September 6, 2009

Broadcast Date: 
Sep 6 2009

Historian Timothy Snyder on the Holocaust's hidden massacres; Brand Israel arrives in Central Park with Tel Aviv Beach; plus Jews for Jesus's annual Summer Witnessing Campaign.

Episode segments
  • Holocaust: The Ignored Reality
    Holocaust
    Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale University and the author of an essay in the New York Review of Books, "Holocaust: The Ignored Reality." His book on the mass killings in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, will be published in 2010.  His most recent book is The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke.
    Esther Kaplan

    For most of us, our understanding of the Holocaust is framed by Auschwitz and the memoirs of Western European survivors.  Our understanding of Stalin's repression by the Gulag and its depiction in survivors' memoirs and by Stalin's murders of political opponents.  But Timothy Snyder argues that these potent symbols are only the beginning of understanding the mass killings that took place under Hitler and Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s.

  • Israel's Branding Campaign
    Israeli Politics, Israel/Palestine, Arts & Culture

    Mandy Katz is a senior editor at Moment magazine and the author of The Re-Branding of Israel From War Planes to Women: Why at 60 Israel's Image is Talking off in New Directions.
    Esther Kaplan and K.E.Feldman

    June 21st was Tel Aviv Beach Day in Central Park.   This month's Toronto International Fim Festival spotlights Tel Aviv in its inaugural "City to City" program, setting off a firestorm of protests.  Both are part of a worldwide launch of a Brand Israel campaign, which, according to Israel's consul general in Toronto, is intended to "take the emphasis off the politics and strife in his homeland and shift it to what matters. . ."  Mandy Katz talked with some of the movers and shakers behind this campaign

  • Return of Jews for Jesus
    Religion, Jewish Communities
    Adam Lerman narrates the Jews for Jesus blogger's text.
    K. E. Feldman

    This summer, for the 36th time, the Jews for Jesus folks are back in New York City for their Summer Witnessing Campaign.  Beyond the Pale contributor K. E. Feldman tracks them down. (To access K.E. Feldman's essay on Jews for Jesus at n+1, click here.)