Currently Browsing: Tzivi’s Columns
When is the right time to say goodbye? My relationship with the JUF News began with a freelance assignment way back in July 2004. Abigail Pickus was one of Chicago’s Nextbook coordinators at that time (raise your hand if you remember Nextbook), she had an event on the horizon, and she told Aaron Cohen (JUF’s much loved and recently […]
On Account of a Hat. In one of Sholem Aleichem’s best–loved stories, a wheeler dealer is forever “negotiating transactions” until “one day God takes pity on him, and for the first time in his career—are you listening?—he actually works out a deal.” But on account of a hat, exhilaration turns into farce and when he […]
Spring brings two new documentary films from Israel to Chicago. One I loved. The other? No so much. So let’s start with the spinach. Mr. Gaga, which opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre on Southport, is Tomer Heymann’s new film about Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company. Chicago has long […]
Tzivi reviews Morgenthau and Fire Birds By Jan Lisa Huttner Hello, Readers. Did you miss me? My first post for Tzivi’s Cinema Spotlight was way back in August 2011, and in all the intervening years, month after month, I have always found something worth recommending. But in December 2016, I had nothing. And I had […]
Lions & Tigers & Bears! Oh, My! Speaking out on 3 new Metro Chicago Releases 🙁 Three new films of potential interest to Jewish cinefiles open in Metro Chicago today. The first is Woody Allen’s new pastiche,Café Society. The second is Wiener-Dog, the latest “dark comedy” from Todd Solondz. The third is The Witness (a […]
Full Title = Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict For all the books written about her since her death in 1979–and even despite the two books she wrote about herself–Peggy Guggenheim remains an elusive subject. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s great contribution to PG’s legacy is twofold. First, she shows us the depth and breadth of the physical objects […]
After a month of previews, Broadway’s fifth Fiddler on the Roof premiered today at the Broadway Theatre at 1681 Broadway (on the corner of 53rd Street). This is the final event – some might even say the culminating event – in the worldwide celebration of the 50th anniversary of Fiddler’s first Broadway performance in 1964. […]
The 10th annual Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema begins this week, and as regular readers already know, I will be flying in from Brooklyn to participate in a special screening of The Gett Trilogy on Tuesday, Nov. 3. This is something of a high-risk venture for the CFIC, because the initial release of Gett: The […]
Blame it on the Law of Unintended Consequences. By all accounts, David Ben Gurion who was, after all, a secular Socialist, never realized he was giving religious authorities total control over the intimate personal lives of Israeli citizens. And yet, 68 years after the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, religion plays an ever […]
NOTE: For my “Feminist Take” on Hannah Arendt, see my Blog Post on The Hot Pink Pen. Tzivi reviews Hannah Arendt Decades after her death in 1975, German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt remains a controversial figure in Jewish history. Lauded on the one hand for The Origins of Totalitarianism (published in 1951), and condemned on […]