Jonathan Glazer's new historical drama about the Holocaust won big at the Baftas last week and looks set to do the same at the Oscars, but does it do the horrific period justice from a Jewish perspective? Irene Wise reports…
After the smash-hit success of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer comes Einstein and the Bomb. Netflix’s new film is an obvious attempt to capitalise on the current public interest in the Atomic Age and the scientists who brought it about. Unfortunately, it offers very little…
Richard Rampton was hailed as the leading defamation barrister of his generation. His knowledge of the detail of the law, his razor-sharp mind and prodigious debating skills were unequalled. He made headlines when he won the McLibel case for McDonalds against two young climate…
In his latest novel, Jacobson’s authoritative wit is at its best as he follows his protagonists through years spent together, through old age and eventual decline, in what his publisher describes as ‘a funny, passionate, lyrical and provocative exploration of a love affair through time’…
Writing Listening for God in Torah and Creation was the anchor of my sanity and solace during the lockdown and Covid years. I felt in part like the figure in Chagall’s Solitude, clasping the Torah as his strength and music…
This new offering by British director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Hunger) veers from his usual dramatic storytelling to documentary territory, but calling it that is a misnomer. Occupation City is closer to a piece of visual art. Informed by the book, Atlas of an Occupied City…
Lex Lesgever was born on 1 May 1929 in the historic heart of Amsterdam, where Jews had thrived for centuries. He was barely 11 when the Germans occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. By May 1945, approximately 107,000 of the 140,500 of the country’s Jewish population were wiped…
There is something extraordinarily powerful about simple storytelling. Although Samantha Spiro, the narrator of this story is actually addressing a packed theatre, it felt like she spoke directly to me as she began ‘Once upon a time…’. The tale she tells is not a fairy story, although…
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…