Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

President Carol Folt honored Holocaust survivors and the Shoah Foundation Monday for its outstanding leadership in preserving the testimonies of the Holocaust during a private event at Town and Gown.

The Shoah Foundation is an institute based at USC with the mission of telling the stories of Holocaust survivors and witnesses through audio-visual testimonies. The Foundation celebrated its 30-year anniversary Monday.

President Folt opened up the afternoon with a speech highlighting the work done by the Shoah Foundation, the perseverance of the Holocaust survivors and the work that still needs to be done to stop the spread of anti-Semitism.

One survivor told me its my duty to speak on the 6 million and I say its our duty to ensure your voices are heard by 6 billion, Folt said.

Folt also acknowledged the rise in American antisemitism after the Hamas attacks on Israel last fall.

We all know antisemitism is on the rise and frighteningly so, and we feel the searing pain of October 7 and we must fight antisemitism with everything, Folt said. The survivors testimonies are the best way to educate those up somewhat ignorant about the Holocaust view as the mission to preserve and protect these eyewitness accounts in perpetuity.

Celina Biniaz, a Holocaust survivor and recipient of the University Medallion, echoed Folts concerns about rising hate.

Today were living in a world shaken by tremendous divisions and horrible violence. We are seeing a frightening return of the same kind of antisemitism I experienced both before and after the war in Europe, Biniaz said. We must never give in to the corrosive power of hatred, and we must always remember the power each individual has to transform the lives of others.

Biniaz, a Jewish person who was saved because her family and her name were added to a list of workers who were to be protected from the Nazis, thanked Steven Spielberg and the Shoah Foundation for allowing her to speak her voice.

After Folts speech, Spielberg, an Oscar-winning USC alumnus and the founder of the Shoah Foundation, came forward to deliver his remarks. Spielberg, who grew up in a Jewish family, recounted how his grandmother taught English to Hungarian Holocaust survivors and said that he was taught to read numbers that were tattooed on survivors arms.

Spielberg also addressed the Israel-Hamas conflict and mentioned how the Shoah Foundation is more important than ever before.

We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7 and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza, Spielberg said. This makes us a unique force for good in the world and is why we are here today to celebrate the work of the Shoah Foundation, which is more crucial now.

Only given three other times in history, the prestigious University Medallion medal was received on stage by Spielberg, Biniaz and Joel Citron, a Shoah Foundation board member. Other Holocaust survivors were in attendance as well.

The afternoon also included a musical performance of the prayer Ani Maamin by Hebrew Union College student Leslie Goldberg. A Zoom Q&A session with student athlete Rae Anne Serville and Holocaust survivor Shaul Ladany followed the performance.

I think the event was beautifully done, said Carol Stulberg, a former interviewer and director of development for the Shoah Foundation who is currently a consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was a long time coming, and every single survivor who has given their testimony, and even those who havent, deserve the accolades and the recognition for their bravery and their survivorship.

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Joey King steps back in time in We Were the Lucky Ones, portraying a Jewish woman whose family seeks refuge during the Holocaust.

King, 24, identifies as Jewish but tells PEOPLE in this weeks issue that she doesnt consider herself a religious person.

I don't know exactly what I believe in, she explains. I'm still figuring that out. But I do feel a really loving tie to my Judaism. It's the tradition that is my favorite part, because I always say I love all the holidays and all the traditions because it's just a reason to get together with my family.

Still, King found working on a story centered around her religion to be gratifying.

I do feel lucky to be part of a show that celebrates Jews, she says. I was always really proud to be who I am, but working on a show where it's the theme 24/7, you are dealing with this heavy subject matter and your own background tied with it, it was a really beautiful thing.

The actress acknowledges that the shows heavy subject pulls at your heart in a different way than other projects shes worked on.

There were some nights where it was really hard, and I would call my sisters or my husband or my mom and just talk through what the day was like, call my husband on FaceTime while we watch a comedy special together on FaceTime or something like that, the Kissing Booth star says. That was surprising for me 'cause I'm usually very good at separating them. Obviously, my ancestry has a big tie to that, so it was a very deeply personal set to be on.

