As 2021 draws to a close, it's a good time to reflect on the year in Jewish film and highlight six worthy of your attention. Two of the films here are from first-time filmmakers, another pair are Holocaust documentaries, and the final duo draw their tales from the past. Here is my list of the best Jewish films released in the U.S. in 2021.

"Becoming Dr. Ruth" carefully and quite literally unpacks the turbulent early years of Dr. Ruth Westheimer -- Holocaust survivor, single mother, and eventual superstar sex therapist. At the same time, this one-woman show starring Tovah Feldshuh celebrates the possibilities of America, while never quite letting go of the past.

On November 9, we will mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), the Third Reich's first large-scale attack on the Jews of Germany and Austria in 1938.

Fresh off a nomination for best documentary at the Ophir Awards, the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars, Maya Sarfaty's new film, Love It Was Not, brings to American audiences the real-life tale of a love affair between a Jewish prisoner and her Nazi SS officer.

In Evgeny Ruman’s bittersweet new film, Golden Voices, a pair of aging voice actors find their lives in upheaval after immigrating to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Victor and Raya, (Vladimir Friedman and Maria Belkin), are not only in a new land with an altogether new language, but also at a crossroads in both career and marriage.

A conversation with Ed Asner, z’l, died on August 29 at the age of 91. This article is adapted from The Actor Within (Wesleyan University Press).

During the 2020 uprising for Black lives, Yehudah was the lead organizer of the 40 Days of Teshuvah action that created a space of mourning the destruction of Black communities and crying out to the Heavens for spiritual co-conspiratorship in the fight for racial justice.

The film, produced by the USC Shoah Foundation, attempts to capture the recollections of an elderly subset of Germans who lived through the Third Reich and will soon no longer be around to give voice to what they witnessed.

The film is based on a children’s novel of the same name, written by Judith Kerr depicting her own childhood memories of escaping Hitler’s Germany.