Who would a guess that such an inane and somewhat annoying song such as Hava Nagila would have such a wealth of history, and more face lifts than Joan Rivers? Well filmmaker Roberta Grossman, and in her amusing and fascinating documentary she traces how this staple of Barmitzvahs and Weddings went from Ukraine to YouTube … Continue reading
As I left the movie house somewhat dazed I simply couldn’t get the phrase out of my head about ‘sons bearing the guilt of their fathers’. Google tells me this originated from the Old Testament where it is paraphrased quite a few times. The trouble is as so often, the Bible is confusion personified and … Continue reading
Once in a while even movies can dispense with its usual stereotypes and can tell us an old story with a fresh set of characters. This debut feature from filmmaker Kevin Asche is a drug smuggling story where the baddies are neither African Americans or Italian Mafia but actually Hassidic Jews, and evidently its all … Continue reading
For Sam Hoffman’s feature film writing/directing debut Humor Me he valiantly attempted to build on his very successful web series (and book) Old Jews Telling Jokes with very mixed results. What he ended up with is a family comedy that older Jewish audiences will lap up, but others will sadly find rather lame at best. This is … Continue reading
Once upon a time there was a play that ran Off Broadway for 3 and a half years. Most of the play’s humor involved jokes about Jewish stereotypes with occasional humor about body parts and bodily functions, and it made numerous references to the Jewish online dating website, JDate. The play’s two authors Bryan Fogel and … Continue reading