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Coming Feb. 17th …

image - MISCELLANEOUS Productions’ Jack Zipes Lecture screenshot

A FREE Facebook Watch Event: Resurrecting Dead Fairy Tales - Lecture and Q&A with Folklorist Jack Zipes

Worth watching …

image - A graphic novel co-created by artist Miriam Libicki and Holocaust survivor David Schaffer for the Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust & Human Rights Education project

A graphic novel co-created by artist Miriam Libicki and Holocaust survivor David Schaffer for the Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust & Human Rights Education project. Made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

screenshot - The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience is scheduled to open soon.

The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience is scheduled to open soon.

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Tag: nuclear

From baseball player to spy

From baseball player to spy

Moe Berg as a catcher during his time in Major League Baseball. (photo from Irwin Berg)

Near the end of John Ford’s essential 1962 western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper editor coins the credo, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The fact, as we all know, is that Americans are all-star myth-makers and myth-lovers. Many American Jewish boys caught the bug via the improbable immigrant saga of Moe Berg, a paradoxically brilliant professional athlete who led a secret second life as a spy for the U.S. government. How much of Berg’s story is true, though, and how much was legend passed among kvelling kids in the schoolyard?

Aviva Kempner, who hit a home run with her 1998 documentary about another Jewish ballplayer, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, was the obvious, natural and best-equipped filmmaker to take on the mid-20th-century mysteries at the heart of Berg’s minor celebrity.

The Spy Behind Home Plate, which screens at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival March 8 at the Rothstein Theatre, is a testament to Kempner’s determination and persistence. Chock full of dozens of contemporary and archival interviews, and packed with rare photos and even rarer film footage, The Spy Behind Home Plate is a definitive record of Berg’s achievements.

Although it’s an effective way to impart information, the dogged, dog-eared marriage of talking heads, vintage visuals and period music can’t fully evoke the shadowy stealth and deadly risks of Berg’s wartime activities. Hamstrung by her budget, Kempner wasn’t able to stage reenactments or employ other strategies to illustrate the unfilmed and unrecorded liaisons and conversations that Berg had in Europe in 1944 and 1945. The Spy Behind Home Plate, therefore, is like the steady everyday player who notches the occasional three-hit game but never achieves the transcendent grace and power of a superstar.

Morris (Moe) Berg, international man of mystery, was born in New York in 1902. His father had fled a Ukrainian shtetl for the Lower East Side, where he started a laundry before buying a drugstore in Newark.

The family moved to New Jersey when Moe was a boy, and he grew into an excellent student and a terrific baseball player. After a year at New York University, he transferred to Princeton, where he was a star shortstop (back when the Ivy League was the top, if not the only, sports conference) and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

While his older brother Sam fulfilled Dad’s wishes and went to medical school, Moe signed a contract to play pro ball. He acceded to his father’s demands up to a point by attending Columbia Law School in the off-seasons, earning his degree and passing the New York bar in 1929.

It was a false bargain: Moe despised the idea of being a lawyer, while Bernard Berg never accepted a baseball career as a legitimate pursuit. In fact, the old man refused to go to the park and see his son play.

From an athletics standpoint, his dad wasn’t missing much. A knee injury early in Moe’s career, compounded by primitive diagnosis and treatment, severely slowed him. Over 15 years as a backup catcher, Berg notched exactly 441 hits in 663 games.

What set Moe apart was his charm, charisma and erudition. He studied Sanskrit at the Sorbonne one off-season, and read multiple newspapers every day. When he went to Japan on a barnstorming tour with Babe Ruth and other Major League stars, he learned Japanese.

Berg carried a camera everywhere on that trip, and made a point of checking out the roof of a tall Tokyo hotel in order to shoot a 360-degree panorama of the city. It’s not altogether clear if he was already working officially (albeit surreptitiously) for the U.S. government, but his film was of significant help when the United States went to war with Japan after Pearl Harbor.

