The faculty of United Theological Seminary, a United Methodist Church institution based in Dayton, issued a statement of solidarity with the Jewish community on March 24, saying it is “greatly disturbed” by the “uptick in antisemitic incidents since November” across the United States. “Not only does this activity evoke the

Opinion

Robert Kahn didn’t want to revisit memories of Nazi Germany. He had to. By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer To a generation of Dayton-area schoolchildren, he is known as the boy the Nazis forced to play the violin on Kristallnacht while they beat his father with clubs, ransacked the

Speaker for Federation Presidents Dinner hopes film clarifies that ‘Holocaust denial is not an opinion’ By Anne Joseph, The Times of Israel “Oh, I’m having a good time!” laughs historian and professor Deborah Lipstadt when asked how she is. “Nothing I did prepared me for the trial and nothing I

By Michael Fox, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer The Kind Words could be described as an exceptionally touching comedy or an unusually funny family drama. Israeli writer-director Shemi Zarhin won’t argue either way. “I write like a director and I direct like a novelist,” he says via Skype from

By Lucy Cohen Blatter, JTA “I thought it was just going to be about falafel and hummus.” That was the perception of Israeli cuisine that filmmaker Roger Sherman had when he reluctantly decided to accompany his friend, the acclaimed Jewish cookbook writer Joan Nathan, on a food tour of Israel in

By Michael Fox, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer Americans of a certain age fervently recall the “miracle on ice” at the 1980 Olympics. Three years earlier, Israelis celebrated their own iconic sports moment — also involving the Soviet Union. Los Angeles-based filmmaker Dani Menkin grew up in Tel Aviv,

Review By Michael Fox, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer Movies about Jews evading the Holocaust are, frankly, irresistible. We never tire of these celluloid beacons of hope, not least because we can never forget that the victims greatly outnumbered the escapees. The challenge that filmmakers face in this area

A few weeks before the official start of this year’s Film Fest, the JCC will offer a sneak peek at the 1979 cult comedy The Frisco Kid, starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 2 at The Neon. Directed by Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened

By Rabbi Judy Chessin, Temple Beth Or At the center of the Torah, the very heart of the book of Leviticus, lies a fundamental teaching of Judaism: “Love your neighbor as yourself (19:18).” Rabbi Akiva concluded that it is the major principle of the Torah (Palestinian Talmud Nedarim 9:4) and