Eighty years ago this summer, in June 1931, New York publisher Covici Friede announced that A Jew in Love, a new novel by Ben Hecht (1894-1964), had been banned in Canada and in bookstores in Boston and other American cities. Anyone who opened the book — the front page of which described the Jewish protagonist…
Nearly 30 years ago Michael Ross, a Canadian from Victoria, went on a backtracking tour to Europe and decided to spend the winter on an Israeli kibbutz, a decision that changed his life. In Israel, he fell in love with both the land and a local woman. He got married, converted to Judaism, became a…
A recently opened camping compound on an Israeli wildlife preserve allows overnight guests to observe coyotes, jackals and other nocturnal animals in action. But you don’t have to sleep over at the Yotvata Hai-Bar Nature Reserve to see these nightly creatures. Daytime visitors may also view a menagerie of rodents, reptiles and arthropods in the…
Dan Bahat, a leading Israeli archaeologist, is in the midst of an extended stint as visiting lecturer at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto (this piece was written in 2004; we’re fortunate to have him still in Toronto in 2011). The former chief archaeologist of Jerusalem and senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, Bahat…
“Whoever did not see Jerusalem in all her glory never saw a beautiful city.” — Babylonian Talmud, Succah 51, B. Situated in the historic Citadel beside the monumental Jaffa Gate, the Museum of the City of Jerusalem tells the extraordinary story of the city’s long and checkered past. One of the most popular sites in…
A group of eminent Jewish genealogists recently announced the formation of a new facility, the International Institute of Jewish Genealogy, that will be housed in the Jewish National and University Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although still in an early stage of development, the Institute’s board expects it to become a major force…
In 1786 the Italian Jewish scholar Samuel Romanelli (1757 1817) boarded a ship at Gibraltar expecting it to carry him eventually to his home in Mantua. The vessel stopped at several Moroccan ports, however, and Romanelli went ashore and innocently became entangled in some legal trouble. Consequently his passport was confiscated and, to his immense chagrin, his intended brief…
Canadian writer Bronwyn Drainie, the wife of a newspaper reporter assigned to the Middle East, returned from Israel earlier this year (1994) after living in Jerusalem for two years, and promptly wrote a book capturing her unique perceptions as a self-styled “outsider” to both Jewish and Israeli society. My Jerusalem: Secular Adventures in the Holy…
It has been almost 25 years since novice Jewish genealogist Arthur Kurzweil wandered into the Jewish Division of the New York Public Library to search the card catalog for references to the Galician shtetl of Dobromil, where his father and numerous ancestors had lived. Kurzweil had heard enough family legends and stories about the town…
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,…
