RSS
This 1939 movie filmed in the Bronx captures a lost Yiddish world
(New York Jewish Week) — The New York Jewish Film Festival, which this year begins on Wednesday evening, is offering moviegoers an opportunity to travel back in time to experience a New York Jewish world of yesteryear.
“Mothers of Today,” a 1939 Yiddish-language feature that was filmed in the Bronx in just five days, will be screened twice as part of the festival. A low-budget potboiler, it stars Esther Fields, a popular radio personality of the era whose “simple Jewish woman” persona learned her the nickname the “Yiddishe Mama.”
The 85-minute drama, which is made with bare-bones sets, costumes and dialogue, follows a widow, played by Fields, as she navigates the sacrifices she made as an immigrant to the United States as her two children begin to reject Jewish tradition and embrace the fast-paced life of New York. In one subplot, her son, a cantor, steals the deed to his mother’s store after falling for a woman of questionable morality and getting involved with gangsters.
“At the time, there was a large immigrant Yiddish-speaking population that was hungry for inexpensive and accessible entertainment,” Eric Goldman, a scholar on Yiddish, Jewish and Israeli cinema and author of “Visions, Images and Dreams: Yiddish Film Past and Present,” said of the era. “They were ready, at least initially, to just watch anything that would entertain them — it’s not as if they needed high culture. The movie theaters were there and willing to show these films.”
Directed by Henry Lynn, “Mothers of Today” is part of the Yiddish genre known as shund — literally, “trash” — a term used to describe popular entertainment of the day. Such films and novels appealed heavily to the working class American Yiddish community. They often drew on widely applicable, sentimental themes that reflected the realities of daily life. Goldman compares shund films to mass-market, low-budget B movies that are beloved by audiences if not respected by critics.
“The film is low budget, maybe even lowbrow, and meant squarely for the audience that enjoyed and gobbled these things up,” said Lisa Rivo, the co-director of the National Center for Jewish Film, which restored “Mothers of Today” for the modern screen. The two screenings of the film this week will be the first public showing of the restored version in the United States.
The New York Jewish Film Festival, now in its 33rd year, is hosted by The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center. It features 28 films that explore Jewish life and experience across the globe. With the exception of “Mothers of Today,” all the films are recent releases including the New York premieres of “One Life,” starring Anthony Hopkins as a real-life British stockbroker who saved hundreds of Jewish children during the Holocaust, and “Remembering Gene Wilder,” a documentary about the iconic Jewish actor.
The National Center for Jewish Film collaborates with the festival every year to screen Yiddish film from their archive of over 15,000 Jewish films from the 20th and 21st century. With “Mothers of Today,” according to Aviva Weintraub, the director of the New York Jewish Film Festival, “We wanted to share this gem of Yiddish film with our audience as we know how much they appreciate Yiddish cinema.”
Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, the National Center for Jewish Film was started in 1976 by Rivo’s mother, Sharon Pucker Rivo, who had acquired and restored 30 Yiddish films. Yiddish cinema — which included shund films but also higher quality, more artistic films — saw its height in the interwar period between the 1920s and early 1940s when about 130 films were made, mostly in Poland and the United States. Before the NCJF, the era of Yiddish film was relatively forgotten — a “lost chapter of cinema history,” according to Rivo.
“Without her having brought together all of these different Yiddish films, there would be no understanding of something called ‘Yiddish cinema,’” Rivo said of her mother. “By aggregating the films and by putting them back together, restoring them, and making them available for screenings like this one… I think she really changed the course of Jewish history and also cinema history.”
As for shund films in particular, audiences also loved them because “most of these were about daily life and the struggles of that population,” Goldman explained. Such films often centered, like “Mothers of Today,” on the role of Jewish women in the home and in immigrant communities.
“They depict a people that are suspended between two worlds — between tradition and modernity, the old country and the new country, the shtetl and the city,” Rivo said of the genre.
“To be able to see yourself on screen — as a Yiddish speaking immigrant, children of immigrants, or even grandchildren of immigrants — must have been a kind of an extraordinary experience.”
For today’s audiences, watching such films “gives us access to the psyche of immigrant life,” Rivo said.
“Mothers of Today”may not be the highest quality film ever made, according to Goldman, but it’s worth watching to “have a fun, escapist night and remember what it was like for these very unsophisticated immigrants, many of whom only spoke Yiddish, to have a night out, just to get away and laugh and choke and squeak and squeal,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“Mothers of Today” is screening on Thursday, Jan. 11 at 2:30 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 14 at 12:00 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W 65th St.). Tickets start at $17. Fore more information about the New York Jewish Film Festival, click here.