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We Were the Lucky Ones, based on Georgia Hunter's book by the same name, filmed for seven months, and sometimes, King says she and her castmates really needed breaks of humor and comedy. At one point, King turned on a Pixar movie with her costar Eva Feiler to decompress.

One weekend we were just like, We need to watch Finding Nemo this weekend. We just need to, King recalls. She came over and we made a cheese board. We just needed those nice moments with each other.

For more on Joey King, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

Despite its challenges, King calls being on set her happy place.

The job is my favorite thing in the world, she says. I love what I do so much, so for me, all I really want to do is just be around for a long time and keep working. I hope I'm still acting until the day that I'm on my deathbed.

King, who started acting at age 4 in commercials, recognizes that not all child stars transition successfully to adult careers.

There was many opportunities for me to go a different direction with my life, that would've been not a good direction, the L.A. native says. Those opportunities, unfortunately, presented themselves many times, but, my mom and my sisters and my grandma made me feel really safe and protected. I care about their opinion of me so much, and I always wanted to make them proud. They were really my grounding force.

The Emmy nominee says life changed overnight after the first Kissing Booth movie came out in 2018.

People were looking at me I was a representation of an era for themselves and for their lives, which was really special, King says. This movie became this pop culture phenomenon, and it was insane.

Now, King hopes her latest project, We Were the Lucky Ones, makes an equal impact.

I really hope people take away from this show is what we all took away from the experience of filming it, [which] was: family is everything, King says. A family's fight for survival and seeing all the ups and downs they go through during this horrible, horrible time in history is so moving and so touching. Hold space in your heart for people that you don't know what they're going through. Be compassionate and don't let the same things happen.

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We Were the Lucky Ones is out now on Hulu.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Its always daunting to press play on a TV show, movie, or documentary about the Holocaust. As necessary and important as these stories are, theyre also agonizing. And Hulus new limited series We Were the Lucky Ones about a Polish family forced to scatter across multiple continents during World War II is a tough watch. But those who brave this moving limited series, based on Georgia Hunters historical novel, will also find it to be edifying, educational, and ultimately rewarding.

The eight-episode drama introduces us to Halina Kurc (Joey King), a young woman living with her family in Radom, Poland, in 1938. Its Passover, and Halinas parents, Sol (Lior Ashkenazi) and Nechuma (Robin Weigert), are giddily awaiting the return of their son Addy (Logan Lerman), a musician who lives in Paris. The family is thriving: Sol and Nechuma own a successful fabric store; their sons Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) and Jakob (Amit Rhav) are training to be lawyers; Addys latest composition is a radio hit; and their daughter Mila (Hadas Yaron) is expecting her first child with her doctor husband, Selim (Michael Aloni). Still, fears about Hitlers growing ambitions and rising antisemitism across Europe have begun to infiltrate the periphery of their cheerful existence. Itll pass, Genek assures Addy. Radom is not Germany.

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His optimism, as we know now, was misguided. The premiere, written by showrunner Erica Lipez (The Morning Show, Bates Motel), carefully cultivates a feeling of creeping dread a Jewish man with a black eye smoking a cigarette outside a Radom caf; a man walking the streets of Paris in a government-issued gas mask as the dangers facing the continent become harder to ignore. Before the hour is over, the Germans have invaded Poland, launching the Kurc family into a years-long nightmare.

Inspired by the true story of Hunters ancestors, We Were the Lucky Ones sprawling narrative explores how the Nazis reign of terror reached far beyond the borders of the death camps and why survival offered no escape from the horrors. Sol, Nechuma, Mila, and her daughter (Artemisia Pagliano) are pushed out of their home and forced into factory work; Halina and Bella (Eva Feiler), Jakobs girlfriend, make a dangerous trek to Soviet-occupied Lvov to find him; Genek and his wife, Herta (Moran Rosenblatt), are sent to a brutal, Russian-controlled work camp; Addy attempts to flee to Brazil but winds up trapped in Nazi-sympathizing Dakar.

