By Lior Zaltzman, Kveller There’s something alchemical that happens when you watch Elsa Zylberstein on screen. The French Jewish actress becomes her characters — be they amazing or villainous, comedic and dramatic. After watching her in Simone: Woman of the Century, in which she stars as a somber, serious and

By Alan Zeitlin, JNS Director and writer Daniel Robbins was looking for a different kind of comedy when producer Adam Mitchell had an idea that he had never seen done on screen before. Robbins — a Modern Orthodox graduate of the Ramaz day school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and

By Talia Doninger, Special to The Observer Dr. Mimi Zieman scaled the slopes of Mount Everest carrying the weight of her backpack — and her legacy as the child of a Holocaust survivor. In 1988, as a 25-year-old medical student, she served as the expedition doctor for a team of

Though overshadowed by brother George’s music, his lyrics are here to stay. Book Review by Martin Gottlieb Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer Ira Gershwin never built the Stairway to Paradise that he imagined in his 1922 lyric. Perhaps he would have if his brother – composer George Gershwin –

Raised in Dayton, Larry Roberts hopes The Faces of Israel provides an understanding of Israeli diversity between 1982 and 2015. By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer Over Larry Roberts’ 50-year career in photojournalism, he’s worked for United Press International, Agence France-Presse, The Blade in Toledo, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

In her memoir, Sara Glass explains how she broke away to find her true self By Charlotte Henry, Jewish News (United Kingdom) Speaking to Dr. Sara Glass now, it is hard to believe she is the same person as the one at the start of her memoir, Kissing Girls on

By Talia Doninger, Special to The Dayton Jewish Observer Samantha A. Vinokor-Meinrath never intended to become an expert on antisemitism. “I wish we were talking about anything else,” she tells The Observer. “I wish for all of us that antisemitism would be the realm of historians and not of contemporary

By Marshall Weiss, The Observer Among the extinct department stores of Manhattan, a mystique surrounds the names of a few: Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor, Henri Bendel. Bonwit Teller, established in 1895, went bankrupt in 2000. It closed that year. Lord & Taylor filed for bankruptcy in 2020. When it

By Talia Doninger, Special to The Dayton Jewish Observer Lolita set the literary world of 1955 on fire. Controversial, provocative, and polarizing, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was rejected by multiple publishers before George Weidenfeld took a chance on it. Critics called it obscene, bookstores hesitated to display it. But for Weidenfeld,

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer In 2006, Yad Vashem published a diary in which 14-year-old Rutka Laskier, a Polish Jew, wrote about her life for four months in 1943, until her deportation and murder in Auschwitz. A non-Jewish friend of Rutka had safeguarded the diary for six decades.