Videos on Jewish subjects in the Leyburn Library
(See selected film descriptions at bottom of page)
American:
Arranged PN1997.2 .A76 2007
(DVD, 89 min.)
Sunshine
PN1997 .S883 2001 (DVD)
A Stranger Among Us PN1997 .S7815 2003 (DVD)
Fiddler on the Roof PN1997 .F411 (VHS and DVD)
Hester Street PS3505 .A254 Y42
1984
The Frisco Kid PN1997 .F76 1990
The Jazz Singer PN1997 .J353 J3
Yentl
PJ5129 .S49 Y4 1989
Enemies: A Love Story PJ5129 .S515 E5 1990 (DVD)
The Magician of Lublin PJ5129 .S49 M413 1989
Brighton Beach Memoirs PS3537 .I663 B7
Crossing Delancy PS3569 .A516 C7 1989
School Ties PN1997 .S31355
1993
Hanna's War PN1997.H3 1988
The Imported Bridegroom PS3505 .A254 I46 1992
The Chosen PS3566.O69 C3
1983 (DVD)
Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1 (DVD)
Novia que te vea = Like a bride ( Mexican,
1994: conflicts of religion and identity of two Mexican
Jewish girls, one Sephardi and the
other Ashkenazi,
in the early 1960s)
Morirse está en Hebreo = My Mexican shivah
(Mexican, 2007)
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
A Serious Man - written & directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
(106 min., 2010)
The Hebrew Hammer (Jewish superhero Mordechai
Jefferson Carver (a.k.a.: The Hebrew Hammer) attempts to save Hanukkah from a
psychotic Santa Claus, 85 min., 2003)
Holocaust [see
complete list here]
Primo Adapted by Antony Sher from "If
this is a man," Primo Levi's memoir of his experience at Auschwitz;
starring Antony Sher, directed by Richard Wilson. A powerful stage
performance filmed at England's National Theatre in 2005. (88 min.)
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis [Italian]
(DVD) PQ4807.A79 G513
The Pawnbroker PN1997 .P374 1989 (DVD)
The Diary of Anne Frank
(DVD) D810 .J4 F715
(1959, 3 hours)
QB VII
PN1995.9.J8 Q2 1984 (3 tapes)
Schindler's List (DVD) PR9619.3.K46
S3 2004
Europa Europa
Based on the memoirs of Solomon Perel. A Jewish
teenager survives World War II by living as a communist and then a Nazi for 7 years.
Best Foreign Film Golden Globe Award. Begins with a scene of his ritual
circumcision, the later threat to his secret. Sympathizing with
anti-religious communists and with anti-Semitic Nazis who temporarily protect
him, he questions his identity.
(German, 115 min., 1991) D810.J4 P473 2003
Die Fälscher = The counterfeiters,
2008 (best foreign language Oscar)
Defiance, 2008
Zwartboek = Black book, Dutch, 2006
Amen
The pianist
Jakob the liar
The Great dictator (1940, Charlie Chaplin)
Defiance
The Reader
God on trial
/ BBC
Scotland, 2009 (Concentration
camp inmates begin asking how God could allow so much suffering. )
The Truce
(1996, 2 hours), based on the memoir by famous Holocaust
survivor, Primo Levi, about his journey back to Turin after the Russians
liberated Auschwitz; directed lovingly, with on-location scenes in Poland
and the Ukraine, by Franciesco Rosi, starring John Turturro and Italian film
stars)
Everything is Illuminated
Documentaries:
Israel:
The silent exodus / a Pierre Rehov
production
Israel: A Nation is Born
DS126.5 .I776 1992 (5 tapes)
Jerusalem, Soul of a People DS109.9 .J45 1990
A Wall in Jerusalem DS126.5
.W35 1989
Yaacov Ben-Dov: Father of Hebrew Cinema TR849 .B43
Y3 1993
To Touch a City DS109 .T67
1996
Jerusalem: Between Heaven and Earth
DS109.9 .J455 1997
Searching for peace in the Middle East (DVD)
DS119.76 .S43 2006 Foundation for Middle East Peace, c2006
American Jews:
The Tribe: an unorthodox, unauthorized, factual history of the Barbie doll
Written by Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg. "... rolls together archival
footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas, and slam poetry to take viewers
on a fast ride through Jewish history and paradoxes of identity." (2006, 18
min.)