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Though their circumstances are extremely varied, every member of the Kurc family is surrounded by the threat of death: Pogroms, mass shootings, starvation, back-breaking labor, the flagrant cruelty of SS soldiers, etc. But Lucky Ones also emphasizes the invisible torture thats intrinsic to the daily act of survival. You need to laugh more when Germans tell jokes, Halina scolds Mila, after they decide to conceal their identity. No Jewish eyes! If we look as sad as we feel, we may as well just announce ourselves. Even as their torment worsens every passing year, the Kurc family defies the Nazis evil by refusing to succumb to it. Faith is a choice, says Herta. Its an act of will. That theme, which recurs through countless other Holocaust survival stories, is what makes the tragedy of Lucky Ones bearable.

As the feisty and quick-witted Halina, King is the emotional engine of the series. Attacking her characters ordeal with passionate defiance, the actress ensures that the Kurc familys intense yearning for a reunion underscores her every scene. (Both she and Ashkenazi, as Halinas steadfast father, Sol, even manage to get a few laughs, which is no small feat in a Holocaust drama.) And Lerman, an actor whose boyish mien can veer suave or heartbreakingly fragile, melds easily with the charismatic Addy.

For Jewish survivors, the struggles of World War II didnt end on VE Day. The excruciating wait for updates on family members from the Red Cross, the jarring shift back to freedom after years of oppression, the return to cities that no longer feel like home We Were the Lucky Ones touches too briefly on these rich themes in its 73-minute finale. But it also gifts viewers with much-needed moments of ugly-cry uplift and a reminder that there are some stories we should never stop telling. Grade: B+

We Were the Lucky Ones premieres Thursday, March 28, on Hulu.

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President Carol Folt presented Holocaust survivors and leaders of the Shoah Foundation The Institute for Visual History and Education with the University Medallion, the fourth time USC has awarded this recognition in its history.

The ceremony recognized the Shoah Foundations 30th anniversary and honored the over 30 Holocaust survivors in attendance. Speakers also reflected on the ongoing rise in antisemitism across the world and on United States college campuses especially after Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Southern Israel and Israels ongoing war in Gaza.

It is USCs mission to preserve and protect these eyewitness accounts in perpetuity, and awarding the University Medallion is one way that we do it, Folt said in her remarks. It will forever be a public display of our commitment to ensuring the testimonies of survivors will be preserved for generations to come.

The University Medallion is a recognition granted to those who have made major contributions to the university, according to USC. This is the first award granted to nondonors since the first honoree in 1994; other awardees include Wallis and Walter Annenberg, as well as Dana and David Dornsife.

Filmmaker and Shoah Foundation Founder Steven Spielberg spoke at the ceremony with Robert Williams, the Finci-Viterbi executive director of the Shoah Foundation, and Board of Councilors Chair Joel Citron.

The event also featured a performance of Ani Maamin a traditional Jewish prayer which translates to I believe by Leslie Goldberg, a third-year cantorial student at Hebrew Union College and a conversation with Rae-Anne Serville, a senior majoring in health and human sciences, and a USC track athlete who visited Poland in Summer 2023 to learn about the Holocaust during the Shoah Foundations Stronger Than Hate Leadership Summit.

Over 260 people attended the ceremony, including Holocaust survivors who have provided testimonies to the Shoah Foundation. Spielberg who was inspired to found the Shoah Foundation after his work on Schindlers List (1993), the film that dramatized Oskar Schindlers effort to save the lives of about 1,200 Jews said the stories of Holocaust survivors are one of the strongest weapons against antisemitism.

The one thing that always punctured that darkness [producing Schindlers List] was when Holocaust survivors would visit us in Krakw where we were filming and I remember every survivor that had a story to tell me, Spielberg said. It pained me that their stories were not being documented as proof of what happened unto them and to all the Jews.

