One of My Bests Films on Netflix: Rough Diamonds

 

I am watching movies on Netflix for over 5 years, but until now, I haven´t encountered any other better series in terms of both actors play and authenticity of the topic as Rough Diamonds. Set in the famous and most secretive Diamond District of Antwerp, it follows the fate of the Wolfson Jewish family, whose fate was shuttered by the sudden suicide of one of the sons. As Noah - remarkably played by famous Belgian film and theatre actor Kevin Janssens -  returns from his self-imposed exile from London, a chain of events is put into motion that may save the company but jeopardize the traditional way of doing businesses.

The series, created by Israeli Rotem Shamir and Yuval Yefet (of Fauda) is remarkable from more than one reason. First and foremost, it presents a Jewish family caught between the traditional life and the new challenges of the business in a balanced, authentic way. Noah, a classical off the derech, does not have anything from the deep cartoonish hate of his upbringing often represented in movies and other media productions, and his family does not reject him fully, as usually expected. He is returning with a non-Jewish son, being welcomed with human kindness although trying hard to overcome the resentfulness of those left behind - among which a fiancée that later married his late brother. 

Another important part of this movie is the knowledgeable way in which it describes the current state of affairs in the diamond industry, from the hard games of the new comers from India to the almost death of traditional small diamantaires, as the Wolfson, and temptations of playing out of the legal game. Diamond industry, the pride and sometimes the legal nightmare of Belgium, does play on different terms and does definitely have its very black secrets. Rough Diamonds does not spare any single romanticism trying to display it as it really is.

Rough Diamonds is a great Jewish movie to watch on Netflix this season. It has eight shorter than one hour episodes that I literarally binged the last weekend. It´s worth watching it for the action, genuine story and the good play of almost all the actors. 

Learning about New York Jewish Intellectuals

The group of New York Jewish intellectuals, grouped around Commentary and Partisan Review mostly, do represent not only an important episode in the intellectual history of Jewish thought in the aftermath of the WWII in America, but also do follow patterns and mindset reflected by the overall flow of thought in the American society itself. 

The insightful online course held by Prof. Ruth Wisse from Tikvah Fund is revealing in more than one aspect. In addition to discussing the changes underwent by the Jewish representation among this group of intellectuals it also offers important details, often acquired first hand, about the evolution of mentalities in the US. Last but not least, it outlines profiles of significant yet forgotten intellectuals, such as Delmore Schwartz or Robert Warshow, besides featuring famous names like Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, Milton Himmelfarb or Irving Kristol and Saul Bellow. 

This course is a very important source of inspiration and understanding about the New York intellectual realm in the context of the Cold War, with communists/liberals versus conservatives taking the first stage. Only that the debates weren´t purely of intellectual nature, with FBI watching over the Moscow connections, that sometimes were more than purely of intellectual nature. Interesting times, one may say, but nevertheless also part of the Jewish post-WWII narrative.

What it definitely interested me the most and hopefully will be able to follow further in detail through essays and memoirs by some of the members of the movement, is the ways in which those intellectuals connected to tradition. Some needed to reinvent it, as the second or third generation of immigrants, coming from families that did their best to turn into ´Americans´, some needed only to connect the missing link in the story. Topics like intermarriage and Jewish demography in the diaspora as well as the position towards Israel continue to be of high interest among the US Jewry and following this path those ideas took, including by being completely reshaped, may offer interesting details about Jewish-American realm of ideas nowadays.

A recommended class to anyone keen to expand his or her knowledge about New York Jewish intellectuals and Jewish stories in general.