Documentaries films and television series
The Jewish Americans by
Traces 350 years of Jewish American history, from the arrival of the first Jews in 1654 up to the present day. Includes archival film footage and interviews with historians and people of the Jewish faith to examine how some aspects of Jewish life have changed in the United States over time.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 4667Publication Date: 2008
America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference (American Experience) by
This edition of The American Experience chronicles a dark chapter of American history, the refusal of this nation to come to the aid of German Jews in the months and years before and during World War II. Hal Linden narrates this tale which uses the story of one German immigrant, Kurt Klein, to illustrate the problems of an entire ethnic group. The obstacles Klein faced in reaching America, and the further obstructions he struggled against to free his parents are well chronicled. Klein's struggle is presented as a race against time as Hitler's policies toward the Jewish people become clear. This documentary is an unflinching look at a black episode of world history and a sobering reminder that responsibility for the events of the Holocaust can not be laid solely at German feet.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 12391Publication Date: 2014
Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story by
Academy Award-winner Dustin Hoffman narrates filmmaker Peter Miller's documentary tracing Jewish involvement in the development of American baseball. From Sandy Koufax's campaign to achieve equal rights for all players to Hank Greenberg's unwavering support of the legendary Jackie Robinson, Jewish personalities have played a pivotal role in shaping this uniquely American sport, and ensuring that every athlete has their turn at bat. Interviews with Al Rosen, Shawn Green, Kevin Youklis, Maury Allen, Larry King, and Ron Howard offer additional insight into the role Jews played in making baseball the great American pass-time, and a rare, archival interview with Koufax allows fans to witness the evolution of their favorite sport firsthand.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 8944Publication Date: 2010
50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. & Mrs. Kraus by
Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus never intended to become heroes. But in early 1939, as conditions were worsening for Jews living inside Nazi Germany, the Philadelphia couple embarked on a risky and improbable mission -- an effort to rescue 50 Jewish children and bring them to safety to the United States.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 12285Publication Date: 2013
Dramatic films and television series
Gentleman's Agreement by
Magazine writer Schuyler 'Phil' Green, a widower who has just arrived with his mother and young son in New York, is assigned the task of writing an expose of anti-Semitism. As he searches for a new angle on the topic, he decides to pass as a Jew for several months, which causes no end of trouble for his ailing mother and young son. It also puts his new society girlfriend on the spot, since despite all her intellectual convictions, she cannot quite shake the vicious prejudices of her social circle.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 10236Publication Date: 1947
Funny Girl by
The life of comedienne Fannie Brice, from her early days in the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, to the height of her career with the Ziegfeld Follies. At first, only Fanny's mother believes she can make it in show business. But when she gets her first break at Keeney's Music Hall as a roller-skating chorus girl, she gets hired and becomes a success. Fanny eventually falls in love with and marries Nick Arnstein, a handsome gambler who's luck doesn't hold up.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 7999Publication Date: 1968
A Serious Man by
Follows one ordinary man's quest to become a serious man. Physics professor Larry Gopnik can't believe his life. His wife is leaving him for his best friend, his unemployed brother won't move off the couch, someone is threatening his career, his kids are a mystery, and his neighbor is tormenting him by sunbathing nude. Struggling to make sense of it all, Larry consults three different rabbis and their answers lead him on a twisted journey of faith, family, delinquent behavior, and mortality.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 7151Publication Date: 2009
The Devil's Arithmetic by
An American Jewish teenager travels backs in time to a Polish concentration camp where she experiences the horrors of the Holocaust and for the first time understands the grim reality of her people's fate.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 7882Publication Date: 1999
A Mighty Heart by
adaptation of Mariane's memoir recounting the abduction and murder of her husband (played in the film by Dan Futterman) by Pakistani militants. It was on January 23, 2002, that Mariane Pearl's life took a grim and unanticipated turn that no one could have seen coming. The South Asia Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl, was in Pakistan with his pregnant wife, Mariane, when he set out to conduct one last interview for an upcoming article; the pair were due to fly back home to the U.S. shortly thereafter. By all accounts, it was the same type of interview he had conducted a hundred times before, and though the only concern that Daniel had voiced beforehand was that he might be a bit late for dinner, it would soon become obvious that something had gone horribly awry. Later, in an attempt to rise above the seething vengeance and cycle of violence that the post-9/11 world has fallen into and familiarize her newborn son with the father he will never know, Mariane penned A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl. The remarkable true story behind the murder that shook the entire world, Mariane's deeply personal novel is adapted for the screen by the BAFTA award-winning director of The Road to Guantanamo.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 3919Publication Date: 2007
Divan by
As a teenager, filmmaker Pearl Gluck left her Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn for secular life in Manhattan. Many years later, Pearl's father has one wish: that she marry and return to the community. Pearl, however, takes a more creative approach to mend the breach. She travels to Hungary to retrieve a turn-of-the-century family heirloom, a couch upon which esteemed rabbis once slept. En route for the ancestral divan, Pearl encounters a colorful cast of characters who provide guidance and inspiration, including a couch exporter, her ex-Communist cousin in Budapest, a pair of Hungarian-American matchmakers and a renegade group of formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 7742Publication Date: 2004
