Insightful and hilarious, When Jews were funny surveys the history of Jewish comedy, from the early days of Borsht belt to the present, ultimately exploring the entire unruly question of what it means to be Jewish.

In his bittersweet comedy loaded with human quirks and nuance, Jacob invents news reports to bolster the spirits of the other Jews living in his Polish ghetto under Nazi occupation. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1977, the story was remade in Hollywood starring Robin Williams in 1999. In a Polish ghetto in 1944, Jacob Heym is summoned to the police station. While there, Jacob overhears on the radio that "the Russians are twenty...

The first German feature film to explicitly address the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, Marriage in the shadows called on Germans to accept collective responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich. Stylistically, the production, in which many former Ufa artists were involved, blends classic melodrama in the Ufa style with documentary glimpses into life in Berlin under the Nazis. Shown in all four sectors of occupied Berlin and across Germany,...

In the year 721, the Muslim Empire was vast. Across the empire Jews and Christians were minorities motivated by a desire to obtain the most favorable status. Their quest for an elevated status within the empire did not hinder cultural exchanges as can be determined with the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, nor prevent the occurrence in the 11th Century of the massacre of Jews in Granada and the persecution and forced conversion of Jews & Christians under...

In 1945, the world discovers the horror of the Nazi camps. In 1948, the birth of Israel aroused anger and bitterness among Arabs and Muslims, but triggered joy and exultation throughout the Jewish world. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled with the hope of a future return. Within just a few decades, the vast majority of Jews living in the Muslim world would leave Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Morocco and Tunisia.

In this documentary, Hildegard Bachert generously shares memories of her personal life and reflects on the work of 20th-century German artist Kthe Kollwitz. n 1936 at the age of 15, Jewish-born Hildegard Bachert left Germany for America. Only four years later, she joined Otto Kallir's Galerie St. Etienne in New York. Throughout her career, Bachert has passionately promoted lesser-known German and Austrian artists to an American audience. Since the...

Anna Larina was the young bride of Nikolai Bukharin, one of the top leaders in the early years of the Russian Revolution. This documentary is based on her memorable autobiography, "This I Cannot Forget," which she wrote late in life, after being imprisoned for almost twenty years in the Russian Gulag. Larina recounts her life story, which is interwoven with extraordinary archival film and interviews. Larina grew up during the 1917 October Revolution,...

This documentary delves into never before seen archival footage and documents to investigate how much the Allies knew about the mass murder of Europe's Jews during World War II and why they did not do more to stop it. What the allies knew examines the immigration policy, top secret documents, personal prejudice and government policies that resulted in the deaths of millions.

This extraordinary haunting building, a zig-zag form reflecting an invisible matrix of addresses of Jewish Berliners who once lived in the area, is Daniel Libeskind's first commission. It took ten years to build, and it has become an integral part of the cityscape, attracting vast numbers of visitors and signaling a new era of Jewish-German history. Libeskind is questioned by Alan Riding, New York Times journalist, as he takes him through the building,...

A look into the complex and contradictory personality of Yossef Nachmani, the man largely responsible for the first Zionist settlements in the Galilee. As director of the Jewish National Fund office in the Galilee, Nachmani acquired as much land from Arabs as possible to establish Jewish settlements upon it. The film focuses on events in Tiberius, Nachmani's hometown, a mixed community where Arabs and Jews coexisted harmoniously. Nachmani left behind...