A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer When I set out to teach a course called The Jewish-American Experience on Film at the University of Dayton, I didn’t anticipate that I would talk about race in America. I envisioned a chronological survey of films and television shows

A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer I was 7 years old on April 26, 1986 when a reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded in the city of Pripyat, about 60 miles from Kiev, where I lived. It was beautifully sunny and I was enjoying my

Until we have a better solution, social distancing is the only option we have. A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer One of the strangest things about living through this pandemic is that those who shelter at home and those on the front lines occupy two different

A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer I grew up in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and immigrated to Chicago, where I struggled to fit into a suburban Jewish private school. My husband, Sam Dorf, grew up in the vibrant Jewish community of Brookline, just outside

A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer As we begin a new decade, I’m seeing many “best of arts and culture” lists pop up on my social media feed. Paradoxically, in the last 10 years we have witnessed a rise in antisemitism along with a renaissance of

With Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer On the High Holy Days, Jewish people all over the world will recite the Unetaneh Tokef liturgical poem, anonymously authored a thousand years ago, that urges worshippers to repent so that they may be inscribed into the Book of Life: “On Rosh Hashanah

A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer My great-grandmother Valentina lived surrounded by plants. Her balcony was lined with potted geraniums and violets; inside were wall to wall cacti. Our ritual when I came over to her small apartment in the center of Kiev, which was often,

A Bisel Kisel Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer At a recent Jewish Film Fest screening in Dayton, I picked up a pamphlet listing classic Jewish authors. There were notable omissions of many Eastern European names, which I hope to remedy by telling you about Isaac Babel, a Russian-speaking Jewish

A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer I recently taught about the 1973 classic movie The Way We Were, directed by Sydney Pollack, for my Jewish-American Film course at UD. In this class, we examine cinematic depictions of Jewish characters against the backdrop of immigration and acculturation

New Column: A Bisel Kisel with Masha Kisel, The Dayton Jewish Observer We decided to spend part of our honeymoon in Krakow because I wanted to share with my new husband “a magical city” that I knew and loved well. I fell in love with Polish language and literature in