THIS MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED BECAUSE OF COVID-19 In early 2018, composer and film maker Benjamin Till, who had only recently discovered he was Jewish, decided to make the film 100 Faces to find out more about the community he’d been a member of for 43 years without realising. His mission was to find … Continue reading Finding 100 Faces: capturing Jewish diversity
Dir. Taika Waititi, Starring Taika Waititi, Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson ; 2019, 123 mins, English Since the days of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, film-makers have adopted naive or comedic perspectives to pierce and deflate the hideous bubble of Nazi ideology. Now, in this Golden Globe-nominated adaptation of Christine Leunens’s book Caging Skies, … Continue reading JoJo Rabbit
Directly after the burning bush scene, G-d inexplicably tries to kill Moses (Exodus 4:24-26). Fortunately, Moses’ life is saved by Zipporah’s enigmatic “Bridegroom of Blood” ritual. Commentators both ancient and modern have proposed many solutions by filling in the gaps, proposing reasons such as Moses’ failing courage or procrastination. But what did this episode mean … Continue reading Medicine in Ancient Judaism: Why does G-d attempt to kill Moses in Exodus 4?
Dir. Eran Korilin; 90 minutes; English, Hebrew, Arabic This award winning charming Israeli comedy is the tale of an Egyptian police band stranded overnight in a quiet Israeli settlement after taking the wrong bus. It features lovely performances from Sasson Gabai as the band's impeccably behaved conductor and actress Ronit Elkabetz as an Israeli bar … Continue reading The Band’s Visit
To mark the 80th anniversary of the British government’s controversial decision to ‘collar the lot’, this illustrated lecture will examine the art produced in the British internment camps, mostly but not only on the Isle of Man. It will do so in the broader context of art produced in other internment situations, from the Japanese-American camps … Continue reading Creativity against the odds: Art and Internment during World War Two
Dir. Max Lewkowicz; 2019; 97 min; English Director Max Lewkowicz’s richly detailed documentary celebrates the illustrious Broadway show Fiddler on the Roof, the evergreen shtetl-set musical first staged in 1964 with choreography and direction by Jerome Robbins and starring Zero Mostel as Teyve, the milkman. Contributions from a range of interviewees – including people attached to … Continue reading Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles – CANCELLED DUE TO LOCKDOWN RESTRICTIONS
In early 2018, composer and film maker Benjamin Till, who had only recently discovered he was Jewish, decided to make the film 100 Faces to find out more about the community he’d been a member of for 43 years without realising. His mission was to find one UK-based Jewish person born every year from 1918 … Continue reading Finding 100 Faces: capturing Jewish diversity
In 1982 nearing the end of a remarkable life, consultant David Henryk Ropschitz put pen to paper to share his own story of 1940s wartime survival. His highly personal novel is about life in the Italian internment camp, Ferramonti, where thousands of Jews and other ‘undesirables’ were imprisoned. In his novel Dr Ropschitz looks back … Continue reading Ferramonti: Salvation behind the barbed wire
Stanley Kubrick is generally acknowledged as one of the world's great directors. Yet few critics or scholars have considered how he emerged from a unique and vibrant cultural milieu: the New York Jewish intelligentsia. In this talk, Nathan Abrams re-examines the director's work in context of his ethnic and cultural origins. Focusing on several of … Continue reading Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual?
In the 1940s a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had fled. Of those remaining, most escaped in the 1970s or were killed. Today, fewer than half a dozen remain. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home … Continue reading The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland
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