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Tablet Presents: Bernard-Henri Lévy and Natan Sharansky – “Freedom and Tyranny”
At the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Sunday, February 12, 2023 3:00 PM (ET) | $75 General Admission with optional additional donation | $25 for seniors and students | Museum members receive $10 off general admission | All profit from the event goes toward Ukrainian Winter Relief
Get tickets here
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival
Feburary 8-21, 2023. More info here.


Dir.: Ran Tal
In this intimate artist portrait and meditation on memory, Israel’s most celebrated photojournalist reflects on a lifetime of searing images that have defined his nation. For over 60 years, Micha Bar-Am had a central role documenting Israel’s tumultuous history, from the Eichmann trial to the endemic Arab-Israeli wars. Powerful, often painful moments are conveyed through an artful assembly of iconic snapshots, enlargements and contact sheets. Voiceover by Bar-Am—self-doubting, and often interrupted by his scolding wife and archivist Orna—reveals the personal toll of a wearying career recording trauma. With unfettered access to a vast archive of negatives, filmmaker Ran Tal’s uniquely sensory experience exposes the beauty and horror revealed by the photographic image.


Dir.: Tal Inbal
In this pulse-pounding deconstruction of a terrorist attack, raw security camera footage and gripping eyewitness testimonies chronicle the deadly June 2016 Sarona Market shooting in Tel Aviv. Two Palestinian gunmen, dressed in suits, fired on shocked diners at the upscale food hall, leaving four dead, scores injured, and lives forever traumatized. In the hellish chaos, a girl escapes but loses her father; a family’s Ramadan meal is shattered; Arab and Jewish restaurant workers seek shelter; a cop unwittingly harbors a fleeing terrorist; and a courageous patron fights back. An inconceivable scenario is confronted with unnerving intensity, prompting audiences to speculate: in the face of death, what would I do?


Barren
Dir.: Rabbi Mordechai Vardi
Desperate for a baby, an ultra-Orthodox couple confronts a devastating trauma that threatens to tear them apart, in this powerful, heartbreaking Israeli drama based on true events. Faigi (Mili Eshet) and her husband Naftali (Yoav Rotman) have spent years fruitlessly trying to conceive, focusing on prayer over fertility treatments. The childless couple lives with his parents much to Faigi’s dismay, as she longs for independence and privacy. When Naftali pilgrims to Ukraine to pray, a charismatic rabbi (Gil Frank) claiming healing powers exploits the family’s trust with sinister consequences. Featuring a gifted ensemble, this deep-dive examination of faith and marriage is the utterly engrossing debut fiction work of documentarian Rabbi Mordechai Vardi.


Dir.: Erez Tadmor
Living on the fringes of Israeli society, troubled boys must band together to save the shelter for at-risk youth that has kept them off the streets. For generations, altruistic surrogate mother, Margalit (Tiki Dayan), provided loving refuge to victims of neglect and violence in a shabby house on Tel Aviv’s outskirts. When tragedy strikes, it’s up to right-hand man Jackie (Roy Assaf) to keep the home from corrupt property developers, and assuage a social worker’s scrutiny. With tough love from “big brother” Jackie, the young men must now be accountable for their own lives, and save their refuge from a dire fate. Inspired by a true story, this compassionate drama gives voice to those on the periphery, often unnoticed and uncared for.


Dir.: Orit Fouks Rotem
Israel’s official Oscar entry, Orit Fouks Rotem’s deft and heartfelt debut brings together disparate Arab and Jewish women who learn self-expression through the power of film. Young Tel Aviv–based filmmaker Rona (Dana Ivgy) teaches a documentary workshop to the residents of Hadera. The women—both secular and religious, reflecting contemporary Israeli society—film their daily activities and routines. At the outset, tempers flare because of cultural misunderstandings, but the students soon form an empowering bond over shared experiences. The casting features a mix of seasoned and nonprofessional actors, each shooting and sharing footage for the first time onscreen. Nominated for eight Israeli Academy Awards with wins for Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress.
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Vol. 2, Issue 3: Mahmoud Abbas and Soviet Zionology, California’s housing crisis, Kafka’s diaries, Yemenite delicacies, and more


Vol. 2, Issue 2: Academic freedom at Stanford, the rise of AI, Prince Harry and Episcopalianism, going bald, and more


Issue 1: A new Cold War, addressing Southern Baptists’ declining attendance, woke whodunits, pro wrestler Barry Horowitz, and more


The Year in Review: A special blockbuster double issue featuring the best of Tablet’s insight, reporting, and great storytelling from 2022


Issue 45: Labor and the class war, new fiction from Yelena Akhtiorskaya, loud vulgar Jews, a soccer cantor, potato pancakes, and more


Issue 44: Laying blame for pandemic school closures, the American postwar ‘literary mafia,’ gay dads and busy moms, Angela Lansbury’s big Jewish Christmas musical, and more


Issue 43: British intentions in Mandate Palestine, women’s health apps, David Mamet’s daring, the humble cabbage, and more


Issue 42: The media’s role in FTX’s downfall, Jews with disabilities, Howard Jacobson on ‘Ulysses,’ Thanksgiving tales, and more. Plus: Joan Nathan’s roast turkey with chestnut challah stuffing recipe, on one convenient-to-print single page.


Issue 41: Midterm election analysis, Judith Shklar’s minority liberalism, Australian farms, Joan Nathan’s unbeatable hummus recipe, and more


Issue 40: Voodoo, Iran’s drones, the journalistic party line, the Rothschilds of the East, Italian sfratti cookies, and more


Beach Reads 2022: An amazing, 113-page, free anthology of some of our best writing, for you and your hammock.


Issue 26: In full, Armin Rosen’s in-depth report on the background of the uniquely American life of Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Also: surveillance, Judaism in translation, chocolate, and more.


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Newsletter
Film, music, visual arts, and more.
Featured Contributor: Marco Roth
Noah Baumbach’s ‘White Noise’ dials back the anxiety and edits out the Jews
I bid goodbye to my boxes
Rachel Aviv’s Journey to the Ends of Psychiatry
Janet Malcolm’s successor at The New Yorker has a different take on the impossible profession
Searching for what is lost in ‘Le Temps Perdu,’ María Alvarez’s artful documentary on an Argentine book club
Marco Roth talks to, yells at, and pleads with Joshua Cohen about his novel, ‘Moving Kings’
And more from Tablet’s Book Critic at Large.
My Favorite Anti-Semite
More from our occasional series of tributes to writers, artists, philosophers, and others who hate us and to why we still find value in their work.


The 20th-century master of horror admired Hitler but married a Jew and hated ‘alien’ cultures but created some of the most memorable ones in literature
BY HUNTER C. EDEN


The director’s films tackled the grandest questions in German culture and politics, before he turned his critical eye to the Jews
BY MARDEAN ISAAC


He was the greatest and strangest of all ball players, a fierce competitor, and a hateful person
BY ARI HOFFMAN


Why the German-language writer and memoirist yearned for an era he never knew
BY WESLEY YANG


Kaddish for the late poet with a history of bigotry, from a poet with a feeling for jazz
BY JAKE MARMER


The progressive-era novelist’s greedy, red-haired, Polish Jew, Zerkow, is the 20th century’s greatest golem
BY ELISA NEW


Regardless of whether or not we should forgive our favorite artists for these sorts of opinions, one thing is clear: We definitely want to.
BY ALEXANDER ACIMAN
Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.
—Primo Levi
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