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Arts & Culture

The other side of the nightmare

A dramatic story of the Jewish resistance in World War II Poland

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Warsaw — a vibrant, cosmopolitan magnet of the 1930s, bustling with shops, nightlife, museums, and a heady sense of place shared by its 1.3 million residents.

How could anyone fail to fall under the spell of a city boasting streets named Pleasant, Goose, Peacock, Valiant, Mushroom and Cordials?

And these were the thoroughfares that ultimately would come to define the heart of the wartime ghetto and its more than 400,000 Jewish inhabitants.

As Hitler’s eastward gaze settled on this crown jewel along the Vistula River, he thought only of a city that was much too Russified, one that would have to pay the ultimate price of his territorial ambitions, his contempt of Jews, Slavs, and communists and his designs on the Polish corridor and thus a clear path to Soviet soil. If Warsaw had the temerity to consider itself the Paris of the East, then the dictator would reduce it to the rubble of the Reich as part of a larger blitzkrieg against the nation.

 
 

Homage to Mel Brooks

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Thirteen’s American Masters documentary, “Mel Brooks: Make a Noise,” premieres nationally on PBS on Monday, at 9 p.m. The career-spanning film features never-before-heard stories and new interviews with stars, including Brooks, Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Cloris Leachman, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, and Tracey Ullman.

After 60 years in show business, Mel Brooks has earned more major awards than any other living entertainer; he is one of 14 EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) winners. A DVD with bonus material will be available Tuesday, from Shout Factory.

 
 

Music open house in Tenafly

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The JCC Thurnauer School of Music at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades is holding on open house on Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Participants can meet the distinguished instructors, who come from prominent conservatories including Juilliard, Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, and Mannes.

For information, call (201) 408-1465 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

 
 

Teen performing at JFSNJ benefit

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Danny Polevoy, 16, of Franklin Lakes, a student at Indian Hills High School in Oakland, will perform at a fundraiser for Jewish Family Service of North Jersey at the school on Sunday, at 7 p.m. He joins Broadway composer Neil Berg, a Rockland County native, and his company in a performance of Berg’s show, “Night of Broadway Stars.”

Polevoy, who began singing and performing when he was 7, was invited to be the student performer in the show following a performance at Temple Beth Rishon in Wyckoff’s recent Cabaret Night.

Tickets are $50 for adults and $40 for students. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. There will be a catered pre-show cocktail and dinner buffet for sponsors at 5.

For information, call (973) 595-0111 or go to www.jfsnorthjersey.org.

 
 

Israeli Chamber Project in NYC

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The Israeli Chamber Project performs at Merkin Concert Hall in Manhattan on Wednesday, at 8 p.m. For tickets, call the box office at (212) 501-3330 or go to www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org or www.israelichamberproject.org.

 
 

Mr. Bellow’s planet

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LOS ANGELES — Born in Canada into an immigrant Jewish family in 1915, Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow had a traditional Jewish upbringing, which included Torah study, Talmud, and Hebrew. Yet Rabbi David Wolpe observes that Bellow had an ambivalent relationship with Judaism.

“It was part of who he was, but he didn’t want to be thought of as a ‘Jewish’ author,” said Wolpe, who has been the top-ranked rabbi on Newsweek’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis in America” list.

Wolpe, the leader of Sinai Temple of Los Angeles, recently sat down with Dr. Greg Bellow, 69, the oldest of Saul Bellow’s four children, to discuss Greg’s new book, “Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir,” before an audience of some 200 mature bibliophiles at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, Calif.

 
 
 
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Hamming it up

Ben Feldman talks about the Jew factor on ‘Mad Men’

Advertising, it’s fair to say, is in Ben Feldman’s blood.

Yes, technically he plays a fictional advertiser, the Jewish copywriter in AMC’s award-winning drama “Mad Men.” But Feldman says it was his excellent marketing skills that landed him the role.

“The casting loved that I was a Jew in real life,” Feldman said. “They were looking for the typical character, a Jew with a heavy accent, and I played it up for all it was worth.”

 

Celluloid truths

Viewing Jewish life through films can be revealing, Eric Goldman says

We Jews are particularly good at text study.

We can take a source, examine each word, individually and in relation to the others surrounding it. We can squint, we can change the angle and the light, and then look again. We can investigate each word’s history, play with the spelling, change the verb tense, listen to the rhythm, follow the allusions. We can consider the period in which it was written and the personalities of generations of its explicators.

So who said we can do that only to written text?

 

42 Jackie Robinson’s fight with black nationalists over anti-Semitism

Moviegoers who went to the AMC Magic Johnson Harlem 9 last week for the opening of “42” saw the story of how Jackie Robinson displayed legendary courage, class and talent in the face of immense pressure and racial hatred as he broke down baseball’s color barrier.

Less well known is Robinson’s role in a controversy that erupted just a few blocks away, at Harlem’s most famous theater, and underscored his commitment to fighting all bigotry, including prejudice emanating from his own community.

It was 1962, a decade and a half after Robinson first took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers and just a few years after he retired. Day after day, an angry crowd marched outside Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater protesting against its Jewish owner, Frank Schiffman, and his plan to open a low-cost restaurant with prices that could threaten the business of a more expensive black-owned eatery.

 

 

 
 
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