris; Bronya Shaffer, a leading writer in the Chabad-Lubavitch hasidic movement; and Mediaite.com editor Rachel Sklar, author of the upcoming book “Jew-ish.”

From the challenges of motherhood to what to call women in the Orthodox “rabbinate,” to the effects of the healthcare debate on regular women, our panelists dig into the pressing issues facing Jewish women today.

WATCH THE PROMO:

On the first episode of Rabbis Roundtable, rabbis of different denominations share their perspectives on being Jewish during Christmas, the role American Jews should play in Israeli politics — including the struggle to redeem captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and the role of conversion in the demographic challenges facing the Jewish community.

Moderated by R’ Dr. David Flatto. Guests include R’ Jonathan Stein (Ref.) of Shaaray Tefila in New York, R’ Robin Fryer Bodzin (Cons.) of the Israel Center of Conservative Judaism in Queens, Rabbi Adam Mintz (Orth.) of Kehillat Rayim Ahuvim in New York, and R’ Stuart Weinblatt (Cons.) of Cong. B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, MD, who is Director of Israel Advocacy for the Rabbinical Assembly.

Enjoy a brand new installment of TJC’s exciting Original Series, With The Editors! Watch clips from this episode below:

On this episode, moderator Ami Eden of the JTA wrangles editors of leading Jewish publications in a discussion about the Yiddish language takeover, how the Orthodox vote is changing, Sarah Palin’s attack on Obama’s approach to Israel, Jewish boxing champs, and more!

Guests on this episode include Tablet Magazine’s Alana Newhouse, Jewcy.com’s Lilit Marcus, Andrew Silow-Caroll of the New Jersey Jewish News, and the Long Island Jewish Star’s Mayer Fertig.

“Next year in Jerusalem,” goes the prayer that Jews have been chanting through two thousand years of exile. Yet nearly 60 years after the founding of the Jewish State, some Jews still long for the home they left behind — even if home meant poverty and persecution, as it did for many Argentine Jews. In “Next Year in Argentina,” two Argentine-Israeli filmmakers travel back to Argentina and explore questions of identity and the meaning of a homeland as they speak with friends and family who have stayed behind.

“I always raise the subject of my being Jewish upfront . . . for me it’s like my mark . . . it’s my pride” says one director’s brother. When people ask why he doesn’t move to Israel, he responds: “Argentina is the best country in the world.”

Argentina has a long history of anti-Semitism and political unrest, which came to a head in the early ‘90’s when attacks on the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center left 116 dead, most of them Jews. For many Jews, Israel was the only way out, which was also the case during Argentina’s recent economic crisis. But now, more than ten years after the attacks, and with the country’s economy on the rebound, Argentina’s Jewish community is staying put.

Directors Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky grew up in Argentina, and made aliyah as adults. They have built families and careers in Israel but still visit Argentina frequently, perhaps out of a desire to stay in touch with friends and family, but also because on some essential level Argentina is still their home. While Shlomo and Jorge continue to straddle two worlds, some of their friends have returned to Argentina after making aliyah. And many, like Gurvich’s brother, refuse to even consider immigrating to Israel.

Many see aliyah as an unwise tradeoff: where Argentine Jews exchange anti-Semitic slurs in the shadow of the attacks, life in Israel demands the far more immediate and permanent sacrifices of a country that is perpetually at war. Israelis believe that “in order to be Jewish you need to live in Israel, to sacrifice yourself and to give up your children for the defense of the country,” says Laura, whose husband was killed in the AMIA attack. Laura resents the Israeli perception of Diaspora Jews that “makes us . . . feel as if we’re not Jewish.” The truth, she says, is that “I don’t have to live in Israel in order to be a Jew.”

Next Year in Argentina helps to define the different perceptions of Jewish identity and the place of the Jewish state in modern Jewish consciousness. For Eduardo, a religious businessman in Argentina, and a childhood friend of the filmmaker, Jewish identity is asserted through religious observance. Asked why he doesn’t make aliyah, he replies, quoting the Lubavitcher Rebbe, “you can make Israel wherever you are,” suggesting that Israel is not about a physical state but a state of Jewish spirituality and observance.

While the vast majority of those who have immigrated to Israel may not return, some are still plagued by self-doubt and continue to question their decision years — even decades — after moving to Israel, especially in the wake of the intifada and Israel’s economic recession.

But for Gurvich, any need for Jewish identification is satisfied in Israel where he “is not preoccupied with my Jewish identity—it seems natural to me.” And yet, he is drawn back to Argentina, and continues to regard this country as his home.

“I have family in Israel, I’m an Israeli filmmaker, but my heart is still here, in faraway Argentina, and this tears me apart,” he reveals.

Anne Frank is perhaps the most familiar symbol of the Holocaust in Holland, but her most important legacy is not the diary she kept during her family’s two years in hiding from the Nazis. Rather, she is most important as a symbol of the senseless destruction of Dutch Jewry, and the deeply rooted anti-Semitism in Dutch society that allowed for — and even encouraged — the murder of more than 100,000 Jews. Goodbye Holland tells the tragic story of Dutch anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis — which resulted in the largest proportion of Jewish fatalities in all of Western Europe — and reveals the shocking present-day anti-Semitism that continues in Dutch society, decades after the Holocaust.

“What happened was not just the result of German evil — the Dutch were not willing to save Jews because they perceived the Jew as ‘other’,” says Job Cohen, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors and the current mayor of Groningen, once home to a vibrant Jewish community. The Dutch were “fully at the disposal of the Nazis and in some cases, the Germans didn’t have to do anything,” because the Dutch willingly carried out the deportations.

Goodbye Holland reveals a terrifying history of collaboration between ordinary Dutch citizens and the Nazi regime. Through first-hand interviews, Director Willy Lindwer weaves together his narrative of the conspiracy that led to the near-annihilation of an entire population. He speaks with former members of the Dutch police force who operated under Nazi occupation, and meets with Dutch Holocaust survivors, and children of survivors like himself. Through it all, he investigates the truth behind the betrayal of an aunt and uncle in hiding, as well as the story of his parents’ survival, as they were hidden in a nearby home.

According to Cohen, classic Christian anti-Semitism was rampant among the religiously-devout gentiles of Holland, and in the wake of the economic recession that preceded the Nazi occupation, anti-Jewish sentiment reached an all-time high in prewar Netherlands. Many Dutch became willing collaborators, betraying Jews who were in hiding, like the Frank family, and actively participating in the destruction of Holland’s Jews. Others merely “looked the other way, so they didn’t have to see anything.”

Cohen goes further to show that Dutch anti-Semitism didn’t die with the defeat of the Nazi regime. Indeed, the few Jews who did survive were met with cold hostility when they returned to the Netherlands. When the war was over, Lindwer’s parents found their home had been taken over by strangers, and they had to fight a year-long battle to get it back. Other survivors relate stories of household effects that went unreturned after the war and of assets that were held by the Dutch government. In a particularly shocking scene, Cohen reveals that taxes for war-years properties were issued to surviving Jewish children of parents who had been deported and exterminated.

The emotional trauma inflicted by the Holocaust continued in the aftermath of the war, particularly among orphans who were adopted by gentile families. When Jewish family members tried to establish contact with these orphans after the war, their attempts were often rejected by Dutch court rulings. The children were left without any connection to family, identity or community.

And Cohen shows that the anti-Semitism continues to this day. Even though the Dutch chief of police during the war was a Nazi party member who oversaw the deportation of Holland’s Jews, a former Dutch police officer who participated in the roundups and deportation of Holland’s Jews stands firm in his assertion that the Dutch chief of police was a “righteous man” who did not deserve the ten-year sentence he received after the war.

In an even more startling moment, the former officer’s wife concurs. After all, she says, “my mother used to say if the war ends at noon, five minutes later the Jews will have cheated you again.”

As Goodbye Holland uncovers the complicity of the Dutch government and community in Hitler’s war against the Jews, it is ultimately most shocking for what it reveals about contemporary Dutch society. Decades after the country sent nearly its entire Jewish population to its death, anti-Semitism lives on.

The famously-martyred Israeli prime minister was once a shy boy who hung around the soccer field and dreamed of becoming a water engineer, but life had a very different plan for Yitzhak Rabin. The first half of this compelling biography of one of Israel’s most important political figures shows how Rabin’s early military service evolved into his diplomatic fight for peace.

“Today we are embarking on a battle which has no dead and no wounded, no blood and no anguish,” Rabin said, addressing the United States Congress ahead of the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, declaring “this is the only battle which is a pleasure to wage: the battle for peace.” Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yitzhak Rabin lost his own life in what he thought was to be a bloodless engagement.

Densely-packed with information, Rabin offers interviews of fellow politicians and family members, along with historic film footage, to tell the history of modern Israel through the fallen prime minister’s personal biography. Part I covers his childhood in Israel, his military service that began at age sixteen, the roots of his rivalry with Shimon Peres, his ambassadorship for the Nixon administration, and his first term as Prime Minister — ending with the dramatic rescue of Israeli hostages and defeat of terrorists at the Entebbe airport in Uganda. Throughout his personal and political life, Rabin’s dedication to his homeland and the Jewish people was consistent. But while his early life was spent conquering territory and establishing Israel as a strong and independent nation with military force, he spent the last years of his life negotiating for peace and asking the settlers to abandon their homes.

The documentary explains how Rabin’s early life experiences affected his later political decisions. During the Israeli War of Independence, other nations refused to sell Israel weaponry. This drastic shortage of supplies led to massive Israeli casualties. Having fought in the war and watched his friends die because of their inability to protect themselves, Rabin made it a priority to strengthen the Israeli Defense Forces once he entered politics.

Cutting through the dense history of politics and bloodshed, the film offers anecdotal stories that flesh out the characters of Rabin and his political contemporaries. Family interviews reveal Rabin’s private side, so well-hidden from the public eye – with a focus on his relationship with his wife, Leah, whome he married at a young age. Leah was confident, beautiful, and proud of herself for having had “the sense to see potential in such a shy man.” When Rabin became an ambassador to the United States, Leah organized their social calendar, playing an important, if indirect, part in his early political career.

