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Tough Jews

By Uriel Heilman · October 23, 2008

Edward Zwick's new feature film "Defiance," which opens in the U.S. in September, is also a family film about the Bielski clan, writes Adam Gopnick in The New Yorker:

The film is still a family film, though, since it tells the largely unknown and entirely true story of the Bielski brothers' brigade: of how Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski fled from Poland into the Belarusian forest in 1941—after the Einsatzgruppen had begun the mass slaughter of Jews that marked the first phase of the Holocaust—and managed not only to hold off the German Army, in grudging compact with Russian partisans, but to recruit Jewish civilians and keep them concealed for three years in the forest. By the end, almost twelve hundred Jews were living in the Belarusian woods, in a series of encampments that included libraries, nurseries, and clinics. The story, very well played by Daniel Craig (everyone's favorite non-Jewish Jew), as Tuvia, and Liev Schreiber, as his angrier younger brother Zus, is stirring.

Here's one story about the latter-day Zvi Bielski from his son Zus:

My dad came to visit me in Israel when I was in the Army. First he told me not to go—but when he came to visit he was so proud. He took the gun out of my hands, handled it like a pair of sneakers. 'Never have your gun on safety,' he told me. He was a great father, but he was hard to impress. I used to skydive, and once I had a videotape made—a cameraman jumped out with me. I couldn't wait to get to Brooklyn to show it to Dad! So I showed him the tape. Nothing, no expression. So, finally, I say, 'Pop, did you see that shit!' He looked at me: 'So? You had a parachute, didn't you?'

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Let there be G-dcast

By Daniel Sieradski · October 23, 2008

From the mind of Jewish t-shirt maven Sarah Lefton comes G-dcast, a new animated series of Torah commentaries as told by a different Jewish celebrity each week. Check out the first episode below, which features Rabbi Lawrence Kushner.

New episodes will be posted each Monday at g-dcast.com.

9 Comments | Share This | On the Web, Religion |

Simchat Torah in Egypt

By Uriel Heilman · October 23, 2008

Brenda Gazzar has a dispatch in The Jerusalem Post on spending Simchat Torah in Alexandria, Egypt. In the synagogue with just 25 members, minyans are hard to come by.

0 Comments | Share This | Holidays, Judaism |

Karsenty pushing al-Dura probe

By Uriel Heilman · October 23, 2008

The decision by a Paris court last spring to overturn a libel ruling against Philippe Karsenty, a French media watchdog who claimed the iconic shooting of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura was manipulated by video editing, lent new credence to claims that the September 2000 shooting was staged.

The ruling has fueled Karsenty's increasingly public campaign for a probe of the shooting, which during the violent early days of the second intifada became a symbol for Palestinians of Israeli brutality.

Karsenty talks about the shooting in an interview in the latest issue of the Middle East Quarterly.

Here's JTA's latest story on the subject.

0 Comments | Share This | France, International, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinians |