Heroes

Actor, and seriously cool blue-eyed mensch, Paul Newman, has died at the respectable age of 83. I could write for days on his brilliant, decades-long acting career, but instead want to acknowledge Newman the humanitarian, whose Newman's Own label of salad dressings and sauces earned around $250 million for charity. Wow!

For your viewing pleasure, here's the trailer for Exodus, one of Newman's best known roles.



I reviewed Exodus for a distributor of Jewish films.

Exodus
US, 1960, 208 minutes

Based on Leon Uris' sweeping novel, Otto Preminger’s star-studded epic tends to simplify and is arguably too long but as one of the few Hollywood films to tackle the creation of the State of Israel, Exodus is absolutely essential. Told from an admittedly pro-Zionist bias, the film relates the events that preceded the UN vote to approve partition of Palestine in 1948 through the exploits of Ari Ben Canaan, (Paul Newman) a member of the Israeli resistance group, Hagannah. Exodus is first and foremost a Hollywood adventure romance, but no other feature film captures the mainstream Jewish regard for the heroes of Israel’s birth. For more detail of the events of the film, check out the recently released documentary, In Search of Peace: Part One 1948 – 1967.