The complicated political relationship between Rabin and Shimon Peres is also explored. Both Leftists, they had a long history of bitter rivalry. Peres explains that their “political animosity had a personal aspect,” because they came from “two different political factions.” But the two were also very different in temperament. Once again, an inside look at Rabin’s daily life provides an example: When the two met on a trip to Africa, they immediately frustrated one another because Peres was in a hurry to get to the meetings, while Rabin, a photography buff, wanted to stop and take pictures of everything.

This seeming paradox reveals a deep insight into a man who pursued all he did with greatest passion.

Despite Rabin’s focus on strengthening the military, he fundamentally tried to avoid war, and his anti-war instincts brought him repeated criticism for being “hesitant” and “weak.” Just before the Six-Day War, his biographer says, Rabin was smoking 120 cigarettes a day and getting little sleep, worried of the looming hostility. While Rabin’s critics would read his anxiety as a sign that he was a feeble, unfit leader, his admirers see his uneasiness as proof that he understood the gravity of the matters at hand, and the immeasurable value of his fellow countrymen’s lives.

It was his experience in the horrors of battle that made him resolve to keep Israel’s young soldiers out of war whenever possible, setting the stage for a political career that was to include the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rampant anti-Semitism is threatening to end the 2,700-year-long history of Jewish residence in Iran. The country’s 1979 revolution pressured most Jews out of the country — but not all of them. Jews of Iran offers an exclusive, first-time look at those who remain: their struggle, their successes, and their hopes for the future.

“They’re very open with their insults,” explains a young Jewish girl of how she is treated by other Iranians, “They say we’re impure — we’re filthy.” Even the children are exposed to prejudice in Iran, a country built on intolerance. But as the film shows, that discrimination hasn’t kept Iranian Jews from creating a rich culture despite obvious obstacles.

Scored with twangy reverberations of Middle Eastern music and offering shots of centuries-old architecture, Jews of Iran travels through the breathtaking cities of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz in order to interview a broad range of Jewish Iranians —from an old woman in a hospital, to a bright computer science student. Breaking ground as the first documentary to grapple with this subject, it captures both friendships among Muslims and Jews, and the prejudices against the Jewish minority. Filmmaker Ramin Firahani explains that his documentary is meant to “help westerners correct their image” of the Middle East, allowing them to “see the nuances” within the culture.

Quite surprisingly, Jews of Iran demonstrates how, even after the revolution, religious tolerance can trickle down from one generation to the next. A Jewish mother and a Muslim mother who have been good friends since college, have raised sons who are now equally as close. The women laugh about religious prejudice, and the Muslim boy explains his friend’s kosher diet by saying, “It’s his choice, he eats what he wants.” When asked, the boys say that they don’t really talk about religion or how it could divide them. Instead, they listen to the same music, go to the same parties and lazily lounge around each other’s homes.

The film also offers rare examples of how these two cultures of Iran’s Muslims and Jews can overlap and feed off of each other. In Isfahan, Jewish artist Soleiman Sassoon explains how his work is strongly influenced by Iranian art and Islamic architecture. He points to his paintings and explains how he naturally blends Jewish religious motifs, such as the Ten Commandments and David’s prayer, with a traditional Iranian art style.

Sadly, the documentary also shows how deep-rooted and unfounded anti-Semitism in Iran is. When a beautiful Muslim art student is asked if she has any Jewish friends, she couples her bigoted response with a coy giggle. She claims that it’s “because of the atmosphere Israel has created” that she is not fond of the Jews. But when confronted with the point that the Jews in Iran are not Israelis, she simplifies her argument, offering a big smile and saying, “I don’t know…They don’t mix with us, either. Never.”

And while the film maintains a sense of levelheaded optimism, it’s hard not to feel disheartened when Firahani travels to Shiraz, where thirteen Jews have been accused of espionage. It is generally believed that the accusations were concocted because the evidence against them was all circumstantial and built on extorted confessions. Nonetheless, the accused Jews faced death sentences and were eventually given prison terms between 2-9 years. Firahani explores the case and the public’s reaction, making it clear that the Jews who have decided to stay in Iran may be putting their own lives at stake.

Still, the Jews that have stayed in Iran have a fundamental love for their homeland, even when it rejects them, and see it as a core element of their identity. Without abandoning their religion, they define themselves by their nationality and are hopeful about the future. “We are alive, joyful, active and Iranian-lovers,” a Jewish leader exclaims into a microphone. Stirring his Iranian audience, he continues, saying, “We are essentially Iranians first and then Jews.”

Tens of thousands of Jews once lived in Libya; now there are none left. The numbers are equally as astonishing throughout the Middle East, but they are rarely brought to light. Using survivor testimony, The Forgotten Refugees tells the neglected story of Jews who were forced to flee their Middle Eastern homes when their governments made being Jewish a criminal offense and neighbors threatened their lives.

“We don’t want to be forgotten anymore,” one Jewish refugee says, “We want to tell our story.”

The Forgotten Refugees gives voice to the thousands of Jews who, up until now, have quietly carried the memory of their destroyed homes. Their stories expose the deep roots of antisemitism in the Middle East, reflecting just how complicated the conflict is, and the great challenges Israel faces in trying to reach a peaceful co-existence with its Arab neighbors. Centuries of oppression can’t be easily overcome, and, according to the film, antisemitism in the Middle East is only getting worse.

Starting in the seventh century, Muslim leaders in the Middle East recognized their nations’ Jewish minorities as dhimmis, or second class citizens with fewer rights than the Muslim majority. Under this system, Jews weren’t even allowed to ride horses because it would make them taller than Muslims. But the persecution Jews faced came to a head in the twentieth century around the time that Haj Amin al Husseini, the Palestinian nationalist who had close ties to Hitler, declared, “Arabs, raise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them.” Antisemitism escalated and manifested itself in anti-Jewish regulations similar to the Nazis’ Nuremberg laws, violent riots, and, in some nations, massacres and expulsion of Jews.

The Jews who survived the riots and oppression grew up in fear because of their faith and are still haunted by their memories. “We were playing in the field,” one Jewish refugee says, remembering one of his most traumatic experiences of antisemitism. In the middle of their games, one of his best friends turned to him and said, “One day we will slit the throat of all the Jews.” The riots in Libya were particularly heinous. Survivors recall that violent rioters tore limbs off of babies, raped women, and one survivor pauses to whisper, “the smell of human being is terrible.”

The only thing that makes the horrific stories more awful is the way in which the global community reacted, or failed to react. In the documentary’s view, no one has been willing to recognize the injustice that Middle Eastern Jews have suffered. Since its formation, the United Nations has passed 101 resolutions regarding refugees in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and not one of those resolutions dealt with Jewish refugees.

According to The Forgotten Refugees, the abuse of Jews in the Middle East proves the necessity of the state of Israel; and after hearing refugees’ stories, it seems overly simplistic to understand Israelis as the persecutors and Palestinians as victims. The fact is, thousands of Jews escaped to Israel after being thrown out of their original homelands, where they faced constant fear and oppression. One woman remembers that even little children were full of violent antisemitism: they would throw stones at her when she walked down the street and yell, “You’re a Jew! You’re a traitor!” For her and other refugees, Israel was the only nation in the Middle East that promised safety.

But Israel isn’t the entire solution. The Jewish refugees interviewed struggle with a divided sense of loyalty and of self. Despite their negative experiences of antisemitism, they still feel a sense of national identity of the homelands they were forced to leave. Along with being Jewish, says one woman, “I’m still very much Iraqi.”

Reconciling the two competing loyalties and identities within her proves as challenging as brokering peace between the two nations.

Not all Jews went to concentration camps against their will, scared for their lives. Paradise Camp explains how Nazi lies brought Jews to the newly-established Theresienstadt Ghetto willingly and eagerly, under the impression that it would be a peaceful retreat. Their shock morphed into terror as they realized the extent to which they had been lied to.

“They had nice coats. They brought pictures,” a witness remembers of wealthy Czech Jews entering Theresienstadt at its opening. “They wanted to make their beautiful spa stay very nice, and, when they arrived in big barracks, they couldn’t understand what happened.”

Paradise Camp exposes the lies that Theresienstadt was built on. Elderly Jews were fooled into believing the camp would be their safe haven, World War I veterans thought that their service to Germany was being rewarded, and prominent Jews thought they were being given special treatment for their German nationalism, with beautiful accommodations and protection from the war. But they all found themselves sleeping in overcrowded barracks, eating meager portions of bread, and fearing for their lives. Paradise Camp features interviews with survivors who experienced the hunger, filth, and terror that the Nazi officials worked to mask — and displays old photographs and archival film footage to reconstruct the truth about Theresienstadt.

Originally a fortress town in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, Theresienstadt was built in the 1800s for the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. But the Nazis realized the high stone walls that surrounded the city made it an ideal site in which to imprison Jews from Czechoslovakia and its neighboring Eastern European nations. In 1941, the Germans established it as a Jewish ghetto, and a year later they began to deport Jews from Theresienstadt to extermination camps throughout Eastern Europe, including Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka.

The extent to which Nazis went to lie to the Jews and to the general public is astonishing. Turning the camp into the equivalent of a film set, the Nazis applied a fresh coat of paint to the buildings, cleaned the streets, and brought in ample props to depict life at a concentration camp as if it were Heaven on Earth. Paradise Camp shows clips from the dumbfounding and fascinating propaganda film that resulted, where little old women knit, a small boy waters a garden with an oversized water barrel, and everyone wears a lazy smile and a healthy layer of fat.

In sharp contradiction to these false images, the documentary also offers the survivors’ heartbreaking memories of what life was really like at Theresienstadt. One woman remembers eating crushed red brick and pretending it was paprika, while crushed bark served as an alternative spice. Anther woman recalls that before a Red Cross inspection, the Nazis built children’s rooms painted in bright colors and lined with small beds. But the Nazis never told the Red Cross inspectors that the tiny beds were inhabited by seventeen-year-olds, because all the younger children had been murdered.