The event included remarks from Holocaust survivors Shaul Ladany and Celina Karp Biniaz, who accepted the award on behalf of all other Holocaust survivors. Biniaz is one of the last living survivors from Schindlers List.

Biniaz was eight years old when the Nazis occupying her city forced her and her community into a ghetto in Krakw, Poland in 1941, and later to the Krakw-Paszw and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. In 1944, she became the youngest woman included on Schindlers List. In the years following the war, Biniaz said she rarely talked about her experiences.

Even my children didnt know I was a Holocaust survivor, because I didnt want them to relive my trauma; that changed after I saw Schindlers List, Biniaz said. Thanks to [Spielberg], I can tell the world about how the Nazis stole my childhood.

Multiple speakers said the Shoah Foundations work in documenting and combating antisemitism is more important than ever following the Oct. 7 attacks. Less than one week after the attacks, the Shoah Foundation launched an initiative to collect testimonies from the attack as part of their series on contemporary antisemitism. Since then, the archive has amassed over 230 accounts and counting.

The Anti-Defamation League found that antisemitic incidents surged by 360% in the three months following Oct. 7, 2023 compared to the previous years numbers. The ADL recorded instances of physical assault, vandalism and rallies that expressed support for terrorism against the state of Israel or anti-Zionism in its tally, which reached 3,291 a number higher than most yearly totals in the past 10 years.

College campuses across the country have served as a forum for tensions surrounding the war and race and religious bias to boil over, including on USCs campus.

From the controversial first statement that Folt released acknowledging the attacks, which some condemned as weak, to the tumult surrounding a professors clash with demonstrators memorializing Palestinians in Gaza killed after Oct. 7. Jewish students and community members said Folt and USC administration werent doing enough to support the campus Jewish community.

Dave Cohn, the executive director of USC Hillel Jewish Center, attended the event and said he was struck by how the event demonstrated USCs commitment to living its values by honoring the Shoah Foundations work, though he said USCs work in building a strong Jewish community on campus is incomplete and ongoing.

The question that lives with me, day to day, is always How will we perform when were next deeply tested? Cohn said. We have a really high-functioning partnership and relationship with the University, which leads to a generally supportive and safe climate for our students, which is a really strong baseline.

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(March 25, 2024 / JNS)

Master tailor Martin Greenfield gained a national reputation over the generations with his brand of fitted suits and mens clothing worn by U.S. presidents and Hollywood celebrities alike. He died on March 20 at age 95.

Maximilian Grnfeld was born to a Jewish family on Aug. 9, 1928, in a region of Czechoslovakia now ruled by Ukraine.

In 1942, when barely a teen, he and his family, including his grandparents, were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. Only he and his father survived the next few years, though his father died shortly before the concentration camp was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945.

He recounted on video that when U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the camp months later, he shook his hand and told him that he saved his life.

On Sept. 18, 1947, poor and alone, he arrived in the United States, changing his name to Martin Greenfield and settling in New York City. He managed to get a job as a floor boy at a tailoring firm in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Said to have learned the value of clothing from the Nazis, over the years, he made it a point to learn clothes-making skills as well as the production process.

I wanted to be the best, to stand out, he wrote in his autobiography Measure of a Man: A Memoir, From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents Tailor.

Thirty years later, Greenfield bought the tailoring firm, renaming it Martin Greenfield Clothiers.

His suits developed a cult following, patronized by U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump; former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell; and businessman Michael Bloomberg, the three-term mayor of New York City. According to Yahoo! News, Greenfield was scheduled to hold a fitting for President George W. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001; it was canceled.

Greenfields clothes found fans not only in politics but in Hollywood, where his work appeared in the HBO gangster drama Boardwalk Empire, and the films The Great Gatsby and The Wolf of Wall Street. Celebrities who wore his handiwork include Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman. Top professional athletes also called on the tailors company, such as LeBron James and Shaquille ONeal.

