Jewish History & Culture
171 posts found
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Remembering Rudolf Vrba's 5 per cent
On April 7, 1944, Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz, one of very few to do so; he died recently at age 81, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Vancouver, British Columbia. Vrba once said that he spent 95 percent of his life on science and 5 percent on the Holocaust. It is worth considering the importance of that 5 percent and the controversy it engendered, which resonates to this day. Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in 1924 and… -
Grossman's Fate
The recent publication of "A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman With the Red Army, 1941-1945" (Pantheon) brings attention to a writer who deserves to be better known and whose personal story illuminates the tragic dimension of Russian Jewry during the Communist era. Grossman (1905-1964) was a journalist as well as the author of short stories and novels, most notably "Life and Fate," which is to be reissued this spring by New York Review of Books (NYRB) Classics. His reporting during… -
COMEDY MATTERS (Albert Brooks)
"After 9/11, all I did was sit around and be scared," Albert Brooks told me recently. "After a year and a half," Brooks now says, "I just got tired of it." He wondered, "Why isn't this being processed? Do we never mention it?" Looking at what Hollywood was releasing to the public, he concluded that "most of the [current] movies take place in the past -- or are teenage sex comedies." Brooks decided to do something about it. His response,… -
Fight of the Century
Joe Louis' boxing match against Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in 1938 remains one of the great sporting events of the 20th century -- even though the fight in front of nearly 70,000 spectators lasted all of two minutes and four seconds. Some 67 years after that fateful night of fisticuffs, David Margolick, a Vanity Fair contributing editor and former New York Times staffer, has written the authoritative account of a time when the fate of nations seemed to hang… -
Larry David Died for our Sinsw
Larry David, the producer-writer-star of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" has just finished airing the fifth season of his HBO program. Many people find him hilarious. Others find him annoying in the extreme. Both are right, of course, and David builds his humor out of this particular intersection of pain and pleasure. However, this season has been more than usually provocative, focusing on matters of identity -- Jewish identity. "Curb" has managed to offend all manner of Jews, from the observant to… -
The Painted Bird - Revisited
Forty years ago this Oct. 15, Houghton Mifflin published "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinski. The book was immediately acclaimed as a must-read text on the Holocaust and the nature of human cruelty. In the years leading up to and following Kosinski's 1991 suicide, his reputation was tarnished by a series of revelations that the author employed uncredited editors and associates to produce his novels, and that much of Kosinski's personal history was fabricated. Nonetheless, the reputation of "The Painted… -
The Great Question (Who We Are)
THIS WEEK'S COLUMN WAS A COVER STORY IN THE JEWISH JOURNAL OF LOS ANGELES (and a pretty funny cover -- so I thought I'd share it with you). We're almost halfway through the first decade of the 21st century. Not a bad time to assess "Who We Are." "Who We Are: On Being (and Not Being) a Jewish American Writer," edited by Derek Rubin (Schocken Books, 2005), an Israeli-born professor who teaches in the Netherlands, collects 29 essays by Jewish… -
Wiesenthal The Collector
Simon Wiesenthal died last month at 96 in his sleep at his home in Vienna. This seems particularly fitting, since Wiesenthal spent the last 60 years troubling the sleep of Nazi war criminals, their henchmen, collaborators and supporters. During the Holocaust, 89 members of Wiesenthal’s extended family were murdered, including his mother who was deported to the Belzec extermination camp. Wiesenthal himself was a prisoner at a succession of charnel houses, such as the Janovska camp, Plaszow (the camp in… -
A Nobel Approach to Hungarians
By this point in the summer, I know that my devoted Tommywood readers are all wondering the same thing — be they sitting by the pool at the Sociéte des Bains de Mer in Monte Carlo, on their yachts sailing off the coast of Turkey or schvitzing in their New York apartments or Los Angeles homes. They all want to know: How is he going to come up with another column about Hungarians? Frankly I was wondering the same, until… -
A Read on Life (novels by Zweibel and Rosen)
Lately, I’ve been thinking about two novels I recently enjoyed: “The Other Shulman†by Alan Zweibel (Villard, $23.95), and “Joy Comes in the Morning†by Jonathan Rosen (Picador, $14). The two novels are strikingly different: One deals with confronting a marriage of long standing; the other is about getting married. One is comic with serious moments; the other serious with comic moments. Yet both feature protagonists trying to decide whether they are running toward something, or away from it. “Shulman  -
"Old Lessons Never Die" (Abby Mann's "Judgment" in Long Beach) 6-17-05
If, as the bard wrote, "All the world's a stage," then let me direct you to a current production that, though seeming of another time, and another era, and based on a film more than 40 years old, offers enduring truths that seem particularly relevant to current events. "Judgment At Nuremberg" Abby Mann's courtroom drama about the post-World War II trial of Nazi-era German Judges is having its Southern California stage premiere this Friday, June 17 at the International City… -
Agents of Charity (Jewish Family Service Gala honoring Kurtzman, Lonner, Kurtzman)
As I write this The Jewish Family Service (JFS) of Los Angeles’ annual gala to be held on June 1, 2005 is a few days away. The honorees are CAA agent Rick Kurtzman; his brother, Fox business affairs executive Howard Kurtzman; and their brother-in-law, William Morris Agent David Lonner (married to their sister Janet). JFS is a wonderful and important organization that, since 1854, has provided mental health and social services to men, women and children of all faiths and…