Shlom Ya'll (DVD) F220
.J5 S53 2002 (on Jews in the American South) 59 min., 2002
Jewish Americans, PBS Paramont
(DVD), 2 discs, 6 programs, 360 min.
Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies, and the American Dream
PN1993.5.U65 J3 1998
Yidl in the middle: growing up Jewish in Iowa / a film by Marlene Booth,
1999, 56 min.
The life and times of Hank Greenberg / written, produced and
directed by Aviva Kempner, 1999, 94 min.
Music Compact Discs:
Religious music:
18 "Golden age" cantors: Masterpieces of the synagogue
Festival of light CDS 1717
The New year in song: melodies for the High Holidays CS 3970
Days of Awe - Music of the High Holidays / Cantor Nathan Lamm - CDS
421
Shabbat Anthology, Volumes 1 through 5 / Various singers and choirs - CDS
4012
The very best of Shlomo Carlebach - Volume I CDS 3990
The very best of Shlomo Carlebach - Volume II CDS 3991
Generations - religious compositions by Gerald Cohen (2001) - CDS 211
And You Shall Be A Blessing by Debbie Friedman (1989) - CDS 4026
Klezmer:
A guide for the perplexed: Jewish
alternative movement (Klezmer) CDS 1271
Yiddish-American klezmer music, 1925-1956
Klezmer pioneers: European and American
recordings, 1905-1952
Simcha time: Mickey Katz plays music for weddings,
Bar mitzvah & Brisses (The Klezmer sessions)
Live!: the thirteenth anniversary album / Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Yiddishe renaissance / Klezmer Conservatory Band
A jumpin' night in the Garden of Eden / the Klezmer Conservatory Band
Klezmer music / Brave Old World
The Klezmer violin of Yehoshua Rochman CDS 3906
Klassic Klezmer / Giora Feidman CDS 397
Sephardic:
Kamti lehallel = I rise in praise : the musical tradition of the Spanish and
Portuguese Jewish communities of Amsterdam, London and New York CDS
3969 (2 discs)
My World / Alberto Mizrahi CDS 3987
Sephardic Music Festival - Shemspeed LLC, c2010 - CDS 506
Wings of time: Jewels of the Sephardim / Lauren Pomerantz, vocals,
dulcimer. CDS 402
Songs from medieval Spain: Jewels of the
Sephardim/ Lauren Pomerantz, vocals, dulcimer. CDS 403
Other:
A musical diaspora: the journey through
Jewish song / hosted by John Schaefer
Our Song / Theodore Bikel, Alberto Mizrahi (Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino folk
songs) CDS 3967
Jewish Songbook: Heart & Humor of a People
Blessings of Beauty: a classic collection of Jewish gems
"Sunshine" Written by Israel Horovitz and István Szabó, based partly on the lives of famous Hungarian Jews; directed and produced by István Szabó. Story of three generations of the Jewish Hungarian family "Sonnenschein," as it yields its values and Jewish identity to "power and lust," as great-grandfather Gustav warns will happen. The "power" is the social and political rewards brought by allegiance to the Hapsburg Empire, demanding a change of names so as not to seem Jewish; allegiance to a Hungary controlled by anti-semitic upper-crust families who demanded conversion to Catholicism; and allegiance to the proletariat equality promoted by the communist dictatorship and secret police who replaced the fascists. Family virtues also crumble through "lust" in the form of adulterous temptations in each generation. The audience knows that all these attempts to assimilate will fail to protect these Jews from the murder perpetrated by Hungarian Nazis and by soldiers at Auschwitz; even the later communists begin executing Jews for being dangerous Zionist conspirators. The family secret to survival turns out to rest in Grandmother Valerie's ability to discover beauty in the world around her (perhaps like the director, Szabo). Recommended! (1999, 180 min.)
"Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy" Paul Mazursky talks us through his visit to Uman in the Ukraine where he joined a pilgrimage of 25,000 Hasidic Jews who come to the tomb of Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav during the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). Rebbe Nachman had promised that whoever comes to him at that time would receive his help in gaining a good "judgment" for the coming year. Mazursky, who talks so much that he drowns out other people's viewpoints, rejects this claim, the beliefs of the Hasidim, and Judaism in general. He calls himself a secular Jew, which seems to consist of Jewish jokes and identification with other Jews . The film contains some good interviews with a variety of Hasidic Jews who explain why they travel to Uman and how it has changed them, and we see some moving pilgrimage scenes, such as men praying before the rebbe's tomb and especially the pilgrims gathering en masse around Uman's lake at the end of Rosh Hashanah, and Mazursky himself finally claims that his trip made him more respectful of religious Jews, but Mazursky's understanding of Judaism is pretty ignorant and his clownish joking gets boring. (2006, 74 min.)
"Devarim" (“Things”) A film by Amos Gitai, who plays Goldman, cinematography by Renato Berta, based on the great novel by Yaakov Shabtai titled “Past Continuous.” The plot begins with a funeral, and becomes a meditation on death and the meaning of life. In Tel Aviv, people prepare food, eat, make love, get pregnant, and die. The film’s characters, dislocated from religion and nation, live lives of individual freedom but disenchantment, drifting without meaning. . The film’s central problem is expressed in the drunken ravings of Besh, who says, “Life’s a bitch but it’s mesmerizing,” “We’re only temporary, all of us,” “If there was a God in this city, maybe we’d have something but even the devil fled, leaving us here with … a bunch of merchants who call themselves Jews… Damn this city!” “I feel like shouting to this city, Pull yourself together!”
"Arranged" An independent feature film written by Stefan Schaefer and based in part on the story of Yuta Silverman, an Orthodox Jewish woman from Borough Park, Brooklyn and her friendship with a young Muslim woman. Both women face the possibility of disastrous arranged marriages and the disapproval of the secular establishment, represented here by the principal of the school where both women teach.
"Wondrous Oblivion" [British] PN1997.2 .W65 2007 (DVD) written and directed by Paul Morrison. Eleven-year-old David Wiseman lives with the singular dream of being a cricket star. The son of a Jewish family, German immigrants scarred by loss of family in the Holocaust, who live in a racist and anti-semitic neighborhood of 1960s South London. David and his whole family are transformed by the arrival of new neighbors, the Samuels, a lively and big-hearted Jamaican family. Starring Delroy Lindo as Dennis Samuels and Emily Woof as Mrs. Wiseman. (2003, 101 min.)
"Time of Favor " PN1995 .T5274 2002 (DVD) Written and directed by Joseph Cedar, excellent score by Jonathan Bar-Giora. Winner of six Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture. "A taut thriller about the tense relationship between the orthodox nationalists and the military. Both a politico-psychological drama and a love story between a passionate woman and two best friends." A highly respected soldier named Menachem is also a pious Orthodox Jew and a devoted student of a charismatic leader of a West Bank settlement, Rabbi Meltzer. Meltzer directs a yeshivah, where he tells his students, all of them soldiers, that all Jewish hearts must yearn for the Temple and the Messiah. Some students interpret this as a call to blow up the Dome of the Rock. But the rabbi's beautiful daughter, Michal, rejects all of his ideals (Settler and messianic) as cruel and ego-centric. She wants to marry Menachem, but her father wants her to marry his star Yeshivah student, Pinchas. The story becomes a tense conflict involving the Mosad, messianic fervor, broken hearts, secret tunnels, and Menachem's choice between love and Settler fanaticism. The film takes a clear stand against the Orthodox Settler movement. In Hebrew with English subtitles. (2000, 101 min.)