It was noted that since Greenfield missed his bar mitzvah due to World War II and the Holocaust, he eventually celebrated the Jewish milestone at the age of 80.

He was known to say, in accented English, that he loved America for the refuge and opportunity it gave him.

He is survived by his wife, Arlene (nee Bergen); sons Jay Greenfield and Tod Greenfield; and four grandchildren.

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Below are quotes and visual assets accessible for media that covered USCs University Medallion event. The medallion was awarded on Monday to Holocaust survivors and supporters of USC Shoah Foundation. We ask that you please credit USC for the enclosed assets if they are used in your coverage.

Contact: Emily Gersema at gersema@usc.edu or 213-712-3168; Kate Canada Obregon at canadaob@usc.edu; USC Media Relations at uscnews@usc.edu or 213-740-2215.

USC President Carol Folt on Monday, March 25, bestowed the prestigious University Medallion upon Holocaust survivors who have bravely shared their testimonies with USC Shoah Foundation since the foundation began 30 years ago.

Among the more than 260 attendees at the event were an estimated 30 Holocaust survivors and their families.

Your testimonies are an irreplaceable record of a dark time in history that we, the world, must never forget. And we will never forget, said USC President Carol Folt before she bequeathed the medallion. One survivor said, It is my duty to speak for 6 million. And I say: Its our duty to ensure your voices are heard by 6 billion.

The 56,000 survivors whose testimonies are preserved at the USC Shoah Foundation are only the fourth recipients of the University Medallion in USCs history.

The weight of the moment was made clear by the founder of USC Shoah Foundation, Steven Spielberg. The foundation was formed 30 years ago, in 1994, after the release of Spielbergs acclaimed film, Schindlers List.

I am increasingly alarmed that we may be condemned to repeat history to once again have to fight for the very right to be Jewish, said Spielberg. In the face of brutality and persecution, we have always been a resilient and compassionate people who understand the power of empathy to combat fear.

We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7th and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza, Spielberg added. This makes us a unique force for good in the world and is why we are here today to celebrate the work of the Shoah Foundation, which is more crucial now than it was in 1994.

The University Medallion is a symbol of USCs lasting commitment to use these visual and oral histories to educate, to enlighten and to shape a future without hate, Folt said.

The University Medallion has only been given three times in the history of USC, most recently in 2017. It is the universitys highest honor and is awarded to those who have made a profound impact on our community.

Past recipients of the medallion have included:

About USC Shoah Foundation Its core purpose is to give opportunity to survivors and witnesses to the Shoah the genocide of the Jews to tell their own stories in their own words in audio-visual interviews, preserve their testimonies, and make them accessible for research, education, and outreach for the betterment of humankind in perpetuity.

Event photos, credit USC/Sean Dube

Special USC Shoah Foundation video, credit USC Shoah Foundation

Event video footage,creditUSC. Speakers in sequence with time stamps:

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Holocaust survivors accepted the University Medallion to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Shoah Foundation. The foundation, founded by acclaimed director Steven Spielberg, records Holocaust survivor testimonies. The Supreme Court will hear arguments about access to a major abortion pill. And Boeing announced that its CEO will step down following a series of aircraft malfunctions.

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WTOP caught up with "We Were the Lucky Ones" actress Joey King, showrunner Erica Lipez and author Georgia Hunter, who based the eponymous source novel about the Holocaust on her grandfather, Addy. The miniseries premieres on Hulu this Thursday.

WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'We Were the Lucky Ones' on Hulu (Part 1)

The new miniseries depicting the Holocaust, We Were the Lucky Ones, premieres on Hulu this Thursday.

WTOP caught up with actress Joey King, showrunner Erica Lipez and author Georgia Hunter, who based the eponymous source novel on her grandfather, Addy.