—
The post This 1939 movie filmed in the Bronx captures a lost Yiddish world appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Hamas Confirms Death of Terror Chief Mohammed Deif Months After Israeli Strike
Picture said to show leader of Hamas’s military wing, known as Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif in a location given as Gaza Strip in this handout picture released on Jan. 7, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas officially confirmed on Thursday that its military chief, Mohammed Deif, was killed during the Gaza war, almost six months after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported his death.
Deif, the architect of Hamas’s military capabilities, is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — which sparked the Gaza war.
Abu Ubaida, a Hamas spokesperson, also reported the deaths of Deif’s deputy, Khan Younis Brigade commander Rafa Salama, as well as senior operatives Marwan Issa, Ghazi Abu Tama’a, Raad Thabet, Ahmed Ghandour, and Ayman Nofal.
According to the IDF, Deif was killed in an airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on July 13 of last year.
Following weeks of intelligence assessments, Israeli authorities gathered evidence to confirm Deif’s death before publicly announcing it in early August.
“IDF fighter jets struck in the area of Khan Yunis, and … it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated in the strike,” the military said. “His elimination serves the objectives of the war and demonstrates Israel’s ability to carry out targeted strikes with precision.”
At the time, Hamas neither confirmed nor denied Deif’s death, but one official, Ezzat Rashaq, stated that any announcements regarding the deaths of its leaders would be made solely by the organization.
“Unless either of them [the Hamas political and military leadership] announces it, no news published in the media or by any other parties can be confirmed,” Rashaq said.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Deif, as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Deif is believed to have collaborated closely with the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, managing military operations and coordinating with the group’s top commanders throughout the conflict.
After Deif’s assassination, then-defense minister Gallant posted an image on social media praising the Israeli military’s accomplishment.
“The assassination of mass murderer Mohammed Deif — ‘Gaza’s Bin Laden’ — is a major step toward dismantling Hamas as a military and governing entity, and achieving the war’s objectives,” he said.
The post Hamas Confirms Death of Terror Chief Mohammed Deif Months After Israeli Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
‘A Bad but Necessary Deal’: Five Members of His Family Were Murdered — Today, Their Killer Walks Free
Oran Almog, right, addressing the UN Security Council next to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon on July 25, 2017. Photo: Screenshot
While the release of three Israeli hostages on Thursday brought relief and elation across Israel, it also triggered a wave of mixed emotions, especially among victims who saw the terrorists responsible for their suffering set free. One of them is Oran Almog, who was just ten years old when a Palestinian terrorist disguised as a pregnant woman blew up the restaurant he was in, killing five members of his family and leaving him blind.
Yet, while Thursday’s release of Sami Jaradat — the mastermind behind the October 2003 massacre of Almog’s family — was a deeply personal blow, the return of hostages remained a necessary step, he said.
“That the terrorist who killed my family will find himself free is deeply painful, heartbreaking even,” he told The Algemeiner. “But at the same time, I know that even today — especially today — I must set aside my personal pain and focus on the significance of this deal. And the significance is clear. We are getting our hostages home, and that is the only thing that matters.”
Almog’s father, Moshe Almog, his younger brother, Tomer, his grandparents Admiral (res.) Ze’ev and Ruth Almog, and his cousin, Asaf, were murdered when the suicide bomber, Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, managed to get past the security guard of the Maxim restaurant — jointly owned by a Jewish Israeli and an Arab Israeli — and blow herself up. Sixteen other people were also murdered in the attack, among them four children. Almog lost his eyesight, and his mother, sister, and aunt were among the 60 injured Israelis.
“Sami Jaradat’s continued imprisonment will never bring my family back, but his release can bring the hostages back home alive,” Almog explained.
Emotional meeting between Agam Berger and her family at Beilinson Hospital in Israel. Photo: Haim Zach (GPO)
Almog knows firsthand what it means to be on the receiving end of a hostage-prisoner exchange.
Just two weeks after marking the 20th anniversary of the Maxim restaurant attack, another tragedy struck his family. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered Nadav and Yam and abducted Chen, Agam, Gal, and Tal from the Almog-Goldstein family in Kfar Azza.
Fifty-one days later, in November 2023, they were released from Hamas captivity in a temporary ceasefire deal.
Under the current ceasefire agreement reached earlier this month, Hamas will release a total 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, according to the terrorist group. In exchange, Israel will free over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were serving multiple life sentences on terrorism offenses. Thursday saw the release of three Israelis — including IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger, 20, and civilians Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80 — and five Thai nationals, who were working in Israeli kibbutzim when they were abducted.
