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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.
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The post This 1939 movie filmed in the Bronx captures a lost Yiddish world appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In a warning sign for the campaign of Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani, a majority of city voters in a new poll say the candidate’s hardline anti-Israel stance makes them less likely to vote for him.
In the survey of likely city voters conducted by American Pulse, 52.5 percent said Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” coupled with his backing of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement made them less likely to vote for him in November. Just 31% of city voters polled were more likely to support him because of these positions.
At the same time, a significant share of young New York City voters support Mamdani’s anti-Israel positioning, a striking sign of shifting generational views on Israel and the Palestinian cause.
Nearly half of voters aged 18 to 44 (46 percent) said the State Assembly member’s backing for BDS and “refusal to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’” made them more likely to support him.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, has been under fire for defending “globalize the intifada,” a slogan many Jewish groups associate with incitement to violence against Israel and Jews. While critics argue it glorifies terrorism, supporters claim it’s a call for international solidarity with oppressed peoples, especially Palestinians. Mamdani has also voiced support for BDS, a movement widely condemned by mainstream Jewish organizations as antisemitic for singling out Israel.
The generational divide exposed by the poll comes amid a broader political realignment. Younger progressives across the country are increasingly critical of Israeli policies, especially in the wake of the Gaza war, and more receptive to Palestinian activism. But to many Jewish leaders, Mamdani’s rising support is alarming.
Rabbi David Wolpe, visiting scholar at Harvard University, condemned the phrase with a sarcastic analogy.
“‘Globalize the intifada’ is just a political slogan,” he said. “Like ‘The cockroaches must be exterminated’ was just a housing authority slogan in Rwanda.”
Jewish organizations have reported a surge in antisemitic incidents in New York and across the U.S. since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last fall. The blending of anti-Zionist slogans with calls for “intifada,” historically linked to violent uprisings, has deepened fears among Jewish communities that traditional red lines are being crossed.
Whether this emerging coalition reshapes New York politics remains to be seen. However, the poll indicates that among younger voters, views that were once considered fringe are quickly moving into the mainstream.
The post New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: Jews Targeted at June’s Pride Month Events
A Jewish gay pride flag. Photo: Twitter.
The research division of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) released a report on Wednesday detailing incidents of hate against Jews which took place last month during demonstrations in celebration of LGBTQ rights and identity.
Incidents reported by the group include:
- At a Pride march in Wales, the activists Cymru Queers for Palestine chose to block the path and show a sign that said “Profiting from genocide,” an attempt to link the event’s sponsors — such as Amazon — to the war in Gaza.
- A Dublin Pride march saw the participation of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which labeled Israel a “genocidal entity.”
- In Toronto at a late June Pride march, demonstrators again attacked organizers with a sign declaring, “Pride partners with genocide.”
CAM also identified a recurring narrative deployed against Israel by some far-left activists: so-called “pinkwashing,” a term which the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement calls “an Israeli government propaganda strategy that cynically exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image while concealing Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies oppressing Palestinians.”
The report notes that at a Washington DC Pride event in early June Medea Benjamin, cofounder of activist group Code Pink and a regular of anti-war protests, wore a pair of goofy, oversized sunglasses and a shirt in her signature pink with the phrase “you can’t pinkwash genocide.”
Other incidents CAM recorded showed the injection of anti-Israel sentiment into Pride events.
A musical group canceled a performance at an interfaith service in Brooklyn, claiming the hosting synagogue had a “public alignment with pro-Israel political positions.” In San Francisco before the yearly Trans March, a Palestine group said in its announcement of its participation, “Stop the war on Iran and the genocide of Palestine, stop the war on immigrants and attacks on trans people.”
CAM notes that this “queers for Palestine” sentiment is not new, pointing to a 2017 event wherein “organizers of the Chicago Dyke March infamously removed participants who were waving a Pride flag adorned with a Star of David on the grounds that the symbol ‘made people feel unsafe.’”
In February, the Israel Defense Forces shared with the New York Post documents it had recovered demonstrating that Hamas had tortured and executed members it suspected of homosexuality and other moral offenses in conflict with Islamist ideology.
Amit Benjamin, who is gay and a first sergeant major in the IDF, said during a visit to New York City for Pride month that “All the ‘queers for Gaza’ need to open their eyes. Hamas kills gays … kills lesbians … queers cannot exist in Gaza.”
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IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 23, 2025. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl/File Photo
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had pulled its last remaining inspectors from Iran as a standoff over their return to the country’s nuclear facilities bombed by the United States and Israel deepens.
Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in a 12-day war with the Islamic Republic three weeks ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have not been able to inspect Iran’s facilities since then, even though IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said that is his top priority.
Iran’s parliament has now passed a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA until the safety of its nuclear facilities can be guaranteed. While the IAEA says Iran has not yet formally informed it of any suspension, it is unclear when the agency’s inspectors will be able to return to Iran.
“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the IAEA said on X.
Diplomats said the number of IAEA inspectors in Iran was reduced to a handful after the June 13 start of the war. Some have also expressed concern about the inspectors’ safety since the end of the conflict, given fierce criticism of the agency by Iranian officials and Iranian media.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31 that led to a resolution by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he stands by the report. He has denied it provided diplomatic cover for military action.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday Iran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“[Grossi] reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israeli military strikes either destroyed or badly damaged Iran’s three uranium enrichment sites. But it was less clear what has happened to much of Iran’s nine tonnes of enriched uranium, especially the more than 400 kg enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons grade.
That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful, but Western powers say there is no civil justification for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without developing the atom bomb.
As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its enriched uranium, which normally is closely monitored by the IAEA, the body that enforces the NPT and verifies countries’ declarations. But the bombing of Iran’s facilities has now muddied the waters.
“We cannot afford that … the inspection regime is interrupted,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna last week.
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