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In Search Of Happiness
''In Search of Happiness'' (russian: В поисках счастья) is a 2005 Russian documentary film that poetically follows the lives of Boris and Masha Rak, Soviet Jews who in 1934 moved to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO) created by the Soviet government in Russian Far East. The film won the Best Documentary award in the Russian Film Festival in 2006. The Jewish population of the JAO never reached 30% and as of 2003 it was only about 1.2%. The population of the capital, Birobidzan, has dwindled. The city's only Birobidzhan Synagogue holds services twice a week. Summary The film shows Boris's and Masha's modest life, without modern technology, relying on each other's hard work to survive. Rak is the chairman of Birobidzhan's last collective farm, which excessive rain has reduced to a swampland. For Rak, the puddles have become "a memorial to his life's work." The two also raise animals, which are all given the names of political leaders. "No one wants to invest any mone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Language
Russian (russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, link=no, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the First language, native language of the Russians, and belongs to the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. Besides Russia itself, Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely as a lingua franca throughout Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. It was the De facto#National languages, ''de facto'' language of the former Soviet Union,1977 Soviet Constitution, Constitution and Fundamental Law of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1977: Section II, Chapter 6, Article 36 and continues to be used in public life with varying proficiency in all of the post-Soviet states. Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jewish State
In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland of the Jewish people. Modern Israel came into existence on 14 May 1948 as a polity to serve as the homeland for the Jewish people. It was also defined in its declaration of independence as a "Jewish state", a term that also appeared in the United Nations Partition Plan for British Palestine in 1947. The related term of "Jewish and democratic state" dates from a 1992 legislation by Israel's Knesset. Since its establishment, Israel has passed many laws which reflect on the Jewish identity and values of the majority (about 75% in 2016) of its citizens. However, the secular-versus-religious debate in Israel in particular has focused debate on the Jewish nature of the state; another aspect of the debate is the status of minorities in Israel, most notably that of the Arab-Israeli population. In pre-modern times, the religious laws of Judaism defined a number of prerogative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2005 Films
2005 in film is an overview of events, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies, festivals, a list of country-specific lists of films released, notable deaths and film debuts. Evaluation of the year Renowned American film critic and professor Emanuel Levy stated on his website, "Despite films like “Crash,” which deals with racism in contemporary America, and geopolitical exposes like ''Syriana'' and ''Munich'', the 2005 movie year may go down in film history as the year of sexual diversity." He went on to emphasize, "It's hard to recall a year in which sex, sexuality, and gender have featured so prominently in American films, both mainstream Hollywood and independent cinema. I am deliberately using the concepts of sexual diversity and sexual orientation, rather than gay-themed movies, because the rather new phenomenon goes beyond homosexuality or lesbianism. For decades, American culture has been both puritanical and hypocritical as far as sexual matters are con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Media In The Jewish Autonomous Oblast
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the object's weight using a spring scale, rather than balance scale comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Jewish Steppe
''The Jewish Steppe'' is a 2001 documentary about a group of Russian Jews who, suffering as a result of prejudice and fearful of pogroms, left their homeland to farm the Crimean Peninsula. Established in the 1920s, their Soviet agrarian commune was destroyed. Summary "Why should the Jewish people go to Palestine where the land is less productive and requires big investments?" a Jewish newspaper asked at the time of the settlement, "Who go so far if the fertile Crimean land is beckoning to the Jewish people?" At the turn of the twentieth century, antisemitism was common in Russia. Legislation was passed that limited Jews to working only in retail and handicrafts. When these laws were lifted, around the time the Russian Revolution of 1917, pogroms broke out. Approximately 30,000 Jews left for the Crimean Peninsula. Rare pictures and film footage from the Russian State Film and Photo Archive are narrated in ''The Jewish Steppe'' to explain how they lived there. One newspaper wrot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Next Year In Argentina
''Next Year in Argentina'' (original title ''El Año Que Viene en... Argentina'') is a 2005 documentary about diaspora Jews, who have either decided to remain in Argentina or move to Israel. Argentine-Israeli filmmakers Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky travel to Argentina to speak to those who have stayed behind. Summary “Next year in Jerusalem,” goes the prayer that Jews have been chanting through two thousand years of exile. Yet nearly 60 years after the founding of the Jewish State, some who've emigrated to the Holy Land still long for the home they left behind — even if home meant poverty and persecution, as it did for many Argentine Jews. “I always raise the subject of my being Jewish upfront . . . for me it’s like my mark . . . it’s my pride” says one director's brother. When people ask why he doesn't move to Israel, he responds: “Argentina is the best country in the world.” Argentina has a long history of anti-Semitism and political unrest, which came t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jews Of Iran (documentary)