"Campfire" PN1995.9 .F67 C36 2004 (DVD) Written and directed also by Joseph Cedar, also with the Zionist Settler Movement as the social setting and also challenging its ideology (but less directly). "The film is set in 1981, immediately after the peace treaty with Egypt and Israel’s subsequent withdrawal from the Sinai desert, the events that provided much of the energy for the formation of the original settlements. Recently widowed, Rachel Gerlick (Michaela Eshet) wants to move to a new West Bank settlement. She thinks this will give her life meaning, and also provide her teenage daughters, Esti and Tami (Maya Maron and Hani Furstenberg), with a stable communal life. Motke (Assi Dayan), the group’s organizer, however, is worried about admitting the women to such a tightly interdependent community. He appears sincere in his religious convictions. There’s nothing fanatical in his public persona, and yet in private conversations, it’s clear that he would willingly sacrifice everyone around him in service to his cause. Rachel’s ally in her struggle with Motke is Yossi (Moshe Ivgy), one of the suitors Motke has lined up for her. Yossi is an older and more reflective version of Menachem, the hero of “Time of Favor.” Like Menachem, Yossi is a deeply sympathetic character, a man who observes without openly criticizing, and who acts quietly but firmly. Both men are devout yet humanistic, open to women’s needs and accepting of their emotions. " (films42.com) The occasion of the "campfire" itself reveals an ugly violent side of the Orthodox Zionist youth movement. At the heart of the film is the family drama involving Rachel and her daughters. (2004, 96 min.)
"Left Luggage"
PT5881.16.R48 L44 2001 (DVD)
Set
in Belgium in 1972, Chaja (Laura Fraser) is a rebellious philosophy student
whose parents are Holocaust survivors; her mother represses her memories and
her father is obsessed with finding the suitcases he buried during the war,
suitcases holding family albums and keepsakes, his former life. Needing money,
Chaja goes to work as a nanny for a Hasidic family with 5 children, one of them
a troubled 4-year old who doesn't speak. She feels repelled by Hasidic rules
but loves the little boy and determines to help him. As the film progresses, Chaja (and the viewers) come to respect and
sympathize with the Hasidic community, as well as see its faults (too passive
toward oppressors), and to understand Chaja's parents. Chaja gradually
embraces her own identity as a Jew and child of survivors, seeking her own "lost
luggage" with her father. Chaim Topol plays Mr. Appleschnitt, a kindly
Orthodox elder offering wise advice to Chaja. In English, a Flemish and Dutch production. (1998, 100
minutes)
"A Stranger Among Us" PN1997
.S7815 2003 (DVD)
Director: Sidney Lumet, written by Robert J. Avrech.
Cast: Melanie Griffith, John Pankow, Tracy Pollan, Lee Richardson, Mia Sara,
Jamey Sheridan, Eric Thal. "Emily Eden, a New York City detective, must go
undercover among Hasidic Jews to solve a puzzling murder." A surprisingly
detailed and sympathetic portrait of a Hasidic community and its
counter-cultural values. Conservative ideals of love and marriage,
and the compassion and caring of a warm community, overcome the cynicism and
self-hatred of the detective. (110 min, 1992)
"Passover Fever" (or Passover Knight) PN1995.9 .F7
P33 1995 (DVD)
Directed by Shemi Zarhin. Comedy/drama about three
generations of a modern Israeli family who convene to celebrate Passover.
Each of the four children and their spouses has a personal history of suffering and a love/hate
relationship with the grandparents (played by veteran actors Gila Almagor and
Yosef Shiloah), and behind much of the drama is the death of one of the sons in
a military training exercise. (100 min.,1995)
"The megilleh" (DVD)
Directed by Ilan Eldad, filmed in Israel in 1983, with English rhymed dialogue
and Yiddish-language songs (with English subtitles). The film is based on the
rhymed play “Songs of the Megilleh" by Itzik Manger (1901-1961), a Yiddish
writer from the same circle as Isaac B. Singer. In the film a Jewish tailor’s
village in Poland “which no longer exists” puts on a play enacting the Purim
story from the Book of Esther. Most of the film presents this play, in which
members of the village take on the roles of characters in the story; we are mostly
watching the play, commented on by an outsider who also appears in various
minor roles. The tone is mostly silly and cheerful, with plenty of Yiddish
slapstick and sentimental songs, but the villain, Haman, is updated as a modern
anti-Semite -- a cosmopolitan fascist wielding a power drill who
tries to destroy all the families of the loyal tailors’ guild. (86 min.)
"Trembling before G-d" (DVD) HQ75.15 .T74 2003
A documentary built around personal stories of gay and
lesbian Hasidic and Orthodox Jews. Portrays people who face a profound dilemma -
how to reconcile their passion for Judaism with the biblical prohibitions
against homosexuality. Includes interviews with closeted and out gay Orthodox
and Hasidic Jews, including the first openly gay Orthodox rabbis, Steven
Greenberg (2001, 84 min.)