Unlike many kids who come from Holocaust survivors, I did not know this part of my story, Hunter told WTOP. My grandfather was one of those who put it behind him. I adored my grandfather, but he died when I was 14. Then at 15, a high-school English teacher assigned us a project to interview a relative to learn about our roots. I sat with my grandmother, Caroline, and it was over the course of that hour with her that his story came to light.

The miniseries follows a Polish-Jewish family, including five siblings and their two parents, who are separated at the start of World War II, but they remain determined to survive and reunite after the war. Its adapted for the screen by Lipez, who was previously a writer and executive producer on Bates Motel and The Morning Show.

When I read Georgias book, I read it in like 24 hours I couldnt put it down. It left me absolutely breathless and heartbroken and uplifted, Lipez told WTOP. It had everything that I had ever wanted to do as a writer and as a Jewish writer. I had never been able to explore content like this, but as someone who had written a lot of television, I knew some of the rules you try to follow in TV and it broke so many of them.

Lipez tapped Virginia native Thomas Kail (Hamilton) to direct alongside Amit Gupta and Neasa Hardiman.

It does have that breathless pace that you want to follow, Lipez said. I think what makes this story so remarkable are the different strands of storytelling through the family. To be able to follow those storylines equally throughout the series is only something you could do in a TV show with eight episodes. That was the real gift that Hulu gave us: to have those eight hours to explore the family in as much depth as we wanted to.

The series stars King, who began as a child star in Crazy Stupid Love and The Conjuring before earning an Emmy nomination for Hulus The Act and kicking butt in the Hulu movie The Princess. Born in 1999, King wasnt alive for Schindlers List (1999) or Life is Beautiful (1997), but shes no stranger to the Holocaust.

The Holocaust and my Jewish history has been something that is ever-present in conversations in my home since I was a young girl, King told WTOP. In an age of social media, information is so accessible. Everything is tailored to each person so perfectly on algorithms. I have had very interesting stories of Holocaust survivors show up on TikTok, but I dont know if its just my algorithm. I really hope that my generation can continue to learn about it.

Now, a limited series like We Were the Lucky Ones is the perfect starting point.

Our show is educational, its very harrowing, it has a lot of hope and a lot of heartbreak, but its also entertainment, which is a really fabulous way to retain information by sitting down and watching a show with your family, with your loved ones, King said. When any true version of the Holocaust is told in a form of television or film, its an opportunity to learn a completely new perspective from the Holocaust.

WTOP's Jason Fraley previews 'We Were the Lucky Ones' on Hulu (Part 2)

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

This article is alsoavailable as a weeklynewsletter, Life Stories, wherewe remember those who made an outsize impact in the Jewish world or just left their community a better or more interesting place. Subscribe here to get Life Stories in your inbox every Tuesday.

In the 1980s, an Auschwitz survivor brought his damaged violin to the Tel Aviv workshop of Israeli luthier Amnon Weinstein. That encounter planted the seed for Violins of Hope, Weinsteins effort to restore violins owned by Jews before and during the Holocaust and hear them played in defiant concerts the world over.

Weinstein and his son Avshalom eventually collected more than 60 instruments, and the project became the subject of a best-selling book by James A. Grymes and an acclaimed PBS documentary.

All [the] instruments have a common denominator: they are symbols of hope and a way to say: remember me, remember us,according to the Violins of Hope website. Life is good, celebrate it for those who perished, for those who survived. For all people.

Weinstein was supremely confident and supremely dedicated to his craft. In an interview in 1988 with The Nation, a short-lived Israeli English-language newspaper, he likened himself to master violin makes like Stradivarius and Guadagnini. He recalled his training in Cremona, the Italian town that has for centuries produced luthiers. And I repay the tradition with my heart, he said.

A label on one of his half-finished violins bore his name, Amnon Weinstein, in Latin letters and the date in Hebrew. Maybe centuries from now it will elicit the same gasp as a Stradivarius. Then again, maybe not.

