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EXTRA! -- EXTRA! -- EXTRA!!!!

New for September 2003: The 1982 film, The Chosen just came out on DVD after being out-of-print for years. It's not likely to show up in your local video store, but you can order the DVD on Amazon.com.

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A Life Apart:
Hasidism in America

This highly-acclaimed 90-minute Documentary by PBS is probably the best educational film on Hasidism available on the market today. If you are teaching a unit on Potok's The Chosen, use this film to give your class a more experiential "feel" for the Hasidic culture. Great for Jewish education, too! (Granted, 90 minutes is too long for a regular class period, but you can use selected scenes.) Now available to in either VHS video> or on DVD.

Unfortunately, one of the better dramas, the 1982 film The Chosen starring Robbie Benson, is currently out of print on video. Hopefully, it will be re-released on DVD soon. If it shows up on your TV schedule, be sure to tune in. Meanwhile, you can read my review and check for used copies on Amazon.

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The Frisco Kid

One of the all-time best Jewish comedies. Gene Wilder plays a good-hearted but bumbling Hasidic rabbi traveling in the Old Wild West, who meets up with a variety of stock Western characters for a brilliant satire about how it feels to be a religious Jew in American culture. A great family film, you will watch it again and again!
Click here to order (VHS only)

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A stranger Among Us

One of the better films about Hasidic culture, this spin-off from Witness features Melanie Griffith as a tough policewoman detective in New York who goes under cover in the Hasidic community to solve a murder and, in the process, learns a lot about Hasidim and about herself. Unique among Hollywood films about Hasidim, in that it portrays the women in a reasonably accurate, positive light. Mentions kabbalah and reincarnation, too!
Click here to order VHS
It's also due to come out on DVD in June 2003 -- you can pre-order the DVD now.

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Schindler's List

If you don't know this Oscar-winning Spielberg movie about the Holocaust, you must be living in a cave. Last time we looked, there were over 85 reviews on the Amazon site, most of them positive. What more can we add?
Click here to order VHS regular
Click here to order VHS widescreen

CD graphic] Plus, you can now order the soundtrack on CD.

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School Ties

Excellent drama about prejudice. A Jewish high school student in the 1950's gets a football scholarship to a classy upper-class school, but is advised to keep his Jewishness a secret. Which he does, and is accepted by his rich classmates -- until the truth leaks out and they find out he's a Jew. (Rated PG13 for bad language.)
Click here to order VHS
Click here to order DVD

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Fiddler on the Roof

The classic Broadway musical about a poor Jewish dairyman and his three daughters in the village of Anatevka in Old Russia. Great music, including "If I Were a Rich Man" and "Sunrise, Sunset." But please keep in mind that this is a comedy, not a serious commentary on Jewish culture! (Many of the characters and jokes are old stand-bys from Yiddish vaudeville.)

Click here to order VHS format
Click here to order DVD format

CD graphic] Or, if you prefer the music only, you can now order the soundtrack on CD.

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Yentl

This is another musical comedy that is good for a laugh but not culturally accurate and, in many ways, quite stereotyped. Based on a short story and play by I.B. Singer, but re-adapted to 1980's Third Wave feminist purposes by director/actor Barbara Streisand. The Amazon.com site has a variety of mixed reviews.
Click here to read reviews and order (VHS format only)

CD graphic] Or, if you prefer the music only, you can now order the soundtrack on CD.

And, if you are interested in the original I.B. Singer story (which may have been about a transexual, not a feminist!), you can read reviews and order a copy.

A Price Above Rubies

We don't carry this because we believe in responsible merchandising. This film is insulting to Hasidim, treats religious issues in a shallow manner, and it's R-rated porn to boot. Probably the worst film about Hasidim on the market. Don't waste your money on this turkey. (If it pops up in the Amazon recommendations below, blame them, not me. I can program this box to display Jewish videos, but not specific titles, which are randomly generated by Amazon.)

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