"Ushpizin" (Succot Guests) (DVD) PN1997.2
.U84 2006
Light hearted, serious, ironic exploration of the meaning of absolute "faith" as
interpreted by the followers of the great Hasidic rabbi, Nahman of Bratslav,
written, acted, and directed (mostly) by Orthodox Jews. "Plot Synopsis: In
Jerusalem's orthodox neighborhoods, it's Succoth, seven days celebrating life's
essentials in a sukkah, a temporary shack of both deprivation and hospitality. A
devout couple, Moshe and Mali, married nearly five years and childless, are
broke and praying for a miracle. Being childless may force them, through Jewish
law, to divorce though they love each other. Suddenly, miracles abound: a
friend finds Moshe a sukkah he says is abandoned, Moshe is the beneficiary
of local charitable fundraising, and two escaped convicts arrive on Moshe and
Mali's doorstep in time to be their ushpizin - their guests. The miracles then
become trials. Rabbinical advice, absolution, an effort to avoid anger, and a
1000-shekel citron/etrog (supposed to promote fertility) figure in Moshe's dark
night of the soul." (2004, 92 min.)
"Only Human"
(DVD) PN1995.9.C55 O559 2006
"Written and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Dominic Harari and Teresa
De Pelegrí, this Spanish film mines the comic possibilities of the classic setup
of introducing the fiancé to the family, with results that are playful, charming
and surprisingly thoughtful. Rafi (played by Guillermo Toledo) is a professor of
Arabic Literature at a Spanish university and, though a bit of a nerd, just the
kind of man that rising television personality Leni (Marián Aguilera)
should want to bring home. Except that her family is Jewish and Rafi is
Palestinian." Political and religious bias, fear, and resentment between
Muslim Palestinians and Jews cause some of the conflict and are the text for an
all-out heated argument between Rafi and Leni near the end of the film.
(2006, 85 min., Spanish with English subtitles)
"A Life Apart: Hasidism in America"
A film by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky, narrated by
Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker, 1997.
"In this extraordinarily intimate film, seven years in the making, we are taken
into the depths of the Hasidim's joyous, sometimes harsh, and often-beautiful
world. From mystical tales to mesmerizing music, Rebbes to Holocaust survivors,
A Life Apart reveals a strange, insular world few outsiders have seen,
and fewer yet could imagine." (95 min.)
"Roots and Wings: a Jewish
Congregation"
A presentation of Maryknoll fathers and brothers, Producer and narrator, Bill
Grimm, 1996. Scenes of religious ritual inside the synagogue of a
Conservative congregation in Maryland and in the homes of members of the
congregation, together with interviews with rabbis and congregants about the
meaning of Judaism and how they try to live Jewish lives amid the competing
forces of American culture. (29 min.)
"My Mexican Shiva" (Morirse está en Hebreo) is a comedy of manners centered around the seven-day Jewish mourning ritual called "shiva," but this film is much more interested in the conflict between the generations. The death of the family's patriarch - Moishe, an immigrant from Poland in 1937, an actor and philanderer - leaves his children full of anger and feelings of rejection; the young-adult grandchildren who come to the shiva have their own conflicts with their parents. The film tells the story of a gradual acceptance and reconciliation, and eventually a joyful affirmation of the grandfather's death and of their own love for each other. Two silly angels comment on the action, trying to guess the fate of Moishe's soul (but adding nothing to the plot). The Catholic maids and mariachi band playing at the end emphasize the Mexican cultural background. Film music by the famous klezmer band, The Klezmatics. (DVD, 98 min. Mexican, 2007)
"The Jew in the Lotus" (DVD, 1998, 1 hr.) purports to show how travel changed Rodger Kamanetz, who was going through a personal and artistic crisis before joining the trip to Dharamsala. He undergoes a crisis on the night before the dialogue with the Dalai Lama begins, but then the experience starts changing him. The mechanism for this never becomes clear, but he’s a happy guy when he returns to Dharamsala to give a copy of his book to the DL, and as he lectures to an audience at a synagogue. The film suggests the strangeness of India and Tibetan culture. Shows different approaches of rabbis (Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Yitz Greenberg, also Joy Levitt) to this journey.