After several years stationed in Europe as a freelance political journalist, American writer Ruth Ellen Gruber was startled to discover that a magnificent old synagogue had been restored in the Hungarian town of Szeged. “I never had any inkling that such a synagogue could exist outside of a major city,” she recalled. Shortly afterwards, she…
Mildred Wyman’s Forest of Trees
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What does it take to produce a three-volume family history that extends to nearly 900 pages? In the case of Mildred Wyman, who recently self-published a triple-decker family history titled A Forest of Trees, it has taken eight years of intensive research and writing, dozens of taped interviews with relatives, and the editorial discipline to…
From Kamenets-Podolsk to Winnipeg: The History of the Lechtziers
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Reuven Lexier, a Toronto orthopaedic surgeon, recently published this handsome 150-page volume that documents his family’s experience in Canada from the moment his great-great-grandparents, Shimon and Chana Lechtzier, settled in Winnipeg with their four sons and two daughters in 1882. Lexier spent about 10 years gathering the 196 photographs, archival documents, newspaper clippings and memorabilia…
Film: Sister Rose’s Passion
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It’s easy to see why this 40-minute documentary was nominated for an Oscar last year (2004): the story of Sister Rose Thering, an 84-year-old Dominican nun from rural Wisconsin who influenced the Vatican to retire its centuries-old bias against Jews, is powerful and compelling. Even as a girl, Sister Rose couldn’t understand how Catholics could…
Film: Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi
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Shot in 2002 and released last year, Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi is a charming coming-of-age comedy by Israeli director Shemi Zarhin, who wrote the script in “five unusual days” in 2001. Sixteen-year-old Shlomi Bardayan (Osri Cohen) is an unappreciated pillar of strength whose family leans on him so fully that, except for a wise old grandpa,…
Film: Mendelsohn’s memorable Judy Berlin
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It’s hard to convey the essence of Judy Berlin (1999), though not the excited reactions it tends to generate. An American-made black-and-white feature written and directed by Eric Mendelsohn, Judy Berlin focuses on the intertwined lives and aspirations of a curious ensemble of characters (some Jewish) living in a Long Island commuter town called Babylon…
Victoria Day: Celebrated author Bezmozgis writes, directs film
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David Bezmozgis, celebrated author of the prize-winning book Natasha and Other Stories, was on skates in North York Centennial Arena recently, along with a camera crew and a group of teenaged actors in skates and hockey uniforms. All were involved in filming a scene from Victoria Day, a feature film that Bezmozgis is directing, based…
Film: Monsieur Batignole
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Monsieur Batignole (France 2002) is a simple, deeply satisfying feature film about one man’s efforts, despite his otherwise unheroic life, to rescue three children from the Nazis. Batignole, a middle-class butcher in wartime Paris, hardly seems to care when his upstairs neighbours, the Bernsteins, are deported for being Jewish; after all, it was his own…
Documentary resumes Oslo-era dialogue despite Intifadah
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Israeli police officer Benny Herness and Palestinian journalist Adnan Joulani had planned to keep in touch after returning from a joint Israeli-Palestinian peace mission to Japan in 2000 that was the focus of the Israeli documentary film “Sleeping With the Enemy.” But the intifadah erupted a week after the film’s debut and the two lost…
Schmelvis: the ‘King’ as Jewish
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Evan Beloff, co-producer of a new documentary that demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that American rock idol Elvis Presley was Jewish according to halakha or Jewish law, was only half-joking when he said that the film uses Elvis “as a metaphor for identity — I think it’s a quest film about Jewish identity.” Titled “Schmelvis:…
