In this documentary, Hildegard Bachert generously shares memories of her personal life and reflects on the work of 20th-century German artist Kthe Kollwitz. n 1936 at the age of 15, Jewish-born Hildegard Bachert left Germany for America. Only four years later, she joined Otto Kallir’s Galerie St. Etienne in New York. Throughout her career, Bachert has passionately promoted lesser-known German and Austrian artists to an American audience. Since the...

Anna Larina was the young bride of Nikolai Bukharin, one of the top leaders in the early years of the Russian Revolution. This documentary is based on her memorable autobiography, “This I Cannot Forget,” which she wrote late in life, after being imprisoned for almost twenty years in the Russian Gulag. Larina recounts her life story, which is interwoven with extraordinary archival film and interviews. Larina grew up during the 1917 October Revolution,...

A look into the complex and contradictory personality of Yossef Nachmani, the man largely responsible for the first Zionist settlements in the Galilee. As director of the Jewish National Fund office in the Galilee, Nachmani acquired as much land from Arabs as possible to establish Jewish settlements upon it. The film focuses on events in Tiberius, Nachmani's hometown, a mixed community where Arabs and Jews coexisted harmoniously. Nachmani left behind...

Four generations of a Jewish immigrant family create Russ and Daughters, a Lower East Side lox and herring emporium that survives and thrives. Produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the store, this documentary features an extensive interview with two of the original daughters for whom the store was named, now 100 and 92 years old, and interviews with prominent enthusiasts of the store including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,...

A classic text on Zionism for the 21st Century. Since its initial publication in 1997, 'Ahad Ha-am: The Zionism of the Future' has become the definitive and standard study of one of Zionism's most towering and influential figures. The republication of this classic text as an e-book is a cause for celebration for students of history, academics and the public. No one knows Ahad Ha-am better or is better suited to deal with the life and thoughts of the...

Symbolized by a three-hundred-year-old Seder plate, the religious life of Fred Behrend's family had centered largely around Passover and the tale of the Jewish people's exodus from tyranny. When the Nazis came to power, the wide-eyed boy and his family found themselves living a twentieth-century version of that exodus, escaping oppression and persecution in Germany for Cuba and ultimately a life of freedom and happiness in the United States. Behrend's...

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization founded and led by people who were themselves immigrants from Eastern Europe, developed an international network to see to the emigration and placement of tens of thousands of European Jews.

A thief-turned-saint, killed by an insult. A rabbi burning down his world in order to save it. A man who lost his sanity while trying to fathom the origin of the universe. A beautiful woman battling her brother's and her husband's egos to preserve their family. Stories such as these enliven the pages of the Talmud, the great repository of ancient wisdom that is one of the sacred texts of the Jewish people. Comprised of the Mishnah, the oral law of...

Kosher USA follows the fascinating and surprising journey of kosher food through the modern industrial food system. Drawing on episodes from the lives of the author's own family, it traces how iconic products such as Coca-Cola and Jell-O tried to become kosher; the contentious debates among rabbis over the incorporation of modern science into Jewish law; how Manischewitz wine became the first kosher product to win over non-Jewish consumers (principally...

Focusing on a diversely rich selection of writers, the pieces featured in Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative explore the community of Jewish American writers who published their first book after the mid-1980s. It is the first book-length collection of essays on this subject matter with contributions from the leading scholars in the field. The manuscript does not attempt to foreground any one critical...