He had massive affection for his musician clients, if he thought they were a little dim. It drove him mad when violinists and violists would tell him that perhaps the varnish was off. I made a viola once and everyone at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra played it, he said. They came back and said the sound wasnt right, maybe it was the varnish as if they knew anything. On one occasion, Shlomo Mintz, a virtuoso of the violin and the viola, borrowed the viola others had criticized. That night he plays beautifully. The next day, theyre all in here, saying, Youve done something to it, Amnon, its changed. I did nothing to it.

He refused to sell the pleaders the viola and kept it in reserve in this apartment for when Mintz was in town.

Weinstein died on March 4 in Tel Aviv. He was 84.

Miranda Frums work appeared in The Tower, Macleans, the Huffington Post and the National Post. (Legacy.com)

In 2018, after returning from a four-year stay in Israel, the writer,modeland media strategistMiranda Frum was diagnosed with a large brain tumor. After recovering from surgery in Los Angeles and later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, at her parents home in Ontario, she moved to Brooklyn. On Feb. 16, she died in her apartment, her immune system depleted by her many treatments. She was 32.

Frum grew up in Washington, D.C., and later attended the University of Toronto. She travelled to Israel in 2013 on a youth program and stayed, working as a fashion model and contributing to a number of publications, including The Daily Beast and The Tower. Tel Aviv is an island of lost boys and girls all of us from near and far who have been drawn to the scene searching for stability, searching for a place to call home, she wrote in 2014.

Her father,Atlantic magazine staff writer David Frum, remembers her in an essay in the current issue:

Miranda was fiercely independent and stoic, often too independent and stoic for her own good. She had braved dangers all her life. In Israel, she smiled her way through photo sessions as Hamas rockets flew overhead. In France, when anti-Semitic thugs tried to intimidate her and some Israeli friends on the Paris subway, Miranda defiantly spoke Hebrew extra loudly. She urged self-doubting friends, You need to say fk you to more people more often. Always ready to listen to the troubles of others, she adamantly refused to discuss her own.

Rabbi Barry Silver, who led a lawsuit against Floridas anti-abortion law in the wake of the Dobbs decision, is shown here in the documentary Under G-d. (Courtesy of Under G-d)

Barry Silver, a Florida rabbi, lawyer and activist who rarely flinched from a fight on an array of causes, died March 24. He was 67 and had been diagnosed with colon cancer 15 years ago.

The founder and rabbi of the post-denominational Congregation LDor Va-Dor in Boynton Beach,Silver filed a lawsuit in 2022 challenging new state abortion limits on religious liberty grounds. He fought successfully to block a developer from building a major project that threatened farmland and wetlands, and led an effort to oppose book bans in Palm Beach County schools.

He went to bat for the underdog all the time,the congregation coordinator, Sharon Leibovitz, told the Sun-Sentinel.

Silver served one term in the Florida House of Representatives, and died one day after copies of his new book, Cosmic Judaism: Uniting Judaism and Science to Enlighten the World, arrived at his home.

Harvey Schulweis was the longtime chairman of The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. (Courtesy JFR)

In 1992, investorHarvey Schulweis, at the behest of his cousin Harold Schulweis, the well-known California rabbi, became chairman of The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. Over the next 31 years, JFR raised and distributed more than $45 million in financial assistance to aged and needy gentiles who rescued and assisted Jews during the Holocaust.

A managing director of Niantic Partners LLC, a real estate investment company in New York City, Schulweis was also active at UJA-Federation of New York, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the 14th Street Y, and other Jewish communal organizations. He died March 18 at age 83.

His efforts assured that Righteous Gentiles are able to live out their remaining years with dignity, JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl said in a statement, and that their legacies live on through the educators who teach about their heroism.

Harry Belafonte and his wife, dancer Julie Robinson, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, California, Aug. 2, 1957. (Graphic House/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Julie Robinson Belafonte, the Jewish-born second wife ofthe late singer Harry Belafonteand his partner in civil rights activism,died March 9 in Los Angeles. She was 95.

