Three centuries before The Merchant of Venice was written, England became the first country in medieval Europe to expel its Jewish population. Comparing Shylock to the stock Jewish villain of the day, the episode looks at the efforts over the years, for better or worse, to treat him more as a victim – and rescue Shakespeare from any taint of anti-Semitism.
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Explore the evolution of Hanukkah from a small holiday within Judaism to prominence in American culture. William Shatner, Lainie Kazan, authors, rabbis and others share historical background and personal memories.
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From Israeli folk dance at the 92Y to eating knishes in the Lower East Side, Mickela gets a taste of this culturally, ethnically, and religiously rich group that is iconic to New York City.
Set in the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, 93Queen follows a group of tenacious Hasidic women who are smashing the patriarchy in their community by creating the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City. With unprecedented—and insider—access, 93Queen offers up a unique portrayal of a group of religious women who are taking matters into their own hands to change their own community from within.
For centuries, the Lithuanian city of Vilna was one of the most important Jewish centers in the world, earning the title “Jerusalem of the North” until World War II, when the Nazis murdered about 95% of its Jewish population and reduced its synagogues and cultural institutions to ruins. The Soviets finished the job, paving over the remnants of Vilna’s famous Great Synagogue so thoroughly that few today know it ever existed. Now, an international team of archaeologists is trying to rediscover this forgotten world, excavating the remains of its Great Synagogue and searching for proof of one of Vilna’s greatest secrets: a lost escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners inside a horrific Nazi execution site.
Join Ann Curry for the dramatic reunions of people separated by WWII. A Japanese American woman sent to an internment camp hopes to find a childhood friend, and a survivor from a Jewish ghetto searches for the child of the couple who befriended him.
CEO Message
Fact-Based Reporting, Without Fear or Favor
I first took note of war correspondent Christiane Amanpour back in the early 1990s when I saw her on cable channel CNN, running across a crowded street in Bosnia with sniper fire ringing out.
It wasn’t only her risk-taking that arrested me; it was her unflinching reports on a different kind of war. This wasn’t an army versus an army. It was a war against civilians.
More than two decades later, she would say: “I learned…when I was covering genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, never to equate victim and aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence.”
“Because then, if you do, particularly in situations like that,” she said, “you are party and accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences.”
“So,” she concluded, “I believe in being truthful, not neutral.”
Amanpour, who is now CNN’s Chief International Correspondent, interviews global leaders and decision-makers on PBS every weeknight at 11:00. Her program, Amanpour on PBS, joined the programming line-up after PBS stopped distributing programs with Charlie Rose, following multiple women’s allegations of sexual harassment.
Amanpour, who turns 59 this month, is a British citizen who spent her early years in Tehran. She is the product of a Muslim father from Iran and a Christian mother from England – and she’s married to a Jewish American, former U.S. diplomat Jamie Rubin. They live in London with their teenage son, Darius.
“I’ve lived in a completely multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious environment, in some of the most difficult places in the world,” Amanpour has said.
“I’ve seen firsthand that you can bridge differences, you can have tolerance between groups. The trick is to minimize the extremes, whether it’s in politics or in religion or in any kind of relationship, and to stick to the sensible center, which is where the vast majority, not only of this country but the world, lies,” she says.
Amanpour also has a knack for bridging between television networks and countries. She will remain with CNN in Britain while sharing her interviews with PBS in America.
She urges all journalists to re-commit to robust, fact-based reporting on the issues – without fear and without favor.
“When lies become mixed up with the truth,” she said, “it’s a very dangerous world.”
Almost three decades after Christiane dodged bullets in the Balkans, she’s sitting down in the studio with world power players. I still find her coverage arresting. And the truth is worth staying up for. See you at 11:00 weeknights, “Amanpour on PBS.”
Aloha nui,
Meet Naomi, a seemingly ordinary Orthodox Jewish preteen from New Jersey whose extraordinary talent – breaking world powerlifting records – turns her into an international phenomenon in this unique coming-of-age story.
This program explores the contributions to Broadway musicals by Jewish artists, including Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.
Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Sarah Silverman, and other Jewish comics and thinkers discuss the provocative question of whether any topic – including the Holocaust – should be off-limits in comedy.