Even more gripping, perhaps, are the survivor accounts that are told without words. Remarkably, some Jews were able to smuggle in paper and pencils and, using these simple resources to their highest advantage, they drew everything they saw. Paradise Camp shows their shocking work. Sketches of victims with sunken eyes, ragged clothes and boney fingers document starvation and need. They succeed where words fall short, in expressing the shadowy terror of Theresienstadt.

Paradise Camp explores how easy it is to manipulate the truth and how easily people will believe lies instead of difficult truths. The Nazis pacified the public with false illusions and controlled the Jews with lies. Through such deception, and the people’s willingness to believe, evil survived — as the very tools of the Nazi propaganda, the Jews themselves, were slaughtered.

Religious Zionism has become an intolerant, polarizing, radical element of Israeli society, and that change threatens to tear Israel apart from the inside, declares filmmaker Chanoch Zeevi. In Nadia’s Friends, Zeevi uses the profoundly subjective lens that he and his grade school classmates offer to examine this phenomenon and its impact on the Jewish State.

“We felt that we were a part of religious Zionism’s elite unit that was destined to produce an open and religious ideal youth,” says Zeevi of his childhood years spent in the religious Zionist infrastructure. The dream was to build “a model of an ideal Jewish society of soil-tilling religious Jews who would integrate in the general Zionist society and be a bridge between the religious and the secular.”

For Zeevi, the experience of his childhood represents the ideal of religious Zionism, an inclusive movement that sought to unify the Jewish people and the Israeli public — to be the bridge between people on different sides of the ideological, political and ethnic divides. Where his own generation was taught to “walk between the drops and to beware of political radicalism,” today’s religious Zionists are increasingly embracing political radicalism, he asserts. The result, says Zeevi, is that “the encounters that were so natural back then” — encounters between the religious and the secular, the Jew and the Arab — “no longer happen.”

Zeevi attended elementary school in the religious Zionist village of Kfar Haroeh, where his classmates represented a true cross-section of Israeli society. They included Jews of every background: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, religious, secular, and even one Arab girl —Nadia, for whom the film is named. Now, more than twenty-five years after graduating from elementary school, Zeevi has organized a class reunion that brings together men and women whose lives have diverged from the original journey begun in Kfar Haroeh.

But the viewer discovers that, in his nostalgia for the past, Zeevi romanticizes the Israeli melting pot. The same culture of tolerance that he lauds also sought to eliminate non-Western influences and impose Ashkenazi culture and practice on Jews and Arabs of the East. Indeed, Zeevi was blissfully unaware of the difficulties faced by some of his classmates, Jews of Sephardic descent, as they tried to acclimate and adapt themselves to their new, Ashkenazi surroundings.

Nor are Zeevi’s former classmates the unified religious Zionists Zeevi might have expected them to become. Indeed, they span the entire gamut of political, ideological and religious affiliations in contemporary Israel. Sarah’le is the daughter of the first victim of the Palestinian Intifada, and is herself a well-known settler activist. She declines Zeevi’s invitation because, she says, she doesn’t want to be the radical in the group. Another former classmate is now an ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist husband and father of five who resides in an insular community where contact with outsiders is extremely limited. Sophie, a divorcee and mother of two, is dating a Thai immigrant and says that she is not particularly concerned about issues of Jewish identity.

Thus, the very values that Zeevi idealizes as shaping the religious Zionist movement of his childhood are being rejected, in one form or another, by his own former classmates.

Nadia’s Friends offers little in the way of answers or resolutions to the issue of conflict within Israeli society, but it does present an attempt at dialogue between the competing voices of the Israeli public. In the process, the film raises interesting and important questions about the state of the Jews in the Jewish State, and we learn, together with Zeevi, that these questions don’t always have pat, easy answers.

They were expelled from their country more than five centuries ago, but their presence lingers on. The Sephardic Legacy of Segovia, Spain: Pentimento of the Past follows one woman as she searches for medieval Sephardic remnants in the Jewish quarter of Segovia, Spain.

Standing in front of a bar called Menorah, the owner – a non-Jew – explains, “We gave the business its name because of our location in the Jewish Quarter.” Surprisingly, after centuries of Jewish exile, the neighborhood retains numerous such references to its Jewish past.

In 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand expelled all Jews from Spain. But The Sephardic Legacy of Segovia, Spain proves that the exiled community has not been forgotten. Director Kate Regan, a Spanish scholar, walks the streets of Segovia, speaking to experts, admiring the medieval architecture, and delving into the city’s literature to piece together the Jewish elements that remain.

Within the last century, Segovia has seen a surge of interest in its Jewish past. The community has established a Jewish Center to educate the public about Spanish-Jewish culture. And with the rising interest in genealogy, Spaniards are looking back on their ancestry to find out if they have Sephardic roots.

One of few Jews currently living in Segovia, Jacque Caredo, says he’s received many inquiries from those curious as to whether their unusual familial practices stem from Jewish ritual. One woman asked if her grandmother’s habit of wrapping a string around her arm when there was danger was a Jewish custom. Jacque gave her the same response he’s given to many others: “You probably have Jewish ancestry. But after five centuries you can no longer claim to be Jewish.”

The Sephardic Legacy of Segovia shares the exciting discovery of a major synagogue that was built in the fifteenth century and was later lost and forgotten under layers of construction. The remaining ruins were only found after construction workers, renovating a school, uncovered a Gothic wall and a mikvah. When historians began to investigate, they found ancient documents that verify the synagogue’s location.

But this exciting discovery points to some of the difficulties involved in identifying ancient Jewish landmarks. “The Gothic design of the [synagogue] windows has a definite Christian influence,” a Spanish historian explains: “It’s important to remember that the art in Spain is never as pure as it is in other countries.” In medieval Spain, Muslims, Christians, and Jews all drew aesthetic ideas from each other. In fact, the medieval Jewish neighborhoods had no distinguishing features — they looked the same as the Christian sections.

At the heart of the film is a desire to prove that Spain remembered its exiled Jews just as much as exiled Spanish Jews remembered Spain. The Sephardic community retained the Spanish language and Spanish customs; and as soon as they could return to Spain, many of them did. No one wants to return home as a stranger, and according to The Sephardic Legacy, Spain was ready to welcome its Jews back, at least in a subconscious aesthetic sense, with open arms.

They’ve separated themselves from the mainstream world and adapted a lifestyle that hearkens back to Biblical times. Keepers of the Faith: Canadian Chasidim offers an intimate peek into the lives of Chasidic Jews and reveals how their beliefs have been challenged, and shaped, by mainstream society.

“We’re not allowed to listen to non-Jewish music or watch videos or movies, so I’m not going to say I have no conflicts,” a teenage Chasidic girl explains, “I want to watch those things.”

Most people see Chasidim as pillars of conservatism, but when the movement started in the middle of the eighteenth century it was rebellious, challenging the Jewish authorities of the time. Frustrated that Judaism had become too academic, the founder of Chasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, a mystical rabbi, stressed an emotional connection with God over an intellectual one. He found followers in unschooled peasants, encouraging them to have a personal relationship with God through song, dance, and storytelling. More than two hundred years later the religious sect continues to thrive (though it’s no longer revolutionary), and in some cities Chasidim are among the fastest growing populations. Keepers of the Faith explores this realm of Judaism by profiling a variety of Chasidic people and their lives.

Most of the subjects live in Montreal, the home of Canada’s largest Chasidic community, which continues to grow. But the film also travels half way around the world to Thailand, where a Lubavitch rabbi and his wife were asked to work as shlichim, spiritual ambassadors or emissaries. “You can be a Jew anywhere,” the rabbi’s wife says, “the Torah fits into the world anywhere at anytime.” But she later admits that she will never get used to the strange smells, the roaming dogs, and the foreign culture. If she didn’t feel a religious calling to be there with her husband, she would have immediately moved back to Canada.

Keepers of the Faith allows its Chasidic subjects to explain in their own words why they live the way they do—and some of the explanations are rather poetic. For example, why keep kosher? “Food is the medium that keeps the body and soul together,” a rabbi who works in kosher certification explains.

The film also shows the variety of different personalities within the Chasidic community, and their various struggles.

One Chasidic man has stopped wearing traditional Chasidic dress and has taken a prestigious job working for the mayor, which regularly exposes him to the secular world, at times putting him in seemingly compromising situations. Is it right that he help the government construct an Islamic Mosque? Is it fair that he argues in favor of expanding a local synagogue? Is forsaking some of his tradition an acceptable trade-off for making what he hopes is a positive impact on the larger community?

One of the most colorful characters in the film is a wiry, old Chasidic peddler who delights in delivering produce to the poor. “This car is going to Heaven!” he exclaims gleefully, as he slams the trunk full of bananas and tomatoes shut.

While this old, ornery Robin Hood steals the camera’s attention with his antics; his unseen beneficiaries are equally as intriguing—the poor of the Chasidic community, silently struggling to get by. One unseen recipient who is mentioned is a woman who is on welfare after divorcing her second husband, who beat her and left her with six children to care for. While Keepers of the Faith is a mostly positive portrayal of Chasidim, this incident hints that, as with all communities, there are real problems boiling below the surface.

And though this woman’s story is devastating, the film argues that when it comes to women’ s issues there are signs that Chasidic community has, in some ways, followed in the footsteps of mainstream society. There are religious institutions where women can go for higher education, and the men interviewed say that husbands benefit when their wives can work. One father is adamant that his daughter, a teacher at a private school, continue her studies.

But when it comes to marriage, Chasidim will continue doing things the way they’ve always done them—with the consent and help of their parents during courtship, a short engagement, and absolutely no touching before marriage. Because, as far as they’re concerned, divorce rates prove modern dating isn’t such a great idea. “People live together for 3 years or 5 years and they get married and 6 months later they’re divorced,” one man says of secular society, “So I don’t think the rest of the world has all the right answers.”

Providing an interesting and intimate look at people who are often held at a distance, viewed as “other,” Keepers of the Faith reveals the ways in which even Chasidim struggle to retain their beliefs and traditions while not being completely estranged from the rest of the world.

