Новости за 30.07.2015

Valentine’s Day is a thoroughly ridiculous holiday. It’s okay, I can say that: I was born on Valentine’s Day. But seriously, whose genius idea was it to place a holiday celebrating passion and romance and love in the dead of winter’s cold, cold heart?

A new Holocaust-themed play called My Report to the World, which just concluded a seven-performance run at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City (with a brief stop in Washington D.C.), tells the story of Jan Karski, a key yet often unknown figure in the Polish underground of World War II. His contributions to the resistance included a secret visit to the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi transit camp for Jews, and then communicating to world leaders, including FDR, about the atrocities he had witnessed. Читать дальше...

When I was single and ads for Tu B’Av, the Jewish Valentine’s Day, would explode across all media throughout Tel Aviv, I would feel thoroughly defeated, deflated. Listening to my friends’ plans—the flowers and the reservations, the gifts and the chocolate—I was reminded just how alone I was, and that my wish for a truly special love might never come.

When Theodore Bikel passed away last week, the New York Times ran an obituary that stated Bikel’s family was from Bukovina, a region described as part of “Romania and Russia.” The Times subsequently corrected this factual mistake about the entertainment giant’s origins after I reached out to them.

Unorthodox, Tablet’s newest podcast, is officially here. Part of Slate’s Panoply network, Unorthodox is a smart, fresh, fun take on Jewish news and culture.

Here’s the moment that tells you everything you need to know about Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, the feverishly anticipated, eight-episode comedy series debuting on Netflix on July 31. It’s when two of the counselors at Camp Firewood, in Maine, challenge each other to a “shofar dick sword fight.”

The subject of writer-director Nadav Lapid’s latest movie is a precocious 5-year-old poet. Lapid, who is 40, can hardly be considered a child prodigy. Still, his two features, Policeman (2011), available through Netflix, and The Kindergarten Teacher (2014), which opens this Friday in New York, have made him the most internationally acclaimed Israeli filmmaker in recent memory… and perhaps ever.

A new movie, The Outrageous Sophie Tucker, purports to introduce audiences to the bawdy, brassy, ballsy singer who was once a household name. Today, she’s nearly forgotten—or remembered merely as an influence on The Divine Bette Midler—but oh, is she worth knowing. Sadly, the movie isn’t a great introduction. It needs a little less conversation, a little more action please (to quote another larger-than-life, sequin-loving singer whose weight was much scrutinized). It’s a fragmented, talking-head-filled balagan. Читать дальше...