Latest articles
Jews & Crime
As any historian will tell you, one of the ways we discover Jews in far-flung places is through accounts of criminal activity both perpetrated by and against Jews. This series proposes to reflect on the relationship between Jews and issues of crime and criminality, opening up the hidden worlds of Jewish criminals and criminal behaviour. […]
Keeping Kosher
A new story by MJ Popplewell. Joseph struggled upstairs and into the apartment with his bags. He laid them on the kitchen table and took out a selection of pans: small for milk, medium for vegetables and a large one for meat. He had also bought some cutlery: knives, forks, spoons and so forth, and […]
Pop Jews Rocking On
David Drimer explores the relationship between Jews, pop and rock ‘n’ roll. We’re endlessly amused by the essentially semitic game “Who’s the Jew?” In my house, we fervently celebrate the Jewish identity of celebrities, athletes, artists and writers or historical figures famous or obscure, and bitterly lament the transgressions of Jewish bad actors (see Madoff, […]
A Time To Mourn…
Barbara Borts reflects on the importance of Yom HaShoah. As a progressive Jew from an earlier time, I hadn’t learned about Tisha B’av, the fast of the 9th of Av. When I began my rabbinical studies, and later my congregational work, Tisha B’Av was beginning to be marked in progressive Jewish circles, mostly as the […]
Yom HaSHoah 2022: The Story of George Garai
As Yom HaShoah looms, the hidden story of a journalist, told by his granddaughter, reaffirms the importance of giving young people a voice in Holocaust education
Dating the Exodus
Annette Duckworth asks how did two different dates arise. In 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion, the French Egyptologist and linguist achieved his first true breakthrough in the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, with the decipherment of the two Pharaonic names, ‘Ramesses’ and ‘Thutmose’. This must have caused great excitement throughout the world of biblical scholarship because the Bible […]
When Passover Ends
Passover ended last night but this morning there’s still a lump of matzah in my stomach and the taste of dry matzah crumbs on my lips It’s like when I leave the beach and come home to find grains of sand stuck between my toes and dried salt from the sea on my legs You […]
The day before Passover
It’s the day before Passover and we’re preparing to flee Egypt again to leave behind all the tasks we never got around to doing to bid goodbye to old habits and routines that won’t take us anywhere but back to where we started to say farewell to the people who enslaved us and treated us […]
Pour Out Your Rage
Ruben Vis reflects on a key passage in the Haggadah. If the word Seder means order, then every piece in the Haggada must be in its correct place. Why, then, immediately after the meal, do we read a passage that seems out of place and why is it even there in the first place? It […]
Television & Film
The Hidden Jews of ‘Dune’
As the film opens in the UK today, Nathan Abrams explores the Jewishness of the famous novel and its film adaptations. Dune opens in the UK today and while its secret Jewish history has been explored here, the full story has not been told. Much of Frank Herbert’s original 1965 science-fiction novel is explicitly influenced […]
All About Eva
In this exclusive extract from his new book, All About Eva: A Holocaust-Related Memoir, with a Hollywood Twist, Vincent Brook reminisces about his German Jewish parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany and their early years as refugees in Los Angeles, where Vincent’s mother, Eva, had an extramarital affair with famed Polish Jewish actor Alexander Granach. When […]
“A Hard Day’s Night”
David Drimer explores the Jewishness of the famous Beatles movie. One Sunday night in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the world somehow changed. Almost 60 days after the Kennedy assassination, it broke America out of its national malaise. In the midst of the “British Invasion” – a slew of bands […]
Cinematic Story
Alex Gordon remembers his role in The Beast. I don’t like movies as a genre. I don’t watch movies, I don’t know actors, I prefer reading books. I belong to the minority of non-movie lovers. There are different minorities: religious, national, sexual. I belong to a cultural minority of film haters. And I was the […]
Ghosts
Elliot Gertel reviews the American sitcom Ghosts based on the British series with the same name. Ghosts, transposed from a British series to American TV by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, is the most-watched new sitcom on the CBS Network. In it, a young overworked New York couple, Samantha “Sam” (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), inherit a […]
“Solomon & Gaenor” and #MeToo
Jaclyn Granick reviews Paul Morrison’s Solomon and Gaenor through new eyes. I logged into the Yiddish New York festival website last December to look at the curated film selection this year. The first film listed was Solomon & Gaenor. To my surprise, it included two non-English languages: Welsh and Yiddish. Welsh?! As Cardiff University‘s first […]
How To Cast Jewish
Here we try to provide some helpful guidelines on how to cast Jewish. As the debate on who can and who can’t play a Jewish role continues to rumble on, as provoked by our self-appointed spokespeople like David Baddiel and Maureen Lipman. But what is “Jewish” and how do we define it? We have decided […]
Jewish Harry Potter
(Below are some impressionistic thoughts not based on any recent or detailed reading of either the books or the films.) J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has been criticized for “its complete lack of sexual identity, gender and religious diversity” given that all of the “main characters are all white, Christian, cisgender and heterosexual.” What is […]
Life after Covid
Israel and Covid
Sue Fox charts the hassle of flying to and from Israel in the age of Covid. Israel here we come. Never mind PASSENGER LOCATOR FORM, what I need is a brain locator form. Flights to Israel were bought pre-Covid. It was barely two years ago but I seem to have aged another decade. When Israel […]
Are our Jewish nightmares paling into insignificance?