At a time when unabashed racism was widespread in America, Jews and Blacks in one Brooklyn neighborhood bonded together, until socioeconomic changes drove them apart. Brownsville: Black and White traces the history of this poor Brooklyn neighborhood while offering an unsettling look at racism in America.

“We’re different cultures, but the differences were so small. They didn’t mean anything back then,” an old African American man explains, saying that as a boy he would help his Jewish neighbors by lighting their stoves for them on the Sabbath.

Dubbed “the first American ghetto” by press and historians, Brownsville was home to the newly arrived poor in the 1920s and 30s. The community wasn’t without problems, but the immigrants — Jews, Italians, and African Americans — who inhabited the streets stuck together and protected each other. All of that changed, however, when the government got involved, and pent up anger erupted during the age of Civil Rights. The Brownsville community’s sense of unity fell apart, and bitter racism set in as they began to notice the color of each other’s skin.

In the early days, the people of Brownsville knew each other, and neighbors cared about one another. An old man remembers that as a little boy he once kicked over an ash can while walking down the street, and a stranger stopped him, admonishing him, “I know your grandfather from the old country and he would be real upset to know his grandson did what you did.”

But the bond between neighbors reached beyond racial lines when the Brownsville Boys Club, with a mostly Jewish membership, took an unprecedented vote. Like most boys clubs it was formed to keep kids busy playing sports instead of loitering on the streets. But the Brownsville Boys Club became exceptional when its members – led by Jewish boys – voted to invite their African-American neighbors to play on their teams.

When the Brownsville boys traveled to play teams in other neighborhoods they were heckled and threatened for being racially mixed. But, as one former member brags, “We’d turn out to be the best.” As far as the Brownsville boys were concerned, playing ball was more important than race.

But everything changed when the government built public housing in Brownsville that wasn’t integrated. Meant for African-American residents, the buildings weren’t well maintained or policed, so as crime and poverty continued to increase the mostly-white citizens who could afford to leave Brownsville did, leaving behind a predominantly African-American community. After they stopped living side-by-side, the Jews and Blacks of Brownsville lost the bond they once felt.

Leaving political correctness behind, Brownsville: Black and White isn’t afraid to step on a few toes. “The Jewish folks were landlords and the housing stock was dilapidating and you had Jewish teachers and the educational system was going down. And if you just want to blame someone, who you gonna blame?” an African American man asks rhetorically, in an attempt to explain why anti-Semitism had developed in black neighborhoods throughout New York City.

But the film makes clear that there was strife and ugliness coming from both sides. One Jewish leader charges that African-Americans’ anti-Semitism was especially cruel because Jews were very often strong supporters of the civil rights movement.

The racial clash fully erupted in Brownsville when the African-American residents banned together to improve their failing public schools and forced the white teachers, who were predominantly Jewish, out. In a fight to control the public schools, the Teachers’ Union and the African-American parent board both unleashed venomous racist attacks that left some fearing for their lives.

The conflict was ugly, but the legacy it left behind is even more disheartening. Now, even the Brownsville Boys Club has become segregated. When former members, now old men, hold reunions, they do separate events for white and black members. “We’ve drifted apart,” one man says, “it just seemed to be the natural way.”

The first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, was eager to declare Israel’s independence, but his political opponents believed that he was being too hasty and feared he might be rushing the Jewish people into a second Holocaust. A riveting historical drama, It’s Now or Never captures Ben-Gurion’s perspective as he led through the military strategies and political negotiations that led to Israel’s statehood.

“Any post-postponement of declaration would be against us,” Ben-Gurion asserted before the final vote to determine fate of Israel as a state. “In a nut-shell — it’s now or never!” The first prime minister’s epic resolve is the true hero of the story.

When the United Nations passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, Jews around the world celebrated, and those in Palestine danced in the streets. But Ben-Gurion didn’t have time to rejoice; he was already planning for the next step—Israel’s official declaration of independence and the inevitable war against the surrounding Arab nations that would result from such a declaration.

It’s Now or Never offers a gripping, behind-the-scenes account of early Israeli politics and the friendships that would shape the nation’s future. The film focuses in particular on the special kinship between Ben-Gurion and the sharp-talking, chain-smoking Golda Meir. In one scene, when Meir has returned from a fund-raising trip to America, having raised ten times as much financial support as was expected, Ben-Gurion toasts her, saying, “When they write the annals of history, they will say that one Jewish woman obtained the money that allowed a state to be born!”

But more than focusing on politics, It’s Now or Never also offers a candid portrait of Ben-Gurion’s personal life. It’s in the privacy of his own home, in intimate scenes with his wife, that Ben-Gurion’s character, as the film paints it, really takes shape, showing him as a man of both stubborn will and great intellect. Putting the almost mythic figure on a human level, he’s shown as a man who disobediently ate sweets, even after his wife put him on a strict diet, and owned so many books that every wall in the house was converted into a bookshelf.

There’s no doubt that Israel’s future was precarious in 1947. The tiny nation lacked the arms and international support necessary to fight the inevitable war against its Arab neighbors. Ben Gurion was receiving regular reports of attacks against Jewish civilians, and there was a general belief that announcing independence would antagonize the Arabs into a full-fledged war against the Jewish State, which would result in the deaths of thousands. “We are a few against many,” Ben-Gurion admitted, “Our only hope is the Jewish brain.”

But Israel’s other asset was a strong will, which was Ben-Gurion himself exemplified. An effective politician, he was strong, decisive, and stood firmly by his word. At times, the was so sure of himself that he saw things too much in terms of black and white, the film suggests. “If we don’t defeat Negev, Negev will defeat us!” he asserts. But this resolve meant Ben-Gurion was prepared to work day and night, full-steam-ahead, to make sure Israel had the money, arms, and support it needed to defeat its enemies.

Yet, at the heart of the film is the realization that when human lives are at stake it’s not easy to keep such strong convictions. Good men and wise politicians often don’t know what is the right thing to do. And at a pivotal moment, even Ben-Gurion, who’s been sure from the start about declaring Israel’s independence, suddenly becomes fearful. What if innocent people die as a result?

Fortunately, behind the strong leader was an equally determined woman. It’s Ben-Gurion’s wife who calms him down and tells him to follow through with his bold dream to give the Jewish people their own state — even if it seems to be a great risk.

And so the final message of It’s Now or Never is summed up best in Ben-Gurion’s own words: “Sometimes to be a realist, one must believe in miracles.”

The Yom Kippur War was an Israeli military failure that resulted in the deaths of 2,656 soldiers. A historical drama based on the events leading up to the war, The Silence of the Sirens tells a riveting behind-the-scenes story of why Israel’s military intelligence failed to recognize the looming threat of war.

“The Egyptians are not prepared for war,” Major General Eli Zeira, the head of Israeli military intelligence, declares defiantly, insisting that Egypt does not pose a military threat to Israel. “They are prepared for [military training] exercises that will end on the 8th!” he continues.

But Zeira’s prediction was wrong. In fact, the Egyptians’ military exercises were merely a smokescreen as they prepared to launch a surprise attack on Israel on the Yom Kippur holiday. The Silence of the Sirens re-enacts the windowless military and governmental meeting rooms where men in decorated uniforms argue through a cloud of cigarette smoke, to offer a riveting account of how politics and policy trumped logic and obfuscated facts that should have been obvious to Israeli intelligence.

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on two fronts, putting the Israeli army on the defensive and launching what came to be known as the Yom Kippur War. Soon after, the Agranat Commission was established to investigate why, despite having received warnings from America’s CIA, a top secret agent in Egypt, and King Hussein of Jordan, the Military Intelligence Directorate of Israel continued to put out the message that the probability of an attack was low.

The film follows the only man in the Military Intelligence Directorate who insisted that Israel was in danger of attack, Aharon Gabai, during the days leading up to Yom Kippur, 1973. Small and wiry with a mustache and huge brown glasses that fill up his face, Gabai makes a delightfully nerdy hero in contrast to his tougher-looking, wrong-headed colleagues. He has pieced together the evidence and refuses to keep quiet about what he knows. Ignoring his supervisors and disrespecting military rank, Gabai continues to warn other departments about the threat of war.

But how much good can his desperate attempts do when his superiors keep silencing him? The leaders in the Military Intelligence Directorate are so determined to be right that they keep ignoring the evidence that proves they’re wrong. “Here’s a report that’s contrary to our basic assumptions,” Gabai complains, “instead of checking it, you refute it, using other reports that support our assumptions!”

The narrative of the film cuts back and forth between the Agranat Commission’s investigations and the events leading up to the war to reveal how things developed and what the consequences were. The Agranat Commission blamed the army for Israel’s military failings and found government leaders innocent — a controversial ruling that The Silence of the Sirens judges as misguided.

The Silence of the Sirens also brings to life those iconic government leaders — the sharp-witted, chain-smoking Prime Minister Golda Meir and the charming and controversial Defense Secretary Moshe Dayan. It’s easy to imagine the stress the actual Meir and Dayan faced, while watching the actors debate and pensively mull over which direction in which to lead the nation.

But instead of holding the nation’s government in high esteem, the film points to its corruption and failings, suggesting that the government’s decisions might have been wrongly motivated by money and the upcoming elections. Gabai calls to attention these superficial considerations. Entering his superior’s office, furious, he cries, “An air recon mission hasn’t been flown in five days now! This is no time to stretch a buck!” And later, in a top-secret military meeting about how to deal with Egypt, a military leader remembers, “We called up reserves last month. It cost us a fortune.” Being fiscally frugal seems to go hand-in-hand with wanting to ignore the threat.

But it’s not just about money. Yom Kippur is a holiday. And The Silence of the Sirens points to the fact that everyone in Israel – including the Military Intelligence Directorate – wanted to observe the holiday in peace, instead of worrying about possible attacks. Instead, the country was taken by surprise in a devastating attack that turned into a devastating war. A devastation, the film suggest, that could have been avoided if the people in charge hadn’t held their own political and economic concerns above the security of their country.

