Roger Ebert on Kathryn Bernheimer’s book The 50 Greatest Jewish Movies….“Wonderful book!  Great idea! Well done….Her selection is sound, and her insights are pointed and provocative.”.

Leonard Maltin on Kathryn Bernheimer’s book The 50 Greatest Jewish Movies….“A welcome addition to the movie bookshelf, this well-written volume places each of its films into a social and historical context, and serves as an ideal companion for viewing (and re-viewing) some of the greatest movies of all time.”

We agree with Ebert and Maltin 100%….this is a great book.   It is such a great book, that we decided,  an UltimateMovieRankings (UMR) page that ranked her 50 selected movies needed to put together.  The following table is the end result.

Factors to consider while looking at our rankings.  (1) Bernheimer wrote the book in 1998….so obviously any movie made after 1998 had no chance to make this table.  (2)  Bernheimer actually lists 51 movies in her book….as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandment finished tied for 10th place.  (3)  All of her selected movies, with the exception of 1977’s Holocaust, played in North American theaters.  Since our UMR score needs box office to calculate a score Holocaust was not added to the table….but her having two 10th rated movies allows us to still have 50 movies on the table. (4) Bernheimer actually ranks the 50 movies from 1st to 50th….her top movie is pretty surprising.

50 Greatest Jewish Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

• Sort 50 Greatest Jewish movies by movie title and movie trailers.
• Sort 50 Greatest Jewish movies by co-stars of his movies.
• Sort 50 Greatest Jewish movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
• Sort 50 Greatest Jewish movies by yearly domestic box office rank
• Sort 50 Greatest Jewish movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
• Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each 50 Greatest Jewish movie received and how many Oscar® wins each 50 Greatest Jewish movie won.
• Sort 50 Greatest Jewish by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Kathryn Bernheimer is the founding director of the Boulder Jewish Film Festival.

You can buy her book…..New, Used or As A Collectible.

https://www.amazon.com/50-Greatest-Jewish-Movies-Critics/dp/1559724579