She was born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan to liberal parents with Russian Jewish roots. A dancer and an actress, she was the first white member of choreographer Katherine Dunhams all-Black dance company and appeared in small parts in various movies.

Between meeting Belafonte in 1954 and their divorce in 2007, she joined him in raising funds for the civil rights movement, strategizing with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and holding back channel communications with the Cuban government. She also co-founded the womens division of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and helped to organize, with Coretta Scott King, Kings wife, a womens march against the Vietnam War.

In an essay for Ebony magazine, Harry Belafonte answered critics who objected to him marrying a white woman and divorcing his first, African-American wife. I did not marry Julie to further the cause of integration, he wrote. I married her because I was in love with her and she married me because she was in love with me.

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Jewish Life Stories: Harry Belafonte's Jewish wife, and the man who repaired Holocaust violins - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

We Were the Lucky Ones has its warning built into the title. The Hulu series based on the book by Georgia Hunter and adapted by Erica Lipez is about how one family survived and separated during the Holocaust, all of it underscored by that title this is what they went through, the horror they witnessed and endured, the sadness that befell them, and they were lucky.

The series kicks off in Radom, Poland before the War, with the Kurc family: Siblings Halina (Joey King), Addy (Logan Lerman), Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Jakob (Amit Rahav), and Mila (Hadas Yaron) and their parents, Sol (Lior Ashkenazi) and Nechuma (Robin Weigert). The Kurcs are close-knit, their home echoing with overlapping voices and laughter at the holidays, and they already feel the pangs of missing Addy, who lives in Paris.

War creeps in, but at first, life continues. Lipez limits the shows scope exactly right, staying with the Kurcs as their day-to-day begins to change, almost imperceptibly at first. Urgency builds with each episode, and the characters have no choice but to develop armor. They adjust their behavior and body language, they develop survival instincts they didnt have or imagine at the outset. War turns even civilians into soldiers, and the immediacy of that truth radiates throughout We Were the Lucky Ones.

The size of the core cast (including the siblings partners and eventually children) doesnt simplify the work for any of these actors, all of whom commit not only with performance but with an apparent empathy. King stuns as the young Halina becomes skilled at lying, adapting, and running. Its she who delivers one of the series most potent lines, when Halina faces separation from husband Adam (Sam Woolf) in later episodes: I cannot bear not to know our children.

Each member of the ensemble becomes the custodian of their characters specific trauma; Jakob is a photographer who has to work for the Germans, Genek ends up enlisted in the army, Mila fights to protect her child. As Addy, Lerman is siloed from the other siblings for almost the entire series, but never waivers in his portrayal of someone sustained by hope and eventually in the haze of grief. The branching storylines depict wartime in Poland, France, Siberia, Senegal, Morocco, Brazil, and Palestine over the course of eight episodes.

And again, no matter the scale of it, We Were the Lucky Ones never loses its focus. Only a handful of scenes use background actors to demonstrate how many Jewish people were regularly lined up, questioned, captured, or killed. There is hardly any mention of Nazis or Hitler or visuals of Swastika. Other than a few mentions of Germany itself, those entities dont matter so much as the constant violence of one human being against another. In the show they are these people, the officers, occasionally sadists or animals broad terms that disgrace the oppressors just as they systematically demean the oppressed.

Neasa Hardiman and executive producers Thomas Kail and Amit Gupta direct the series (Jennifer Todd executive produces along with Kail and Old 320 Sycamore, Adam Milch executive produces with Gupta), which releases weekly after the March 28 premiere of three episodes. Its not an easy show to watch or reality to reckon with, but history is never as neat (or as distant) as wed like. As much as We Were the Lucky Ones tells an extraordinary story of endurance and triumph, the show never loses sight of suffering, and of what kind of person someone has to be to let that happen.

The first three episodes of We Were the Lucky Ones are now streaming on Hulu, with new episodes weekly.

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'We Were the Lucky Ones' Review: A Sensitive, Moving Portrayal of One Family's Holocaust Journey - IndieWire

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