After decades of trying to forget the past, a Holocaust survivor returns to Poland on her granddaughter’s class trip, determined to confront the difficult past once and for all. Pesya’s Necklace tells an emotional story of one woman’s life-long struggle that ends with a shocking twist.

“Why didn’t she want to go with me?!” Pesya’s daughter complains, feeling hurt that her mother has always refused her requests to accompany her back to Poland and is now suddenly willing to go with her granddaughter. “I’ve asked her a million times if she wanted to visit her home and said I’d love to go. Her reply has always been the same: ‘I, Pesya Goldfarb, survived the Holocaust. No further comments.’”

When Pesya was only seventeen, her whole family was sent to Auschwitz, where they were all gassed – only Pesya miraculously survived. Now that her granddaughter is seventeen, Pesya sees the past in a new light, and, feeling a special closeness with her sweet granddaughter, decides to return to her homeland so they can confront the past together. But it turns out that Pesya has a very specific, secret agenda – to retrieve the gold necklace her parents gave her as a birthday gift, which she and her sister hid just before the Nazis arrived. If Pesya can just find the necklace, maybe she’ll finally be ready to reveal the long-held secret behind it.

With impeccable acting from its mostly female case, Pesya’s Necklace reveals the quiet ways intense emotions can be expressed and explores the special bond between a grandmother and granddaughter. When Pesya leaves the group to sneak off and find her childhood home, her granddaughter follows quickly behind. A sweet moment passes between them while driving, revealing the different perspectives of grandmother and granddaughter that are bridged by the caring they feel for one another. While her granddaughter calls and apologizes to her teacher for running off, Pesya’s serious thoughts are interrupted by the young girl’s chatting. Listening in, the old woman gives a pensive look and a weak smile that speaks volumes to how she feels about her granddaughter.

She might be a sweet and sensitive kid, but Pesya’s granddaughter is no dope. She realizes that things change over time and there’s a good chance that Pesya’s childhood home doesn’t even exist anymore. But, resisting the impulse to deter her grandmother from making what could be a devastating trip, she silences her doubts and tries to make the emotional journey as easy as possible by asking about her grandmother’s childhood– without prying too much.

Hesitantly, she asks, “Grandmother, do you still remember where the necklace is hidden?”

“As if it were yesterday,” Pesya responds, staring coldly straight ahead.

But it’s not just the necklace’s hiding place that Pesya recalls so vividly. Along with the necklace, the awful truth about Pesya has been concealed for almost a lifetime. Her shameful secret will continue to haunt her as if it were only yesterday, unless the old woman finds the emotional strength to dig up the necklace and expose the painful truth.

When the Germans invaded Scandinavia during World War II, brave Scandinavians risked their lives to protect their Jewish neighbors on a scale unmatched by their counterparts in the Eastern European countries. Narrated by Oscar-nominated actress Liv Ullmann, Rescue In Scandinavia compiles archival footage and interviews with those involved to explore their acts of heroism.

“I carried a four year old child on my shoulders for nine hours,” says a Norwegian man who helped Jews cross the border into Sweden with nothing but his skies and homemade stun gun. His is just one of many remarkable stories shared in Rescue In Scandinavia.

When the Nazis invaded the Scandinavian countries in 1940, each nation reacted differently, but there were non-Jewish citizens in every country who believed it was their duty to help their Jewish neighbors. While some of these heroes survived to tell their stories, others were killed in concentration camps alongside the people they wanted to protect.

Ordinary citizens and people in positions of power alike helped Jews. One of the most inspiring stories shared in Rescue In Scandinavia comes from the former Swedish ambassador to Hungary. While stationed in Budapest, he and his partner managed to save the lives of 200,000 Jews by creating fake Swedish passports and hiding Jews in a giant abandoned building. When one of them heard that a train was departing for Auschwitz, the other would rush to the station to give amnesty to anyone with a Swedish passport. The ambassador remembers one particular incident in which only two Jews at the station had their passports with them, so, thinking quickly (and speaking in Hungarian so the Nazis couldn’t entirely understand), he urged all the Jews who weer supposed to board the dreaded train to show receipts or licenses, any paper they had on them which the ambassador could pretend proved their Swedish identities. In the end, he saved the lives of a hundred Jews that day.

Stories like this are inspiring and exciting, but some of the interviewees come off as a little too eager to see the good in people during the war. When it came to rescue missions, one woman remembers, “Everyone wanted to do something!” Despite her perhaps enviable desire to see the best in everyone, the woman comes off as naïve, even defensive While on the whole the Scandinavian people were more sympathetic to their Jewish neighbors than Eastern Europeans were, there were certainly those who ratted Jews out.

Rescue In Scandinavia does not hesitate to share those stories as well. In Denmark, for instance, an interviewee recalls, a Dane told the Nazis that Jews were hiding in the attic of the church. The Jews were all deported to concentration camps, and the pastor who had hid them was so emotionally distraught that he died soon after.

Despite such devastating blows, one Danish Jew urges us to look at the big picture. Of the 7,000 Jews in Denmark, he says, only 474 were caught; the rest were saved by the decency and quick wits of the Danish people.

The most important aspect of Rescue In Scandinavia is the concept of bravery it lays out through these heroic but very real stories. One thing is constant throughout every interview: over and over, the brave men and women who risked their own lives to save the lives of their countrymen claim that what they did wasn’t heroic. They see what they did as what any decent person would do. And they acknowledge that they were scared.

It’s not that brave people have control over their fear. No, as the interviewees in Rescue In Scandinavia describe it, they’re just as terrified as everyone else. They simply saw no alternative but to push through the fear and to do what they knew was right. In the words of one brave man, “Certainly, I am scared to death. But we have to do this. There’s no other way out!”

The language of Israel comes alive at the University of Oklahoma, where there are classes and a club for learning Hebrew. Now, we get to meet the extraordinary students and faculty who make up this unique academic program in The Hebrew Project.

“There’s very beautiful chemistry between you all, and between us,” Professor Ori Kritz tells her students. “This is unique. This is how I feel. This doesn’t always exist in other classes or programs. You love to learn Hebrew – you want to learn.”

With the University of Oklahoma’s hiring of Kritz and Lea Reches to its Modern Languages department, the school has been able to offer a complete Hebrew minor since 2003. The following year, Hebrew students began filming each other practicing the language, and director Ryan Timpte began a larger documentary project in early 2005. The resulting film gives a fascinating insight into what drives modern American collegians to learn a foreign tongue.

In up-close interviews, the students tell us what keeps them interested. Aaron Friedman wants to rediscover the Hebrew he let lapse as a child. Jessica Mannes is set on going to Israel to become a filmmaker. Lance Friedensohn is studying to become a Rabbi, while Ryan Timpte thinks Hebrew will help him be a better Christian priest.

“Hebrew is a very hard language,” Timpte tells fellow Hebrew Club members at a party. “One needs to want to study it and to want to be a part of it. Hebrew is not for the lazy or bored. It is for the proud – those who truly want to know it. It is for us.”

Classroom scenes demonstrate how Kritz and Reches approach teaching the language. As it turns out, having fun is a big part of their curriculum. Professors and students gather for Hebrew Club parties where they sing Hebrew songs, watch Hebrew movies and converse in a relaxed environment that takes the classroom out of the learning equation.

One such celebration comes in the spring of 2005 when Kritz is presented with a gift by her first class of graduating pupils. She opens it to find a DVD/VCR (better to watch Hebrew films at home) and emotionally thanks them for their dedication to her teachings.

This same dedication means that students appearing in the film speak only in Hebrew throughout, and diverging levels of proficiency are obvious. Some students are fully immersed, while others are simply fulfilling a degree language requirement. Still, they each express an enthusiasm for the language that makes the film thoroughly enjoyable to watch, even for the linguistically uninitiated.

Everything seems to be perfect for a smart yeshiva student who’s engaged to a beautiful, religious girl — until a package arrives with his deceased mother’s belongings and turns his world upside down. Engaging and thought-provoking, A Green Chariot follows Yair through an identity crisis that forces him to reexamine the life he’s chosen.

“Why would a gentile keep Shabbat? Is he crazy!?” one of Yair’s classmates asks, bringing up one of the many questions Yair must answer when he finds out his mother wasn’t technically Jewish.

Yair was born Sasha, a secular Russian Jew whose parents immigrated to Israel. But after his teenage years, he changed his name, refused to speak Russian, enrolled in yeshiva, and embraced the life of an Orthodox Jew. After dropping his Russian friends and losing touch with his father, Yair slowly forgot about his old life – until, out of nowhere, a package arrives that forces him to revisit his past.

At first Yair is touched to receive his mother’s old music box, which has a green chariot on the cover. But opening the box releases a world of confusion, when he finds a gold cross inside. In a moment of devastation, Yair realizes that if his mother wasn’t Jewish then he’s not Jewish, and the Orthodox life that he’s been living is a lie.

Not everyone sees things the way Yair does, though. “Your mother was a Jew. A Jew!” Yair’s father insists when confronted. He tells Yair that his mother wore a gold Star of David around her neck when it was dangerous to do so and sent for a moyl from Moscow to circumcise her son. Yair’s grandmother may have been a Christian, his father admits, but as far as he is concerned, his late wife was a Jew. “What’s important is what’s on the inside,” Yair’s father says, “you don’t have to be a genius to see what you really are.”

But if he wants to consider himself a Jew in the eyes of the law, Yair realizes he’s going to need more than his father’s insistence. Bitterly, he meets with rabbis and answers questions for his official conversion. He passes the verbal test, but when it comes time to dunk in the mikvah, he is struck by the ridiculousness of his situation, and it all is too much for the young man to handle. “You should be happy. You’re getting a new soul, a new Jewish soul,” the rabbi tells him, but Yair is unconvinced. He snaps back that he likes his soul the way it is! And if dipping in water will suddenly, magically turn him into a Jew – after years of studying and praying and practicing the commandments has kept him a gentile – then maybe he doesn’t want to be a Jew!

