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Michael Douglas, Lena Dunham Make Shocking Discoveries About Their Jewish Ancestry
Michael Douglas and Lena Dunham in the latest episode of “Finding Your Roots.” Photo: Screenshot
Actor Michael Douglas and writer-director Lena Dunham made shocking revelations about their Jewish ancestors and family roots stemming from Eastern Europe in Thursday’s episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots.
In the latest episode of the popular series, in which celebrities learn more about their ancestral histories, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Douglas with new information about his Jewish paternal side of the family. The Wall Street actor and his father, the late Kirk Douglas, are both household names in the Hollywood film industry, but Michael discovered on Finding Your Roots that his Jewish paternal grandfather who sold rags from a cart in America hailed from the town of Chausy, which was part of the Russian Empire but is now in eastern Belarus.
Back in Chausy, Douglas’ family lived in the town’s Jewish ghetto and faced discrimination for their Jewish heritage. The Oscar winner also learned that his grandfather was imprisoned and charged with robbery and his great-uncle, named Moshe, was a wanted man in Chausy accused of armed robbery in 1906.
Douglas made more revelations about his father’s Jewish family during the course of the episode and was even presented with a photo of a Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe where some of his ancestors were buried. Upon learning more about his Jewish roots, the Fatal Attraction actor said, “I feel more of a spiritual religious connection to Judaism than I ever had before.”
During Thursday’s episode, meanwhile, Dunham for the first time ever learned that she had a family connection to the Holocaust. The creator of the HBO hit series Girls uncovered information about her Eastern European roots in Poland and Hungary. She learned of an ancestor, named Ilona, who was killed by Nazi SS police in Hungary in 1941 during World War II, along with thousands of Jews during a Nazi roundup.
“It’s an incredibly painful thing to think about people with whom I share probably not just a DNA but the features and emotional responses and an approach to life,” she said after learning about her genetic ties to the Holocaust. “Those people being placed in this situation and having their lives extinguished this way. There’s not a way to reckon with it. It’s too big … but to see a personal connection to it literalizes it in a way that is very, very powerful.”
The final bits of information presented to Douglas about his family revealed that his maternal fourth great-grandfather, named John Neilson, was a colonel of a battalion of a militia in colonial New Jersey during the American Revolution and an informant who provided military intelligence to George Washington. There is even a statue of Neilson in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. However, Neilson was also a slave owner. Reflecting on that unsavory part of his family history, Douglas said it made him think of the Hebrew expression tikkun olam, which means to repair a broken world and make it a better place.
“You feel the obligation [of tikkun olam] and that sense much more when you see something like that,” he said. “It makes you want to be a better person.”
Watch the full episode of Finding Your Roots featuring Douglas and Dunham in the video below.
The post Michael Douglas, Lena Dunham Make Shocking Discoveries About Their Jewish Ancestry first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove: An Israeli stamp reflects the complex mix of emotions about Oct. 7
Michelle Shalmiev was born in a village in the Caucasian mountains and immigrated to Israel and settled on a kibbutz when she was 14. Her series “Putting Your Stamp on History” […]
The post Treasure Trove: An Israeli stamp reflects the complex mix of emotions about Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Download a special Oct. 7 print edition of The Canadian Jewish News
Printable obituaries of eight Canadian victims and more of our original coverage.
The post Download a special Oct. 7 print edition of The Canadian Jewish News appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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The Jewish People Perform Another Miracle
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is seen addressing supporters, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters.
JNS.org – This Oct. 7 will not only be an anniversary of tears, of pure contrition, even if the memory is burning as the people of Israel live. As to how, it wasn’t at all obvious. Our whole history is made of miracles—from the splitting of the sea to escape from the Egyptians to the Inquisition to the pogroms to the thousand other genocidal attacks to which the Jews have been subjected. In every case, the results are always incredible and surprising, especially for how we have emerged active, faithful to our Torah tradition and committed to the return to Jerusalem until we made it happen.
The War of Independence in 1948 was fought by concentration-camp veterans, yet we defeated all the Arab armies, united in hatred, who marched against us. Later, in 1967, 1973 wars were won by a hair’s breadth with miraculous strokes of imagination and leaders who gave birth to ideas that people would have expected. No one would have ever bet a euro, penny or shekel on the idea that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his entire hierarchy could be eliminated, petrifying Iran, especially since we have already reduced its other favorite proxy, Hamas, to pieces. And now we have bombed Iran’s other proxy, the Houthis, some 2,000 kilometers away, destroying the airport from which they receive their weapons and aid from the ayatollahs. The Islamic Republic’s leader, Ali Khamenei, is reportedly hiding underground, the Iraqi and Syrian Shi’ites are waiting to see if they are next, and cities controlled by Tehran are shaking.
As President Joe Biden said, it is a measure of justice, but one that Israel has undertaken in an impossible fashion, defending its citizens amid a thousand prohibitions with determination and without fear. Only in this way can a 76-year-old young state, which has been attacked from all sides, defend itself. The country’s existence is the latest chapter in the history of a people born many millennia ago in the Land of Israel, who are finally back home and defending their state.
The war is certainly not over, as Hezbollah reportedly had 100,000 fighters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that he must see this fight through to the end, despite the international pressure to which Israel has been subjected for nearly a year. Israel’s leadership understands that its very existence is at definitive risk if there is no “new Middle East” in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
While previous generations and Israeli leaders hoped that peace agreements would establish peace in the region, today’s leaders know that there is also a need for battle to stop those who, dominated by absurd fanatical and religious beliefs, wish to kill you. (After all, what do the Houthi rebels in Yemen have to do with the Jews and Israel?)
This is the lesson of our time—not just for Israel and the Jewish people but for everyone. The Jewish people are writing a new page in history, one in which the free world must write and fight alongside them, as it is a battle for the survival of Western ideals. Israel has eliminated the two most dangerous terrorist groups in the world—Hamas and Hezbollah—with operations that will set a precedent for decades. And it challenges Iran. I would like to hear the applause, please.
The post The Jewish People Perform Another Miracle first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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