Our Team's Recommendations

Barbara

Mathieu Amalric's hypnotic, genre-defying 2017 film about the legendary French-Jewish chanteuse born Monique Andrée Serf. Jeanne Balibar, in a César-winning performance, plays an actress preparing to portray Barbara in a biopic, and Amalric blurs the line between performer and subject until the two become almost indistinguishable. The film weaves in archival footage of the real Barbara, who hid with her family during the Nazi occupation, rose to fame from the tiny Parisian cabarets of the 1950s, and wrote songs — Dis, quand reviendras-tu ?, Göttingen, L'Aigle noir — that became landmarks of French culture.

It's not a conventional biopic. It's a meditation on what it means to inhabit someone else's voice, and on why some artists continue to possess us long after they're gone. Especially timely alongside our Jewish Paris course with Nick Underwood.

Listen: Dis, quand reviendras-tu ? · Göttingen · L'Aigle noir

Dark Star

Are you ready for some good old-fashioned fun but can't remember how that sounds? Elle Aviv prescribes Dark Star (2026) by Paris-based Marlon Magnée. The album is a melodramatic blend of rockabilly, cold wave, punk, electroclash, and enough synths to short-circuit your better judgment. This marks the first solo outing from the musician known for founding La Femme, one of France's most beloved indie bands.

The best part? You will dance. You won't even have to try.

Watch: Plus fort que toi · Nuage Gris

The Hairdresser of Harare

A vibrant and deceptively sharp novel by Tendai Huchu, set in contemporary Zimbabwe. The story follows Vimbai, the undisputed star of a high-end salon, whose world is upended by the arrival of Dumisani, a charming and talented newcomer. What begins as a witty, street-level rivalry between stylists soon deepens into a profound exploration of class, power, and the cost of living authentically under a repressive regime.

Huchu's prose captures the rhythmic gossip and intimate sanctuary of the salon, while gradually pulling back the curtain on the political tensions of the Mugabe era. The result is a compelling story about the unlikely partnerships we form to survive and the secrets even the closest friends keep from one another.

Find it at your local independent bookstore or library.

Tinghir-Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah

A moving documentary and a perfect companion to our upcoming Judeo-Moroccan Arabic 1 course. The film captures the voices of a generation that still speaks this endangered dialect, following its journey from the Moroccan Atlas Mountains to the communities where it lives on today.

Having taught Moroccan Arabic for years and authored a textbook on it, Jim suggests this film as a rare opportunity to hear the language spoken by those who grew up with it.

Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

Benjamin Moser's biography is ideal preparation for our upcoming course on Clarice Lispector. It traces her life from Chechelnyk in Podolia—yes, the same corner of Ukraine that produced Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav—through immigration to Recife, years in Europe and Washington, DC, and finally to Rio, where she became a literary icon and made Portuguese do things it had never done before.

Moser shows how the strangeness that has mystified Lispector's readers for decades has deep roots in Jewish textual and mystical traditions, making her as much an heir to Nachman and Kafka as to any Brazilian modernist.

Find it at your local independent bookstore or library.

Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945

Elle Aviv is just beginning to read this much-anticipated book by Dutch historian Ian Buruma, former editor of the New York Review of Books. A chronicle of life in the German capital under the Third Reich, it asks what everyday people did as the state descended into increasingly brutal totalitarianism.

One such adaptation concerned how people said goodbye: as Allied bombing intensified and the Red Army drew nearer, Berliners dropped "Auf Wiedersehen" for "Bleiben Sie übrig" ("Stay alive"). By war's end, Berlin's population of 4.2 million had fallen by nearly half.

Find it at your local independent bookstore or library.