Then there’s also the matter of his fiancé to contend with. Surely, despite her love for him, she wouldn’t marry a non-Jew. This point is made clearly in one of the film’s most piercing scenes while, at the height of Yair’s confusion, he’s celebrating Shabbat his with fiancé’s family. Her parents are aware of his Christian lineage, but have agreed not to say anything to avoid making him feel uncomfortable. Yet, when Yair opens the wine and politely fills each person’s glass, their hesitance to drink is a clear sign of their true feelings – Jewish law prohibits a Jew from drinking wine that has been handled by a non-Jew, and his future-in-laws hesitance to drink shows Yair exactly where he stands. It’s hard not to sympathize with the distraught young man as the film questions the line between dutiful observance of the religious laws and exclusionary religious practice.

Confused about his own identity and feeling rejected by his Orthodox community, Yair runs back to his father’s home and calls up his Russian ex-girlfriend, who takes him to a party with all his old friends. Smoking and drinking and eating what he pleases, Yair decides that if he is in fact a gentile he might as well enjoy the perks.

At the end of the night, he’s alone with his ex-girlfriend. Unbuttoning her blouse, he whispers, “I’m a gentile. Gentiles are allowed.” But even if Yair is confused, she’s not.

“Sometimes you have to go away to return,” she says, “Return to yourself.”

At the heart of A Green Chariot is the realization that you can’t move forward without grappling with your past. Instead of choosing one and ignoring the other, Yair has to accept that he is both Yair and Sasha, and that, in both Hebrew and Russian, he can still tell his fiancé that he loves her.

The first modern Jewish state wasn’t in the Middle East—it was in Siberia. Stalin’s Forgotten Zion explores the history of Birobidzhan through archival footage and family stories to reveal why Jews from around the world flocked to a homeland that turned out to be full of disappointment.

“There’s an animal called a mink,” a man from Birobidzhan says, “It has beautiful fur, but when it gets hungry, it will eat itself. And the more it eats itself the angrier it gets. The Soviet regime was just like that. The regime ate its own people. It was madness. They lured people to Birobidzhan only to arrest them later on.”

When Stalin created the first Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the 1930s, news about the great socialist haven spread from New York to Buenos Aires to South Africa. Wanting to escape antisemitism and the world’s economic crisis, eager Jews from around the world traveled to remote Siberia to live among their people and to be a part of a new socialist community. But soon after they arrived, the Soviet Union’s Great Terror swept through Birobidzhan, deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Soviet minorities. The Jews that survived this bitter time in history were left to deal with the extreme cold, a failing economy and, later, the mass Jewish emigration to Israel. The Jews who still remain in Birobidzhan – and though they are few, they are there — must wonder why they too haven’t left.

The first Jewish pioneers trekked to Birobidzhan on a grueling journey by train. One old woman remembers that everyone was exhausted and hungry, but as they traveled across Siberia’s barren landscape, they tried to make the best of the excruciating train ride by telling jokes and singing, until they finally arrived, full of hope, to the small village near the border of China that was to be their new home.

Upon arriving, though, they were greeted by a series of disappointments. Under Soviet law, citizens of Birobidzhan were forbidden to practice their Jewish religion or culture. This explains why only two percent of the residents have remained Jewishly identified, and why, during the filming of the documentary, no one in the synagogue can answer basic questions about Passover.

The citizens of the Jewish Autonomous Region always wanted to live a Jewish life, but in the Soviet era it was nearly impossible to study anything other than Lenin. One woman says she moved to Birobidzhan hoping to learn Yiddish, but the schools were closed in 1947, and, soon after, pens and paper were forbidden. She says it’s a good thing that the Torah has been translated to Russian because otherwise she wouldn’t understand a word of it.

Ignorance of Jewish laws ad customs is perhaps a small frustration compared to the devastating effects The Great Terror had on Birobidzhan’s citizenry. Only half of the population survived when Jews were deported in sealed trains to work at labor camps throughout Siberia.

Only 5,000 Jews remain in Birobidzhan, according to Stalin’s Forgotten Zion, while five times as many former residents have left Siberia for Israel. The documentary shares interviews with Jews that have stayed and those that have left to look at how they made their decision. One old woman says she hasn’t left Birobidzhan because her husband wants to be buried with his parents, who died in Siberia, but, even so, their decision to stay hasn’t been easy. “Life is so hard here,” she says, “I don’t know what to do.”

The move to Israel doesn’t necessarily bring happiness, though, as the film reveals. After making aliyah, the former rabbi of Birobidzhan quickly became disillusioned when he struggled to find work. In Siberia he had been a celebrity figure who could teach and do the work that he loved, but in Israel, as part of a much larger Jewish community, he would be lucky to land a job at a bread factory or the postal service.

Ultimately, the film’s explores the nature of “home,” arguing that it’s not something you choose but something you’re born into. In the words of Soviet poet Margarita Aliger, “You don’t choose your home. You get it, just like your parents.” And, whether it’s Israel or Birobidzhan, being home can be tough. But as another wise poet once said, there’s still no place like it.

An Academy Award-winning, iconic film, Yentl stars Barbra Streisand, and marks her critically-acclaimed directing debut, in a story about a young woman in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe who poses as a man so that she can enter a yeshiva and study Talmud. The star-studded, musical adaptation of a story by Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer follows as Yentl uses her disguise to get just what she wants — until she falls in love with a man and can’t tell him that she’s not really a man.

“Alright Yentl, draw the curtains,” Yentl’s father tells her as he prepares to teach her Talmud. When she asks why she has to study in secret, he explains, “I’m sure God will understand. But I’m not so sure the neighbors will.”

For a woman of her time, Yentl is a failure. She can’t cook, she’s strong-headed and stubborn, and she hates even the thought of darning socks. The only person who has patience for her unusual personality is her father. So when he dies and leaves her all alone Yentl is devastated. She’s convinced that society will force her to become someone she’s not. So – acting as any tumultuous feminist born before her time would – she cuts her hair, puts on men’s clothes, changes her name to Anchel, and runs away to study at a Yeshiva. Her plan seems to be going smoothly, until she’s suddenly pressured into an engagement with a woman!

Needless to say, YENTL doesn’t unfold like a typical romance. Instead, the plot moves boldly into unpredictable scenarios. As Roger Ebert said, “I didn’t have the slightest idea how this situation was going to turn out.”

For Yentl, there’s nothing better than debating the Talmud with someone who can keep up with her racing mind, and her tall, dark, and brooding study partner Avigdor is one of the few people who can. They become close friends immediately, and it’s not long before Yentl is madly in love with her best friend—who has no idea she’s a woman.

But their attraction is muted because Avigdor is engaged to the beautiful Hadass (Amy Irving in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Yentl understands that she’s an anomaly: men aren’t after women with sharp minds. After she first meets the lovely Hadass, Yentl asks Avigdor about Hadass’s mind.

“What could she be thinking?” he replies, “I don’t need her to think. I can do that with you.” The implied sexism only sounds foolish; and, disappointed, Yentl realizes that even the brilliant Avigdor wants a simple-minded woman to fulfill the roles of a dutiful housewife.

But the plot becomes more tricky when Hadass’s parents break her engagement, and in a desperate attempt to keep his fiance close to him, Avigdor begs Yentl to marry Hadass so that she won’t be sent to marry someone who lives far away. At least, this way, Avigdor imagines, he can visit the two people that mean the most to him. But what Avigdor doesn’t realize is that he’s setting the stage for a shocking love-triangle between Yentl, her bride, and the man they both love.

For all its cross-dressing, farcically humorous situations, YENTL is a defiantly feminist film. Streisand-as-Yentl rises to the top of her class, proving women can be just as capable as men when it comes to debating and philosophizing. Sounding more like a liberated woman of the 80s than one of the 1920s shtetl, our heroine argues that women and men should “share masculine and feminine qualities because they come from the same source!”

But the film doesn’t simply push a political agenda but sympathetically evaluates traditional gender roles and why they are the way they are. Rather than portray Hadass, Yentl’s foil, as inferior for being Eastern European society’s ideal, submissive, homemaker-y woman, Irving gives an entirely sympathetic performance. Hadass might not be bright, but she’s sweet and kind and, in trying to be a good person, she’s developed talents — making baked-apples and almond cakes, among other things – that have won her the admiration of the community.

In fact, Yentl admires her most of all, because she knows just how hard traditionally “feminine” tasks are. But, even so, Yentl never loses sight of her true, feminist goals – to study Talmud and further her education, no matter what society, or even the man she loves, thinks of her.

An old farmer, who lost his faith long ago, is about to lose his land. For years, old Mr. Wasserman has been at odds with the religious leaders of his farming community; but now that a drought has taken its toll on his crops, his fate is in their hands. An emotional film that explores family and faith, Wasserman follows the dramatic twenty-four hours before the old man’s farm will be repossessed.

“Your father and I built this village long before all these crackpots came and took everything over,” Wasserman snaps at a young man when he refuses to lend him extra seeds, taking a jab at the religious Jewish neighbors he can’t stand. “I’m not going to lose this field. It’s my home. Do you understand!?”

Wasserman would like to forget that he was born Jewish. In fact, as far as he’s concerned, he’s not a Jew. But his adamant hate for God and religion has only worked to divide his family against him and to place him at odds with his community. Now that the old curmudgeon’s situation has become desperate, his fellow Jews are reluctant to help him. But there’s more to Wasserman than what meets the eye, and when he finally shares the devastating story of how he lost his faith, he suddenly becomes a more sympathetic figure, to both his neighbors and the viewer.

Wasserman reveals how emotional baggage can be inherited, as the tumult over religion gets passed down through generations. Being Jewish isn’t just a struggle for Wasserman, it’s a struggle for everyone in his family. Over-compensating for her father’s lack of faith, one of Wasserman’s daughter ran away from the farm as soon as she could, married a religious man, and is determined to build a perfect Jewish family. But her striving for perfection has driven her husband and son away from her. Tired of being criticized, her husband snaps at her, saying, “If your son and I aren’t good enough for you, you can leave!”

Wasserman’s other daughter, who stuck by her father on the farm, has ended up just as unhappy and regretful as her sister. In order to please her father, she suppressed her own feelings and delayed accepting a proposal from the religious man she loves! In an emotional scene, the two sisters, who have been at odds for years, sit out on the porch together and realize how their father’s strong-headed nature has pushed them away from each other and hurt them both.