In fact, in early 1942, Berg recorded a radio segment in Japanese that was broadcast in Japan and drew on the goodwill he’d accumulated over two prewar visits.

photo - Moe Berg in a military jeep in California with his brother Sam during the war, July 1942
Moe Berg in a military jeep in California with his brother Sam during the war, July 1942. (photo from Irwin Berg)

Berg had been sent on research missions to South America, but that was too far from the real action. It appears he found a home in 1943 in the newly created Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the intelligence branch that evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency after the war.

His primary and crucial assignment was to ascertain how close the Germans were to having a nuclear weapon, and to sway Italian scientists from the Axis to the Allies. To successfully carry off his cover story, Berg was briefed on the science and strategy of the Manhattan Project.

One biographer recounts, “The OSS had given the Manhattan Project its own spy, in effect, its own field agent to pursue questions of interest wherever he could in Europe. And that was Moe Berg.”

Kempner accords a great deal of screen time to this episode in Berg’s clandestine career as a professional spook. It’s a great story, in which the solidly built former catcher is assigned to attend a conference in Switzerland and determine – from the keynote speech by a visiting German scientist, Werner Heisenberg – if the Nazis are within reach of perfecting the bomb.

Berg carries a pistol to the symposium, with orders to use it on Heisenberg if he deems it necessary. It would be churlish of me to recount the outcome of Berg’s suicide mission except to say that the catcher-turned-spy who spoke seven languages lived unhappily ever after the war.

Kempner leaves us wanting to know more about Berg’s later years. By the weirdest of coincidences, Sam Berg headed a group of doctors sent to Nagasaki to study the effects of radiation poisoning. Incredibly, Moe and Sam never knew about each other’s exploits. This lone fact reveals that there’s still more to know about Moe Berg’s story.

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs until March 8. For tickets and the movie schedule, visit vjff.org.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Format ImagePosted on February 28, 2020February 26, 2020Author Michael FoxCategories TV & FilmTags baseball, history, Manhattan Project, Moe Berg, nuclear, politics, Second World War, Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, VJFF
Nuclear comedy to be a hit?

Nuclear comedy to be a hit?

Atomic Falafel poster. (photo from Atomic Falafel PR via israel21c.org)

While world headlines focused on the landmark Iranian nuclear deal, an enormous billboard outside a Tel Aviv building announcing the upcoming opening of an Iranian embassy in Israel in August had the local social media community wondering whether it was an art installation, an anonymous peace group’s campaign or someone’s idea of a joke.

photo - The billboard announcement that had Tel Avivians talking
The billboard announcement that had Tel Avivians talking. (photo from Atomic Falafel PR via israel21c.org)

The Hebrew billboard included pictures of the two countries’ flags, a local phone number and the text: “Opening here soon – embassy of Iran in Israel.” It was erected at Rabin Square, the favored site for political peace rallies.

The mystery was solved in the last days of August by the people behind the sign. It was a public-relations stunt to drum up publicity for the new Israeli comedy Atomic Falafel, a madcap film about a nuclear conflict between Israel and Iran.

“A satirical comedy mocking ultra-militarism” is how producer Avraham Pirchi explained the film, which was scheduled to open in Israel on Sept. 10.

Atomic Falafel is the latest from director Dror Shaul, winner of the 2007 Sundance World Cinema Jury Prize for his semi-autobiographical film Sweet Mud. It tells the story of two girls – one in Israel, one in Iran – who spill their countries’ most valuable secrets on Facebook to prevent a nuclear crisis. The movie pits a wifi-connected younger generation against old-school warmongers in an effort to stop a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Teenagers around the world today are much more similar than different to each other. They dress the same, listen to the same music and are not really interested in wars. I hope that the sane, logical side of Israel and the world will overcome the irresponsible one, and that my little boy born just two weeks after the end of shooting will be rewarded with a safe future,” said Shaul.

