Simcha Jacobovici

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Simcha Jacobovici
Born (1953-04-04) April 4, 1953 (age 60)
Petah Tikva, Israel
Nationality Canadian/Israeli
Occupation Film director, producer, journalist, writer

Simcha Jacobovici (pron.: /ˈsɪm.hə jəˈkoʊbɵvɪtʃ/; born April 4, 1953) is a Canadian film director, producer, free-lance journalist, and writer. He is a three-times Emmy winner for Outstanding Investigative Journalism and New York Times best selling author.

He hosts the The Naked Archaeologist on VisionTV in Canada and The History Channel in the United States.

Contents

Biography [edit]

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Jacobovici earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science (w/honors) from McGill University and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Toronto.

For the past ten years, Jacobovici has conducted historical and archaeological investigations. He calls his technique "investigative archaeology". As a result, Jacobovici has appeared on shows including Anderson Cooper 360, Larry King Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC Today, and ABC Nightline.

He is Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at Huntington University, an affiliate of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. Jacobovici has been a guest lecturer at numerous conferences and on various campuses including Yale, Johns Hopkins, McGill, UCLA and York University.

Jacobovici is married and is the father of five children.

Books [edit]

  • Jacobovici, Simcha; Pellegrino, Charles (March 2007). The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History. New York: HarperLuxe. ISBN 0-06-125299-9. 
  • Jacobovici, Simcha; Tabor, James D. (January 2012). The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 1-4516-5040-X. 

Filmography [edit]

Director

  • The Jesus Discovery/The Resurrection Tomb Mystery (2012)
  • Secrets of Christianity/Decoding the Ancients (2010)
  • Science of the Soul (2009)
  • The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007)
  • Charging the Rhino (2007)
  • The Naked Archaeologist (2006–2010)
  • The Exodus Decoded (2005)
  • James, Brother of Jesus (2003)
  • Quest for the Lost Tribes (2003)
  • The Struma (2001)
  • Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies & the American Dream (1997)
  • Expulsion and Memory: Descendants of the Hidden Jews (1996)
  • Northern Justice (1995)
  • A Child’s Grief (1995)
  • Bones of Contention (1994)
  • Deadly Currents (1991)
  • Burden on the Land (1990)
  • Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews (1983)

Producer

  • Anxiety (2012)
  • Finding Atlantis (2011)
  • Living in the Time of Jesus (2010)
  • Beasts of the Bible (2010)
  • Sex Slaves/The Real Sex Traffic (2005)
  • Yummy Mummy (2005)
  • Impact of Terror (2004)
  • Betrayal! And Betrayal! (II) (2004)
  • Tell It Like It Is (2003/04)
  • Gladiatrix (2001)
  • Planet Storm (2001)
  • Criminal Evidence (2000)
  • Penn & Teller’s Magic and Mystery Tour (2000)
  • Murder at Stonehenge (2000)
  • Stunt School (2000)
  • Drag Kings: The Need for Speed (2000)
  • O’Shea’s Big Adventure (1999)
  • Scandal! Then and Now (1999)
  • Frozen Hearts (1999)
  • Pandemic: Case of the Killer Flu (1999)
  • A Mother’s Grief (1997)
  • The Dancing Game (1997)
  • The Selling of Innocents (1996)
  • Jesus in Russia: An American Holy War (1996)
  • Ebola: Inside an Outbreak/The Plague Fighters (1996)
  • The Plague Monkeys (1994)
  • AIDS in Africa (1990)

Awards [edit]

Documentaries and television programs [edit]

Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews [edit]

In the 1983 documentary, Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews, Jacobovici tells the story of Ethiopian Jews, also called Falasha (strangers) and properly known as Beta Israel. According to the documentary, the group was conquered by neighbouring tribes in the 17th century and suffered persecution. After the movie, during the Israeli Operation Moses (Hebrew: מִבְצָע מֹשֶׁה, Mivtza Moshe), the Falasha were evacuated from Sudan during a famine in 1984 and airlifted to Israel.

Expulsion & Memory: Descendants of the Hidden Jews [edit]

In this 1996 documentary, Jacobovici studies the Crypto Jews of New Mexico and the tiny population of Jewish descendants in Spain and Portugal, known as nuevos Cristianos ("new Christians"). He explores the Jewish ancestry of the New Mexican Hispanic families presently living in New Mexico, and finds many of them have always been aware of their Jewish heritage.[10]

The Struma [edit]

The 2002 documentary The Struma, directed by Jacobovici, tells the story of MV Struma, a small ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Mandatory Palestine in World War II. Only one man and his wife were let off the ship.[citation needed] The man was the representative of the Mobil Oil Company in Romania, and was helped by Mobil's representative in Turkey, Vehbi Koc.[citation needed] Koc asked this favor of the Istanbul Chief of Police, Sabri Caglayangil, who later became a Minister of the Interior.[citation needed] On February 23, 1942, with her engine inoperable and her refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed Struma from Istanbul harbor through the Bosphorus back to the Black Sea,[11] where they set her adrift without food, water, or fuel. Within hours, on the morning of February 24, she was torpedoed and sunk by the Soviet submarine Shch-213, killing at least 768 men, women and children, and possibly as many as as 791, of whom 785 were Jews.[11]

The movie won the Audience Award Portland International Film Festival as best documentary.

