Simcha Jacobovici

Jacobovici is presently (January 2020) in production as Series Director/Showrunner on a six-part series on the transatlantic slave trade, "Enslaved: The Slave Trade As Told From the Ocean Floor" (Epix/MGM, CBC, Fremantle Media). The series is hosted and co-executive produced by Samuel L Jackson.

In 2017, he was awarded the Gordon Sinclair Award, Canada's highest achievement in Broadcast Journalism, from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

In 2016, Jacobovici directed a documentary on Atlantis for National Geographic Channel; its executive producer was James Cameron. Shot in several places in the Mediterranean (Greece, Sardinia, Malta, Santorini) such as in Spain (Cádiz, Huelva, Sevilla, Jaén, Ciudad Real, Badajoz and other undersea places in the Gulf of Cádiz) and the Azores. It premiered on January 29, 2017, on National Geographic Channel (US) and at National Geographic Spain as "El Resurgir de la Atlántida" on March 5, 2017.

He earned a B.A. in philosophy and political science (with honors) from McGill University and an M.A. in international relations from the University of Toronto. As of 2015 he was an adjunct professor of religious studies at Huntington University, in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. He is married and the father of five children.

Jacobovici is a three-time Emmy winner for Outstanding Investigative Journalism and a New York Times bestselling author. l His filmmaking awards also include a certificate of Special Merit from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a Gold Medal from the International Documentary Festival of Nyon, two US CableACE Awards, a Royal Television Society Award, two Gemini awards, an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, two Gold Dolphins from the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards, a Jack R. Howard Award from the Scripps Howard Awards for In-Depth National and International Coverage, the Norman Bethune Award from the Canadian Medical Association for Excellence in International Health Reporting and, from the Overseas Press Club of America, two Edward R. Murrow Awards and a Carl Spielvogel Award.

Jacobovici hosted three seasons of The Naked Archaeologist on VisionTV in Canada and The History Channel in the United States. In 2013, the series began to be broadcast on the Israel Broadcast Authority (IBA) Channel 1.

Over the past decades, Jacobovici has engaged in what he calls "investigative archaeology". His most controversial claim is the identification of a tomb in Jerusalem as that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. The tomb was discovered in the Talpiot neighbourhood. In 2012, he investigated a Second Temple-era burial cave in Armon Hanatziv with a robotic arm that had a camera. He believes the cave may be the burial site of disciples of Jesus.

Jacobovici was involved as executive producer in the production of a documentary that was shown in March 2010 on the National Geographic Channel. He claimed that Atlantis had been found in Spain, and he said that evidence found by University of Hartford Professor Richard Freund included the unearthed emblem of Atlantis and that "Tarshish is Atlantis itself".

The documentary was 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, and James Cameron served as executive producer. It was released in conjunction with a book on 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 has claims that are disputed by some archaeologists and theologians fields as well as some linguistic and biblical scholars.

The 2006 History Channel documentary was created by Jacobovici and the producer/director James Cameron. It explores evidence for the biblical account of the Exodus. Its claims and methods were widely criticized by Biblical scholars and by mainstream scientists.

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

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

In the 2003 wide-ranging documentary, Jacobovici goes on a worldwide search for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and states that there are actually only nine since the remnant of the tribe of Dan was confirmed to be the Beta Israel of Ethiopia. Travelling from western Europe to China and India, Jacobovici finds tantalizing evidence that the "lost tribes" are, like the tribe of Dan, not really lost. The tribe of Dan is the only original tribe of Israel not to be included in the Book of Revelation's list of tribes that are sealed. No mention is made of why it is excluded.

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

Several of Jacobovici's films have sparked controversies. The 1994 film, The Plague Monkeys resulted in the closure of a level 4 lab in Toronto, Canada. James, Brother of Jesus highlighted an ossuary in the private collection of an Israeli antiquities collector, Oded Golan. Golan was accused of forging part of the inscription on a 2,000-year-old bone box/ossuary. Jacobovici and Hershel Shanks, the now-retired editor of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR), stood by their story. After 7 years in an Israeli court, Golan was exonerated. The claims made in The Lost Tomb of Jesus are still being debated by scholars.

His film on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Deadly Currents (1991), won the Genie Award for Best Documentary and was the runner-up for the Peace Prize at the 1991 Berlin Film Festival.

After the documentary, 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.

As an early advocate of airlifting Ethiopian Jews to Israel, he wrote an op-ed piece on the subject for New York Times and made a documentary, Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews (1983).

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.

Simcha Jacobovici (/ˈ s ɪ m x ə j ə ˈ k oʊ b oʊ v ɪ tʃ / ; born April 4, 1953, in Petah Tikva, Israel) is an Israeli-Canadian multi award-winning film director, producer, freelance journalist, and New York Times bestselling author.

Simcha Jacobovici's parents were from Iași, Romania. He was born April 4, 1953, in Petach Tikvah, Israel. In 1962, the family relocated to Canada.

In the 2002 documentary, directed by Jacobovici, tells the story of MV Struma, a small ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Mandatory Palestine during World War II. Ten people were let off the ship in Istanbul, including a woman who had just had a miscarriage, and one man who was the representative of the Mobil Oil Company in Romania and was helped by Mobil's representative in Turkey, Vehbi Koc. Koc asked the favour of the Istanbul Chief of Police, Sabri Caglayangil, who later became a Minister of the Interior. On February 23, 1942, with her engine inoperable and her refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed Struma from Istanbul Harbour through the Bosphorus back to the Black Sea, 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 791, 785 of whom were Jews.