Jordana Horn

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Creative Creation

By Jordana Horn

The Center for Jewish History is a hidden treasure buried in the secular haven of New York City’s West Village. With an intellectually pleasing symmetry, its museum is hosting a profoundly religious exhibit from an extremely secular town. San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum organized In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis. Currently, the center offers a small taste, in Manhattan, of the complete exhibit’s contemplative depth.Read More

A Funny Guy Fights Hezbollah

By Jordana Horn

It’s a shame Hanukkah has come and gone — the perfect gift is only just making its way into bookstores. Joel Chasnoff’s memoir, “The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Jewish Kid From Chicago Fights Hezbollah,” is set for release by Free Press on February 9. It’s an unusual story, humorous but not without heartbreak, told well by an intelligent and funny person.Read More

Short Cuts Jaffa

By Jordana Horn

From Australian animation (“Mary and Max”) to a restored print of 1935 Yiddish cinema (“Bar Mitzvah”), the 19th New York Jewish Film Festival is a veritable international smorgasbord of movies. Among the offerings, “Ajami” — also in sneak preview at the Boston Jewish Film Festival — is worth taking time to savor at the cinematic buffet.Read More

Song, Dance and Oud

By Jordana Horn

In comparison with some forms of Sephardic culture, Ashkenazic Judaism can come out looking as bland as a gefilte fish that’s lost its horseradish. Not to belittle klezmer, Yiddish or, has v’halila, a good matzo ball, but the inflections of Spanish and Ottoman culture in Sephardic arts render the ordinary exotic for the majority of American Jews who are Ashkenazic, like me. The opportunity to engage with Sephardic culture, whether you’re Ashkenazic, Sephardic or not Jewish at all, is a chance to revel in the polychromatic nature of the Jewish Diaspora.Read More

Israel’s Naked Truth

By Jordana Horn

Documentary film is a sprawling, big tent of a genre. Any topic could, conceivably, be made into a documentary. But I’ll venture a semi-controversial opinion: It shouldn’t.Read More


 

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