The message at the heart of Wasserman is that love for God goes hand-in-hand with love for people. Wasserman’s young grandson is afraid that spending time with his little girlfriend will distract him from his prayers take his attention away from God. The little boy explains his concerns to her and says he’s waiting for a sign to point him in the right direction. Thinking for a second, the little girl kisses him and then walks away smiling, convinced she’s just given him a pretty good sign that he can love both God and her.

Wasserman, on the other hand, doesn’t even know he’s waiting for a sign. He has always loved his family, but he polluted that love by despising God. Now, in order for him to right the wrongs that have been done and reconcile with the people who mean everything to him, he needs to be reminded of how good it feels to have faith. It may just take a miracle to make Wasserman believe again. But for the faithful, just such a miracle could happen at any moment.

Inexperienced and ill-equipped, a group of American citizens risked their lives to help a foreign people and to fight against fascism. Nominated for an Academy Award, Forever Activists: Stories From the Abraham Lincoln Brigade shares stories of American men and women who became soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, and returned home to continue fighting for social equality and the rights of the American working class.

“Although I went home with one arm, I gained more than I lost,” a Spanish Civil War veteran and pianist tells a crowded theater, concluding with a performance that wins him a standing ovation from fellow veterans, whose cheeks are wet with tears.

After Spain’s democratic elections in 1936, fascist military leader Francisco Franco overthrew the government and forcibly took control of the state. In the bloody civil war that followed, Franco was supported by Hitler and Mussolini. The pleas of the Spanish people roused soldiers from around the world, who assembled brigades named after national heroes to fight against fascism alongside the Soviet Union’s communist army. The Abraham Lincoln and George Washington Brigades were formed by 3,000 Americans who could not sit idly by and watch fascists take over Europe.

The Abraham Lincoln battalion was revolutionary because it was led by Oliver Law — the first African American captain to command American troops. Law was well respected. The Lincoln Brigade veterans all agree that, unlike in the American Army during World War II, racism was not prevalent in their brigade. One African-American soldier said that, at thirty-four years old, he had never felt as much like a man as he did serving under Law.

Sexism was also not a factor in the international brigades. Women, too, found equality in their ranks: while some women chose to work as nurses, others picked up guns and fought alongside the men.

Sadly, the fight against Fascism failed, and over half of the foreign soldiers were buried in Spanish soil, never to return home. But the lucky few who survived went back to America with an even stronger sense of determination, having learned a lesson that would shape the rest of their lives. “We didn’t fight for nothing,” one veteran says. “We learned in Spain to act, not just talk,” another old man explains.

Their unstoppable desire to improve society was demonstrated throughout the decades following the war, through their support of labor unions, enlistment in World War II, involvement in Civil Rights activism, anti-Vietnam war protests, and their sending aid to Nicaragua. “You can either help make history, or have history pass you by,” one of the old men tells a group of students.

The legendary Spanish Communist leader, Dolores Ibarruri, is featured in the documentary, greeting the soldiers as they return to Spain for the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War. The bold woman once preached, “It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward,” and gave her people the rallying cry, “no pasaran!” (“they shall not pass”).

Now aged and feeble, Ibarruri is asked how she feels to see the soldiers return. “I am very happy because I get to see them again, and I know how brave and heroic they are,” she responds. But it’s the stoic expression in her watery eyes that tell the true depth of her emotions.

The soldiers are also excited to see one another, although fifty years of aging has made it difficult for them to recognize each other. When his old friend doesn’t recognize him through his wrinkles, one veteran protests, “I’m just as good looking as I used to be.”

“But a little more seasoned,” his friends responds politically.

“No,” the veteran corrects him, putting things in perspective, “once an anti-fascist, always an anti-fascist.” And they both laugh in agreement.

A warm-hearted old ice cream vendor journeys back to his hometown in the Ukraine, fifty years after the Holocaust, to deliver a Torah to its struggling Jewish community in Carpati, a film that the LA Times called “irresistible and poignant…full of camaraderie and intoxicating music.”

“Many people sold ice cream, but Uncle Zev was the kindest,” a young man says, explaining that even though they weren’t blood relations, he always thought of Zev as family. Zev – an orphan with few surviving relatives – listens, and his eyes fill with tears.

Carpati explores the contemporary lives and history of Ukrainian Jews through one ordinary man’s exceptional experiences. Zev was taken by Nazis when he was only sixteen-years-old and after miraculously surviving the Holocaust he returned to the Carpathian Mountains, orphaned and alone. “I had no where to lay my head,” he says, “I wandered the streets like a dog, eating wherever I could get a meal.” As he opens up to the camera and takes an emotional look back on everything he’s been through, it becomes clear that his Jewish faith has given him the strength to go on and lead a good and fulfilling life. So when he journeys from his current home in Beregovo back to his hometown of Vinogradov, he takes a Torah with him to bring hope to the dwindling Jewish community that remains there.

In addition to focusing on the Ukrainian-Jewish Holocaust experience, Carpati also takes a unique look at the Nazi mass murder of Gypsies, and the intimacy felt between Gypsies and Jews in Eastern Europe as persecuted minorities. Zev doesn’t have a large Jewish community surrounding him, but he can talk about the Holocaust with his gypsy neighbors, who suffered alongside the Jews. “I cry like the rain,” Zev says, and the Gypsy street cleaner with whom he’s struck up a conversation sympathizes, having gone through similar WWII experiences.

Later, when Zev stops into Gypsy cafes and Gypsy homes, where he meets friends and is greeted warmly, the film points to the fact that the two groups share more than a history of oppression: Eastern-European Jews and gypsies also both love klezmer music. “In every [ypsy] band that was at least one Jewish musician,” one of Zev’s gypsy neighbors says. The camera watches as a mesmerizing blend of accordions and violins encourage crowds to clap and smile, and everyone circles around children with nimble feet, who dance and shake to the musician’s racing beat.

The absorbing music is not only a pleasant addition to the film, but also presents a central theme, representing a wealth that can’t be measured monetarily. After enduring WWII and Communist oppression, Ukrainian Jews and Gypsies – who, quite frankly, are lucky to be alive – are still poor and still struggling. The aged Zev is seen chopping wood in his backyard as his wife gathers lettuce from their garden and puts the teapot on to boil on the rusted stove in their tiny kitchen, conveying their simple means. But Judaism has obviously given him something more important than wealth.

Standing in his garden, remembering his encounter with the infamous Nazi “doctor” Josef Mengele, Zev attributes his miraculous survival to a higher power: “God helped me,” he says, “He gave me years.”

Luckily, the young boy was able to grow up and become an old man. But these years have seen painful changes. “It’s not what it used to be; it’s not what it used to be,” Zev mutters, sadly looking on the neighborhood of his childhood. The pond where he swam every day as a boy is now dirty and drying up. The house he grew up in has been torn down. The Jews are mostly gone—they all left for Israel after the war.

In fact, Zev can count the number of Jewish men in Vinogradov who know how to pray on one hand. “In all of Carpathia, you’ll need a candle to find a Jew in ten or fifteen years,” he says, disheartened.

But the Jews who receive the gift of his Torah are still grateful. “It will help hold us,” one man says, reinforcing the fact at the center of Carpati, that, not only for Zev but for many struggling Ukrainian Jews, faith is a crucial source of support and strength.

One of the sweetest movies you’ll ever watch, the charming romantic comedy Like A Fish Out of Water follows out-of-work, immigrant actor Marcello and his beautiful Hebrew teacher Anat through a series of comic misadventures that draw the seemingly mismatched pair closer together. Desperate to improve his Hebrew accent in order to land an audition for a soap opera in Israel, Marcello begs Anat for help. But she has her own problems to deal with, namely her pesky mother who’s obsessed with marrying her off to a good Jewish man. Little does she know she may have already found him.

“This is so important to me,” Marcello pleads with Anat, begging her to help him practice his lines for the audition after class, “an actor without work is like a fish out of water!” What Marcello doesn’t realize yet is that a man without the woman that he loves is equally as lost.

Marcello and Anat both know that love is hard to find—so they’ve decided not to look. For Anat, dating has become a chore because she’s unimpressed by the suitors her mother finds for her. Marcello, on the other hand, is a widower, and has dedicated himself solely to his daughter, Lucy, after the death of his wife. Teasing Lucy as he lowers her down from a piggy-back ride, Marcello tells her he doesn’t need a woman because, “I already have one breaking my back.” But, though they get off to a rocky start, it’s only a matter of time before Anat sees through Marcello’s lousy luck and foolish antics and falls in love with the goofy, warm-hearted father.

As in any worthy romantic comedy, Marcello does not make a good first impression on Anat. He was only trying to charm her, but Anat ends up thinking he’s a liar and a playboy. She’s convinced that tutoring him after class is some sort of scheme he’s come up with to try to seduce her — and she’s too smart for that. Interrupting his pleading and apologizing, Anat snaps at him, saying, “I hate soap operas. They’re stupid and trashy.”

But attraction has a will of its own. Despite what Anat’s mother seems to believe, it can’t be orchestrated or controlled, and sometimes total opposites attract. Marcello might not be what Anat had in mind for herself (he’s an immigrant, not religious, already has a child, and he’s struggling to find work), but, against her better judgment, Anat is willing to forgive all their differences, which takes even her by surprise.

When she looks closely at her own parent’s relationship, however, Anat realizes that she grew up with proof that opposites can balance each other out. While her couch potato father takes in his daily does of trashy television, her excitable mother buzzes through the house preparing for the company that she’s just invited over. “You two are so different,” Anat mutters to herself with her eyes glazed in thought, thinking of Marcello.

Marcello’s moment of epiphany comes while lounging in his living room. When he looks over at the couch and sees Anat and Lucy enamored with each other and giggling together, he realizes just how special Anat really is.