Quest for the Lost Tribes [edit]

In this 2003 wide-ranging documentary, Jacobovici goes on a worldwide search for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel (stating there are actually only nine since the remnant of the Tribe of Dan was confirmed to be the Ethiopian Jews). Traveling from western Europe to China and India, Jacobovici finds tantalizing evidence that the "lost tribes" are not really lost.

Impact of Terror [edit]

Impact of Terror, produced by Jacobovici and directed by Tim Wolochatiuk, is a 2004 documentary about Israeli victims of terrorism struggling to cope in the aftermath of the August 2001 Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

The Exodus Decoded [edit]

The Exodus Decoded is a 2006 History Channel documentary created by Jacobovici and the producer/director James Cameron. The documentary explores evidence for the biblical account of the Exodus. Its claims and methods were widely criticized both by Biblical scholars and by mainstream scientists.[12][13][14][15]

Jacobovici suggests that the Exodus took place around 1500 BC, during the reign of pharaoh Ahmose I, and that it coincided with the Minoan eruption. In the documentary, the plagues that ravaged Egypt in the Bible are explained as having resulted from that eruption and a related limnic eruption in the Nile Delta. While much of Jacobovici's archaeological evidence for the Exodus comes from Egypt, some comes from Mycenae on mainland Greece, such as a gold ornament that somewhat resembles the Ark of the Covenant.

The documentary makes extensive use of computer animation and visual effects made by Gravity Visual Effects, Inc., based in Toronto. It runs for 90 minutes and was first aired in Canada on April 16, (Easter Day) 2006 (Discovery Channel Canada). Shown in the US on August 20, 2006 (History Channel US), UK on December 23, 2006 (Discovery Channel UK) and Spain on December 25, 2006 (Cuatro).

The Lost Tomb of Jesus [edit]

The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a documentary co-produced and first broadcast on the Discovery Channel and Vision TV in Canada on March 4, 2007, covering the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb. It was directed by Jacobovici and produced by Felix Golubev and Ric Esther Bienstock, while James Cameron served as executive producer. The film was released in conjunction with a book about the same subject, The Jesus Family Tomb, issued in late February 2007 and co-authored by Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino. The documentary and book's claims are disputed within the archaeological and theological fields, as well as among most linguistic and biblical scholars.

The Naked Archaeologist [edit]

The Naked Archaeologist is a television show produced for VisionTV in Canada and History International in the US that is hosted and prepared by Jacobovici together with Avri Gilad. The show ultimately reviews Biblical stories, then tries to find proof for them by exploring the Holy Land looking for archaeological evidence, personal inferences, deductions, and interviews with scholars and experts. Subsequent to its original run on VisionTV, it was picked up in the U.S. by The History Channel and its sister network, History International.

The episode "A Nabatean by Any Other Name" won the Special Jury Prize at the 8th International Archaeological Film Festival in Brussels.[16]

Finding Atlantis [edit]

Jacobovici was involved in the production of a documentary shown in March 2010 on the National Geographic Channel in which he claimed that Atlantis has been found in Spain, and has said that evidence found by University of Hartford Professor Richard Freund includes the unearthed emblem of Atlantis, and the biblical angle that has been largely overlooked.[17]

References [edit]

 This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (August 2012)
  1. ^ a b c d "Ric Esther Bienstock - Associated Producers Ltd. - Associated Producers Ltd". Apltd.ca. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  2. ^ "News and Documentary Emmy Awards - C-SPAN Video Library". C-spanvideo.org. 2007-09-24. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  3. ^ http://www.opcofamerica.org/awards/awards-recipients?date_filter[value][year]=&field_award_recipient_value=Jacobovici&field_award_recip_affil_value=
  4. ^ "Awards | Royal Television Society". Rts.org.uk. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  5. ^ "Broadcast: Television and radio news, comment, jobs, data and analysis". Broadcastnow.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  6. ^ Award Name:  14 The Carl Spielvogel Award. "The Carl Spielvogel Award 2004 | Overseas Press Club of America". Opcofamerica.org. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  7. ^ http://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000493/1997
  8. ^ a b "Felix Golubev - Associated Producers Ltd. - Associated Producers Ltd". Apltd.ca. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  9. ^ a b c "Awards - Associated Producers Ltd. - Associated Producers Ltd". Apltd.ca. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  10. ^ "Expulsion and Memory: Descendants of the Hidden Jews". Jewishfilm.org. Retrieved 2012-11-07. 
  11. ^ a b Aroni, Samuel (2002–2007). "Who Perished On The Struma And How Many?". JewishGen.org. 
  12. ^ Debunking "The Exodus Decoded"
  13. ^ Higgaion » Exodus Decoded
  14. ^ Biblical Archaeology Society
  15. ^ Biblical Archaeology Society
  16. ^ List of Award Winners, 2009 Festival International du Film Archaeologique de Bruxelles
  17. ^ Hartman, Ben (20 March 2011). "The deepest Jewish encampment?". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 22 March 2011. 

External links [edit]

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