More in ‘tel aviv university’

I remember a moment from my first trip to Israel 29 years ago. I was waiting for a friend at the entrance to Beit Hatfutsot, a museum on the Tel Aviv University campus. It was during a conference convened for Holocaust survivors, and as I watched older survivors flow out of the building, I glanced at the occasional uncovered arm to see the tattooed numbers there, remnants of their Holocaust experience. It was a powerful vision for a first-time visitor to Israel, one that underscored triumph over adversity and the human will to survive along with the need for the country as a safe haven for the Jews.

Not so long ago, when I was a student at Tel Aviv University’s film school, I mastered the delicate art of writing a particular kind of term paper. Under a title like “Invisible Faces” or “Unheard Voices,” the paper would assert that Hollywood, arbiter of all things cultural, relegated anyone who wasn’t white or male ...