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Virtual program: Women of Valor — Stories of Resistance in Paris
4 PM US EASTERN TIME, 1 PM US PACIFIC TIME
In February 1943, at the height of the deportations from France, a daring group of Jewish and Christian women banded together to stage the largest single rescue operation in wartime Paris. Please join Anne Nelson, author of Suzanne’s Children, and Joanne Gilbert, author of Women of Valor, as they describe these women — including Suzanne Spaak, Sophie Schwartz, Frida Wattenberg and others — who risked everything to fight back against evil.
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The Jewish James Bond and Other Heroes
Go behind the scenes and get to know some of the colorful characters who participated in Operation Zebra — the 1947-49 mission to help rescue newborn Israel’s 600,000 Jews and provide a safe haven for Holocaust survivors. The heroes include the Jewish James Bond, Yehuda Arazi, the operation’s whimsical chief pilot, Sam Lewis, and its cowgirl flight instructor, Elynor Rudnick. Meet Arazi’s grandson and namesake, and Lewis’ daughter, who was a teenager during the operation, as well as Boaz Dvir, who captured their tales in the 2015 award-winning PBS documentary A Wing and a Prayer and the 2020 critically acclaimed book Saving Israel. (more…)
In My Mother’s Footsteps
Caught within the ever-approaching steel jaws of Nazi exterminators, 19-year-old Leah Steppel from Dusseldorf successfully escapes Europe via Portugal — thanks to a precious visa from Aristides de Sousa Mendes. More than seven decades later, her daughter Rebecca Barber retraces Leah’s footsteps to freedom. (more…)
Resistance of the Heart – A Valentine’s Day Program
The Rosenstrasse Protest is the nearly-forgotten story of a group of women in Berlin who faced down the Third Reich — and won! In February of 1943, several hundred non-Jewish wives of Jewish men faced down Hitler’s genocidal policy and the SS to secure the release of their captured husbands. Nathan Stoltzfus is the world’s expert on this history, and he will be in dialogue with historian Mordecai Paldiel as well as Ruth Wiseman, whose family lived this story. (more…)
Lessons in Moral Courage — Irshad Manji in conversation with Abraham H. Foxman
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Irshad Manji is the winner of Oprah Winfrey’s first annual Chutzpah Award for boldness. As founder of the Moral Courage Project, Irshad equips people to do the right thing in the face of fear. She discovered her mission through a deeply personal journey. In 2003, Irshad released The Trouble with Islam Today, an open letter to her fellow Muslims about why anti-Semitism and other prejudices must end in the name of Allah. In 2007, Irshad turned the book into an Emmy-nominated PBS film, Faith Without Fear. And in 2011, she published Allah, Liberty & Love, which shows how Islam can be reinterpreted for the 21st century. Along the way, Irshad became a professor of moral courage — first teaching at New York University and now lecturing with Oxford University’s Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights. Irshad’s latest book is Don’t Label Me. In our deeply polarized time, she says, standing for what’s right is not enough to make progress. We must also learn to engage the “Other.” Labeling is easy. But listening is a form of moral courage. (more…)
Shalom Uganda
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK
7 PM LISBON • 9 PM UGANDA
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Learn about a small Ashkenazi Jewish community that settled in the African country of Uganda after World War II. With no rabbi or Jewish infrastructure, this community of twenty-three families formed a cohesive group that celebrated all Jewish festivals together and upheld their Jewish identity. There is also a small but vibrant indigenous Jewish Ugandan community that survived persecution under the regime of Idi Amin and that survives to this day. Meet representatives of both communities.
Natan Sharansky in Conversation with Gil Troy
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 9 PM JERUSALEM
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See the award-winning documentary film From Slavery to Freedom and then meet Natan Sharansky in person. He will be in dialogue with historian Dr. Gil Troy, and they will take your questions.
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The Lady in Gold: The Remarkable Story of Klimt’s Nazi-Looted Painting and its Recovery
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 7 PM LONDON • 8 PM VIENNA
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Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also called The Lady in Gold or The Woman in Gold) is a painting by Gustav Klimt. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter’s husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. After a seven-year legal claim, which included a hearing before the US Supreme Court, an arbitration committee in Vienna agreed that the painting had indeed been stolen from the family and should be returned. Meet the American journalist Anne-Marie O’Connor who first broke the story to US audiences. (more…)
The Catcher Was a Spy — The Moe Berg Story
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Morris “Moe” Berg was a Jewish American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball, who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke numerous languages and read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please. Berg was sent by the US government to determine whether the German physicist Werner Heisenberg was developing an atomic bomb for Nazi Germany, and Berg was authorized to shoot Heisenberg if he had definitive proof in the affirmative. Meet Nicholas Dawidoff, author of the best-selling book on which the motion picture was based. He will be in conversation with the well-known journalist and podcaster Jacob Goldstein. (more…)
Miep Gies and the Rescue of Anne Frank’s Diary
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 7 PM LONDON
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This program pays tribute to the woman who sheltered Anne Frank for three years and then rescued her now-famous diary. Miep Gies oversaw the “secret annex” where the Frank family was housed, while sheltering another Jewish person in her own home. Meet Gillian Walnes Perry who knew Miep Gies well and accompanied her to the Academy Awards and Meeg Pincus who wrote a delightful book on Miep Gies for young people. (more…)