“This is a bad deal, very bad, but the alternative is that much worse,” Almog said. “We must look ahead, put today aside, and recognize that releasing prisoners serves a greater purpose.”
However, Almog expressed hope that Israel would move toward a more decisive and uncompromising approach in its fight against terrorism.
“I sincerely hope that as a country, we will have the wisdom to decisively thwart terrorism,” he said, emphasizing the need to break free from the ongoing cycle of prisoner exchanges.
“I don’t want us to find ourselves trapped in a cycle of releasing terrorists, only for them to return to terror, and then repeat the process again and again,” he added.
Almog has previously addressed the UN Security Council, urging action against the so-called “pay-for-slay” scheme, in which terrorists and their families receive monthly stipends from the Palestinian Authority. The terrorist behind the murder of Almog’s family received $3,000 a month while behind bars, making him almost a millionaire by the time of his release.
Still, Almog concluded with a deeply uplifting message for the returning hostages, confident that they would have a chance at a good life, drawing from his own experiences since the terror attack.
Oran Almog. Photo: Facebook
After his release from the hospital, he began a long rehabilitation process, culminating in third place at the World Blind Sailing Championship with Etgarim, a nonprofit founded by disabled veterans and rehabilitation experts, and supported by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). He was chosen to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the state and, despite his disability, insisted on enlisting in the IDF, serving in an elite unit. Today, he is a managing partner at a financial technology fund, works with Etgarim, and shares his story globally through lectures.
“I know the hostages will be able to return, to live, and to live well. With enough support — and a great deal of willpower — it is truly possible to rebuild life, even after the deepest catastrophes,” he said.
The post ‘A Bad but Necessary Deal’: Five Members of His Family Were Murdered — Today, Their Killer Walks Free first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Pro-Israel Lawmaker Randy Fine Wins Florida GOP Primary, Favorite to Replace Trump Adviser Mike Waltz in Congress
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine. Photo: Reuters
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine emerged victorious on Tuesday in the Republican primary election for the Sunshine State’s 6th Congressional District in the US Congress, making the firebrand conservative the overwhelming favorite to secure the highly-coveted seat to replace now-former Rep. Mike Waltz.
The congressional seat became vacant after Waltz stepped down to become the national security adviser for US President Donald Trump in the White House. Waltz had managed to secure reelection in November with 66 percent of the vote.
Fine, who is Jewish, has established himself as a stalwart ally of Israel. In the year following the Hamas-led slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages during a cross-border invasion into southern Israel, Fine has spearheaded efforts to uproot antisemitism within the state of Florida.
In August 2024, he chided Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for taking a trip to Ireland, repudiating the country as “antisemitic.”
“I was certainly disappointed to see not only folks go to what is clearly an antisemitic country that supports Muslim terror, but I was also disappointed that the game wasn’t cancelled, which it should have been,” Fine said.
Ireland has been a fierce critic of Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, even joining a legal case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The move, which came after the Irish government in May officially recognized a Palestinian state, led Israel to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
In August 2024, Fine launched an investigation into alleged antisemitic and pro-terrorist ideology within instructional materials at Florida public universities. Fine suggested that activist professors were using textbooks that were indoctrinating students with anti-Israel sentiment.
“When we learned that Florida universities were using a factually inaccurate, openly antisemitic textbook, we realized there was a problem that had to be addressed,” Fine said.
Following the New Year’s Day ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New Orleans, Fine raised eyebrows by repudiating Islam as a “fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”
“Muslim terror has attacked the United States — again. The blood is on the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge the worldwide #MuslimProblem. It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture,” Fine posted on X/Twitter.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US congratulated Fine for his primary victory on Tuesday.
“We are proud to support pro-Israel candidates who help strengthen and expand the US-Israel relationship. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics,” AIPAC, which endorsed Fine, posted on social media.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), an organization that attempts to forge closer ties between the Jewish community and the Republican Party, touted Fine’s vigorous crusade against antisemitism within the Florida state legislature.
“Randy Fine is a warrior for his constituents and has served for years in the Florida legislature with distinction,” RJC wrote on X/Twitter. “Randy Fine will be a fierce advocate for the Jewish community in the House of Representatives. Importantly, he has led the fight and been the loudest voice against the rise of antisemitism in Florida and across the country.”
The post Pro-Israel Lawmaker Randy Fine Wins Florida GOP Primary, Favorite to Replace Trump Adviser Mike Waltz in Congress first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login