CULTURE
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Norman Jewison 1926-2024 — Jewish Renaissance
The award-winning Canadian filmmaker has died aged 97 Norman Jewison, the Canadian movie director who died last week aged 97, was not Jewish. But he did film the musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on a story by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. And with that surname…. How could we not celebrate his life and work? In school, Jewison…
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The Most Precious of Goods ★★★★★ — Jewish Renaissance
The warmth of her voice belies the horrors in the tale she tells. The cosy armchair in which she is seated, wrapped in a shawl, stands on a cheerfully colourful rug, though the monochrome backdrop and side curtains are sober, sinister, even before you realise the numbers on the curtains evoke the numbers tattooed on the arms of concentration camp…
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A century of Rhapsody in Blue — Jewish Renaissance
The premiere performance was attended by musical luminaries including Igor Stravinsky, Fritz Kreisler and Leopold Stokowski. Rhapsody in Blue was an immediate success and brought Gershwin worldwide fame. Incorporated into the Rhapsody were hallmarks of jazz, including blue notes, long passages of syncopated rhythms, and onomatopoeic musical effects. He later reflected: “There had been so much chatter about the limitations…
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Don’t Destroy Me ★★★★ — Jewish Renaissance
They may be onto something, however, for George (Timothy O’Hara), a bookie and the other lodger on the same floor as the Kirz household, is a bold example of toxic masculinity and barely hides that he’s getting it on with Shani. It’s hardly surprising then that Leo is a figure of anger, who cannot empathise with the son who needs…
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Jacqueline Nicholls — Jewish Renaissance
I am a Jew in London, watching from afar what is happening to close friends and family in Israel. Where do I stand? I am outside, trying to follow what is happening over there. I am in a city and fearful of the chants on the streets here. I am caught up in these dark times, but uncertain of my…
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Rock ’n’ Roll ★★★★ — Jewish Renaissance
What makes this extraordinarily multifaceted drama worth close attention is the debate, ongoing over decades, between the two protagonists. Jan (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) in 1968 is an idealistic young Czech Cambridge PhD student intent on returning home for the Prague Spring; and Max (Nathaniel Parker), his Marxist professor, sees all that is good in the Soviet ideal. They represent perhaps not…
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One Life ★★★★ — Jewish Renaissance
The film, directed by James Hawes, shifts between two separate time frames: one set in 1939 and the other in the 1980s. It opens with the older Winton counting coins from charity tins. He pockets a button dropped into the collection, telling his wife it might come in useful. Sometime later, the button does the job when an additional coin…
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The Soldier on Smithdown Road — Jewish Renaissance
As well as telling an exciting story, I wanted to make a film that both explores the precarious nature of being a British Jew and complex questions of identity. Most Jews are painfully familiar with the feeling that their loyalty will always be questioned, and their Judaism will always make them a target in the context of geopolitical events. I…
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Pacific Overtures ★★★★★
Small is beautiful in this intimate iteration of Sondheim’s inspired musical in which East meets West When Japan famously featured in Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly in 1904, the Treaty of Kanagawa – which opened up Japan to the West – was 50 years in the past. Fast forward to 1976 and the events took centre stage once again in Stephen…
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Queen of the Deuce ★★★★ — Jewish Renaissance
Born into a Sephardi Jewish family in Salonika (now Thessaloniki), Greece, in 1908, Wilson was forced into an arranged marriage, with her ferocious temperament at the forefront even then. Having escaped the clutches of unconsensual matrimony, she then avoided Auschwitz by boarding the last boat to America out of Greece before the onset of World War II. This first part…
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