''Jews of Iran'' is a 2005 documentary film by Iranian-Dutch filmmaker Ramin Farahani. The film examines the lives of Persian Jews living in Iran's predominately Islamic society. Although they face discrimination, they choose to remain in their homes rather than leave the country. The documentary was the first film to cover this subject, capturing both friendships among Muslims and Jews and the prejudices against the Jewish minority. Farahani states that ''Jews of Iran'' is meant to "help westerners correct their image" of the Middle East and allow them to "see the nuances" within the culture. Background Although Jews have lived in Iran for 2,700 years, the 1979 Iranian Revolution pressured most Jews to leave the country. In modern Iran, rampant antisemitism continues to threaten the remaining citizens. Synopsis The film uses Middle Eastern music in its backgorund. It offers shots of century-old architecture as the documentary travels through Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jews And Judaism In The Jewish Autonomous Oblast
The history of the Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast ( JAO), Russia, began with the early settlements of 1928. Yiddish and Russian are the two official languages of the JAO. According to Peter Matthiessen, The Birds of Heaven,p20-21, “According to local memory, thousands of Jews from Ukraine and elsewhere were transported here during the vast purges and organized famines of the mid-1930s…most of the displaced were city dwellers…a large number of Jews died…” Early settlement In May 1928 the first group of Jewish settlers from cities and villages in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia arrived in the region that became the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. These individuals settled in many different areas of the autonomous oblast, some in Birobidzhan and others in various rural settlements. In 1934, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was formed in the Russian Far East to show that, like other national groups in the Soviet Union, Russian Jews could receive a territory in which to pursue cul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antisemitism And Joseph Stalin
The accusation that Joseph Stalin was antisemitic is much discussed by historians. Although part of a movement that included Jews and rejected antisemitism, he privately displayed a contemptuous attitude toward Jews on various occasions that were witnessed by his contemporaries, and are documented by historical sources. In 1939, he reversed Communist policy and began a cooperation with Nazi Germany that included the removal of high profile Jews from the Kremlin. As dictator of the Soviet Union, he promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews shortly after World War II, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. At the time of his death, Stalin was planning an even larger campaign against Jews. According to his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin was fomenting the doctors' plot as a pretext for further anti-Jewish repressions. Early years Born in Gori, Georgia (then in the Russian Empire) and educated at an Orthodox seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi) before beco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of The Jews In Russia And The Soviet Union
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "For two centuries – wrote Zvi Gitelman – millions of Jews had lived under one entity, the Russian Empire and its successor state the USSR. They had now come under the jurisdiction of fifteen states, some of which had never existed and others that had passed out of existence in 1939." Before the revolutions of 1989 which resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, a number of these now sovereign countries constituted the component republics of the Soviet Union. Armenia The history of the Jews in Armenia dates back more than 2,000 years. After Eastern Armenia came under Russian rule in the early 19th century, Jews began arriving from Poland and Iran, creating Ashkenazic and Mizrahi communities in Yerevan. More Jews ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Progressive Jewish Thought And The New Anti-Semitism
''"Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism'' is a 2006 essay written by Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld, director of Indiana University's Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and professor of English and Jewish Studies. It was published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) with an introduction by AJC executive director David A. Harris.Alvin Rosenfeld'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism. American Jewish Committee. 2006. The essay claims that a "number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent antisemitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist". The essay Motivation Rosenfeld described his motivation for writing the essay in an interview featured on the CampusJ blog: Over the last few years I've been focusing a lot of my research on present day anti-Semitism.... In the course of my research I began to notice that some of the people who were voicing some of the harshest hostility were themselves Jews, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