“When we started to make Atomic Falafel, we didn’t know we would be releasing the film when Iran’s nuclear power would be so relevant. But that’s what’s happened,” Pirchi told variety.com, adding that the film is “pro-peace and optimistic.”

The film is co-produced by New Zealand’s General Film Corp. and Germany’s Arden Film, Getaway Pictures and Jooyaa Film. It stars Israeli actors including Shai Avivi, Mali Levy, Yossi Marshak and Zohar Strauss, as well as Germany’s Alexander Fehling (Inglourious Basterds).

screenshot - Tara Melter, a German actress of Iranian descent who plays a supporting role in the film, raps the soundtrack’s title track, “Hitchki.”
Tara Melter, a German actress of Iranian descent who plays a supporting role in the film, raps the soundtrack’s title track, “Hitchki.” (screenshot)

Tara Melter, a German actress of Iranian descent who plays a supporting role in Atomic Falafel, raps the soundtrack’s title track, “Hitchki.” The song, composed by Bahar Henschel, is addictive.

Production company United Channel Movies (UCM) announced on Facebook that Atomic Falafel has all the makings of a hit, citing that the movie’s trailer (in Hebrew only) racked up more than 100,000 views in its first two hours online. UCM says it is in talks with international agents to secure wide distribution of the movie following its Israel release.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Posted on September 11, 2015September 9, 2015Author Viva Sarah Press ISRAEL21CCategories TV & FilmTags atomic bomb, Avraham Pirchi, Dror Shaul, Hitchki, Iran, Israel, nuclear, Tara Melter, UCM, United Channel Movies

Misdirecting attention

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a letter to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting Iran’s support in the battle against ISIS. At a time when Israel’s relationship with the American administration is strained, the letter (which was apparently sent back in October and whose existence was recently reported by the Wall Street Journal) has sparked a great deal of reaction.

Stopping the Islamic State is and should be a global priority, but the softening of attitudes toward Iran’s regime is a concern. While there appears to be some progress in talks on Iran’s nuclear program – negotiations that are rapidly approaching a Nov. 24 deadline for an agreement – the hatred directed at Israel is as vibrant as ever. Just days ago, Khamenei tweeted an infographic titled “9 Key Questions About Elimination of Israel.”

The graphic design is better than the English grammar, but the message is unmistakable. No less than ever – and regardless of what we may read suggesting schisms in the highest reaches of the regime – the top leader is as committed as he ever was to the annihilation of Israel.

While insisting that, “of course, the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of Jewish people in the region,” the emphatic message is, put mildly, unwelcoming. Still, the world seems convinced that it’s a bluff. To see events at the United Nations, one would think it was Israel that was threatening to obliterate another member-state. Commentators dismiss destructive rhetoric like Khamenei’s as propaganda for domestic consumption, but most Jews, and anyone with a sense of history, take seriously threats like this at any time, but particularly in the week that we commemorate both the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht and Remembrance Day.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insists any Iran overture is unrelated to the broader issues of the Middle East, as if the interconnected web of intrigues, hatreds and alliances could be unraveled from one another. And then, as if there are not enough issues in the world with which to be concerned, European states are lining up to recognize the “state of Palestine.” These legally meaningless but symbolic votes by Britain and Sweden, with more legislatures intending to follow suit, are meant to force negotiations toward a two-state solution, with an underlying assumption that Israel is to blame for the lack of progress. All the incitement to violence by Palestinian leaders and the recent upsurge in vehicular murders and stabbings of Israelis are blamed on the Israelis themselves, who must somehow deserve what they get.

Often, commentators, including Kerry recently, state that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the lynchpin to resolving the broader conflict in the region. By obsessing about Israel, the UN, European powers and others are wasting their energies on a sideshow while the feature presentations get short shrift.

Posted on November 14, 2014November 13, 2014Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags Iran, Israel, John Kerry, Khamenei, nuclear, Palestine, terrorism
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