Marcello and Anat’s simple little love affair is quickly complicated by a series of well-intentioned lies that slip out of control. The film comes to comedic climax when Marcello, Lucy, Rosa the neighbor woman, and the little old French man from down the street have to remember all the lies they’ve told and pretend to be a family in order to get through Sabbath dinner with Anat’s parents without a catastrophe.

Sabbath dinner isn’t the first time that Marcello’s nerves have made him botch things with Anat. If he’s not blubbering like an idiot around her, he’s told a good-intentioned lie that’s put them both into a sticky situation, or he’s done something to cross the line of their friendship.

But his romance-obsessed daughter, full of forgiveness for her father, excuses his foolish behavior: “Romeo always gets confused when he’s talking to Juliette,” she assures him. It may not be true, but it’s the charming white lie on which most romantic comedies, including the irresistible Like A Fish Out of Water, are based.

America’s early Jews fought hard for equal rights, and got results. They Came For Good, Part I recounts the decisive ideological battles they waged and their resounding victories that made even George Washington take notice.

“May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid,” wrote then-President Washington to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, at a time when other world leaders were loath to give public support to their Jewish populations.

Through the use of correspondence, diaries and actor portrayals, They Came For Good paints a rich and varied portrait of the acts that merited such supportive words.

American Jewry began in 1654, with the arrival of 23 Sephardic, South American refugees in New Amsterdam. From these humble beginnings, Jewish individuals soon became influential throughout the colonies, and we are introduced to a gallery of important early Jewish Americans, both celebrated and obscure. In colonial New York, men like Asser Levy and Louis Moses Gomes helped win the right for Jews to serve on the watch, own property, openly observe their religion and have their own burial grounds. Aaron Lopes, a convert to Judaism, founded one of the colonial era’s richest merchant empires. Later, Francis Salvador became both the first Jew to serve on a state assembly (in South Carolina) and the first to die while serving in the American Revolution. Further north, Haym Salomon financed the Continental Congress through his Philadelphia brokerage, asking for no repayment.

Looking beyond these great accomplishments, the film also examines the ways in which early American society often complicated the religious lives of its Jews. Apart from times of worship, many early American Jews strove to show no outward signs of their faith. We are told that this submergence of Jewish identity stemmed in part from the Sephardic tradition: Sephardic Jews had sustained their synagogues and religious devotion for centuries, but without expressing their religion in public life. To examine the changing face of early American Jewish pride, the film subtly but effectively juxtaposes the pre-Revolutionary War era of publicly-secret Jewishness, with the post-war rise in publicly-overt Jewishness.

Attitudes about marriage outside the faith are especially telling of early American Jews’ changing religious attitudes. In the 17th century, Abigail Frank helplessly mourned the marriage and religious conversion of her Jewish daughter to a French Huguenot. In the 19th century, however, renowned educator Rebecca Gratz refused the marriage proposal of a suitor she loved, because he was a gentile.

The film gives life to a few of Gratz’s colorful Jewish contemporaries, who were not above using dramatics of their own in order to further their causes. An actor skillfully recreates Mordecai Manuel Noah’s 1825 announcement to an Episcopalian congregation about the founding of “Ararat.” Dressed as Richard III (the only costume he could find on short notice), Noah offered up Grand Island in western New York’s Niagara River as a homeland for Jews everywhere. Another actor channels the emotional fire of 19th century Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, who fought for the abolition of flogging in the American Navy, while dodging several court marshals and dueling pistol bullets.

The common tie between Gratz, Noah and Levy is their pioneering dual-identities as both outspoken Jews and equally-proud Americans. And as Part I of They Came For Good closes, this newfound national and religious pride sets the stage for the next generations of Jews to put their stamp on the American experience.

Banned by the Soviet Government for twenty-one years, Commissar explores the complex loyalties of love and politics in a film The New York Times called “a brave, humane and powerful work…image after stunning image.”

“Having children is not so simple,” a mother tells the Commissar of Russia’s Red army, who has just found out she’s pregnant. “Not like war—bang bang, and there you are.”

After Madame Commissar Vavilova confides her embarrassing situation to her supervisor, a poor Jewish family with six children is forced to take her in. Over time, the severe commissar is softened by the family’s chaotic and loving home, and by the impending birth of her child. Through innovative cinematography and symbolic storytelling, Commissar demonstrates the prejudice Jews faced in antisemitic Russia and the sacrifices involved in every life decision.

When Vavilova takes refuge with a Jewish family, the father of the house, Yefim, is less than pleased to have the Commissar impose upon his family, but his kind-hearted wife is quick to offer her old slippers from under the bed, dote over Vavilova’s pregnant belly, and embrace her into her home. If they lived in a vacuum, perhaps the Commissar and the Jewish family could live out simple lives together, modestly, but happily. But once the Commissar’s child is born, the family’s honeymoon is over. Fear of pogroms permeates their town, and the Commissar must decide whether she wants to embrace her new role as a mother or return to being the military leader she’s always understood herself to be.

In its reflections on motherhood, Commissar offers a couched critique of “Mother Russia” and the Russian government’s flawed relationship with its citizens. “All disease comes from the stomach,” the Commissar utters drearily at one point. For her, pregnancy is an unwanted result of her actions, and her love for her child is tempered by neglect and frustration. Similarly, Russia could be seen as the neglectful mother who failed to consider her lower classes and, as a result, birthed a bloody revolution. Acting as the Commissar’s foil, the Jewish mother is full of warmth and nurturing that borders on self-deprivation. “You could go mad with it all,” she says, “but you can’t because you’re a mother.” She is the ideal caregiver who loves all of her children equally and is always prepared to meet their needs: perhaps she represents the kind of Russia for which the Red Army was fighting.

A film with art house appeal, Commissar is a visual poem, with a lyrical and minimalist approach to storytelling and stark, visually stunning cinematography. When the Commissar goes into labor the camera shows her sweating from the pain of contractions and then breaks momentarily with the narrative to show a metaphoric scene of soldiers pushing a broken carriage through the dessert. When the carriage finally goes over a hill and the exhausted men chase it down into a watery oasis, it’s clear the baby is born. Such use of visual metaphor makes the film much more interesting than a standard Hollywood flick, even of the same era.

Commissar takes a similar poetic approach in its conveyance of the rampant anti-Semitism Jews faced in the period, showing just how twisted the hate could become. In one particularly dark scene, two Russian boys bully a little Jewish girl, confronting her with wooden guns and threatening her with the “bang” of their fake bullets. But what starts out as a children’s game soon devolves into the mimicking of torturous acts. The disturbing scene undermines the presumed innocence of children, and blurs the line between adult and child-like behavior, asking to what extent antisemitic adults are acting out games they don’t fully understand.

Thought-provoking and visually mesmerizing, Commissar is a cinematic masterpiece as well as a document of a troubling history. The fact that it was banned for so many years only adds to its historical and artistic significance.

Secular values are seeping into ultra-Orthodox homes as computers and movies become more and more prevalent in even the most sheltered communities. Profiling a stellar yeshiva student who abandoned his religious studies and cut his side-locks to take up a career in movie-making, Kosher Gefilte Film looks at how advanced media technology is changing the ultra-Orthodox community.

“Around the set Shalom is really soft and gentle. But when the cameras are rolling he’s all fire and brimstone,” one of Shalom’s actors says. “He could be Spielberg—the Orthodox Spielberg.”

Kosher Gefilte Film goes behind the set of Shalom’s newest film, “A Week Without Mother,” to reveal the challenges involved in making an film fit for an Orthodox audience. But it’s only recently that there is even such a thing as an Orthodox film, and Shalom’s personal history sheds light on what’s spurring the fledgling industry. In intimate interviews, he confesses the embarrassing scandal that encouraged him to embrace secular culture, and he shares his take on growing up in an insular Orthodox community in Jerusalem, where, he says, many of the people have never seen the sea or watched a television set, and for whom everything outside of their neighborhood seems far, far away.

For the first half of his life Shalom happily obeyed Orthodox tradition and didn’t think of questioning the rules. He was one of the top students at his yeshiva, and his parents had high expectations of him. “I loved studying!” he says.

But everything changed when a counselor at the yeshiva maliciously accused Shalom of being a homosexual. For a naive religious boy, the attack on his sexuality was especially confusing and painful. (This was a boy who didn’t realize women had different sex organs than men until he was seventeen.) And the accusation was unfounded—Shalom is now happily married. But at the time he felt ostracized from the yeshiva, discouraged from study, and he slowly began to slip away from the tradition to which he had previously clung.

Then one day he sneaked into a movie theater. The Man in the Iron Mask, the first secular movie he’d ever seen, changed his life forever. His side-locks became shorter and shorter, until they were gone. He took off his uniform of black suit and white shirt to wear “secular” clothing. He shaved off the beginnings of a beard that had grown on his teenage face. But because he still wanted to live according to the Torah, he kept one foot in the Orthodox world while stepping into the secular world. After abandoning his yeshiva studies, Shalom started producing a television show and movies for Orthodox viewers.

Shalom’s wedding is a perfect example of how he’s blended the religious and secular influences in his life. Shalom decided that if a streimel [a traditional Hasidic fur hat] was going to cost him $2,000, he might as well spend that money on a Giorgio Armani suit instead. During the reception men and women were seated separately, but Shalom hired a DJ to play modern dance music so people could dance out of traditional separate-gendered circles, breaking from Orthodox tradition.

When it comes to making movies, however, Shalom follows all the rules for Orthodox films: no romance, no vulgarity, and, hardest of all, no women. “Here’s a girl. Erase her!” he tells his film editor as they search the background for stray females that might have wandered into the shot. But Shalom’s editor doesn’t understand the sense in such edits. “When you understand girls aren’t bad, then we can make films,” he teases his director.

But Shalom has figured out a way to make films without women. “A Week without Mother” is a comedy that follows the misadventures of a father and his four sons after their mother’s gone off on a well-deserved vacation.

Filming gets a little tough, though, when a swarm of Orthodox kids gathers outside the set, hoping to catch a glimpse of the lead actor, a celebrity in their community. Their star might have side-locks and wear a yarmulke, but when a cluster of kids are ogling over him, the scene seems like it should be found in the secular world and not in an Orthodox neighborhood.