Gloria Tessler asks has the pandemic deepened society’s consciousness and so we Jews have to worry less? Does it seem strange that during the pandemic so many important topics of conversation have suddenly assumed even greater magnitude? Racism in society, gender issues, women’s rights, everything is laid bare before us in terms that were muted […]
Masks, Jews and the Holocaust
Nathan Abrams explores the similarities between rightwing Americans and orthodox Jews over their refusal to wear masks. The wearing of masks has evoked contradictory emotions and reactions. Some see it as an important means to halt the spread of Covid-19, as well as a sign of social consideration and altruism. Others have politicised the issue, […]
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? A Profile of Yehudis Fletcher
Karen Skinazi profiles Yehudis Fletcher, a Haredi political and social activist who helped to found Nahamu, an organisation dedicated to fighting extremism. ‘What would you do if, say, a transwoman who used to be part of the Haredi community lost the right to see her children in the civil courts?’ I asked (admittedly, it was […]
Lockdown and Motherhood
Miki Shaw, an artist, illustrator and graphic designer based in London, reflects on parenthood during lockdown. Lockdown, when it first came, felt oddly familiar to me. Not the large-scale and tragic backdrop of it, but the personal-scale isolation, and being stuck at home. I’ve been locked down in some ways since I first became a […]
Streaming Rosh Hashanah
Nathan Abrams talks to Dr. Joshua Edelman about his new research project into how best to conduct religion online. As Rosh Hashanah looms, how do we conduct online religious services in the age of Covid? This is an essential question, as we prepare for what is, unquestionably, the most important period in the Jewish calendar. […]
How Will This Rosh HaShanah Be Different From Every Other? It Won’t
Nathan Abrams reflects on how there will be little change to his Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There is a great deal of talk about how Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will be different this year for many people but for me it won’t. In fact, it will be better. I live in Bangor, in […]
The Enduring Relevance of Avrom Radutski’s Poetry
Phil Alexander finds contemporary echoes in the poetry of Avrom Radutski. At the beginning of 2020, recently embarked upon a British Academy fellowship exploring Scottish-Jewish musical encounters, I was looking forward to days spent leisurely mining the Garnethill Synagogue Archives, the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, and so many other physical treasure chests. […]
Politics
A left response to left antisemitism: Is it too late for education?
Two recently-published books try and educate the left against antisemitism. Will they succeed?
The Hard Work of Racial Inclusivity in the British-Jewish Community Starts Here
Lara Monroe, a Black-British Jew, responds to the publication of the report by the Board of Deputies Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community.
It’s Time to Celebrate Jewish Power
Loolwa Khazzoom celebrates the Jews in the new Biden administration. I watched inauguration day with great emotion, for numerous reasons, including the fact that a Black Indian woman is in the White House, for the first time in history. I was equally excited not only about the corollary fact that there is a second gentleman […]
We need better ways to speak to each other about campus antisemitism and Israel
Ken Stern argues that efforts to oppose campus antisemitism must be consistent with academic freedom and free speech, and this means rejection of hate speech codes such as IHRA.
Corbynites prepare to reject EHRC findings
Dan Jacobs considers the likely reaction to the EHRC report by Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters. The report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into Labour antisemitism is due to be released to the public within weeks, possibly days. The report is unlikely to call for the removal of individuals and Jeremy Corbyn himself then […]
A Letter from Portland
On the day I write this, we have witnessed 60 days of daily demonstrations in the streets of downtown Portland Oregon. After the murder of George Floyd by police, it was awe-inspiring to see myriads of thousands rise up across the US. Horrified by the blatant injustice, peaceful crowds in Portland Oregon, masked, observing safe […]
Dang!
Artist and filmmaker Ruth Novaczek reflects on social media’s determination of hate speech — and the real hate it occludes. Dang, banned again! Yes, first it was 24 hours, ok not so bad, next it was 48, hmm, then finally 3 days. The worst aspect of this stupid Facebook algorithmic witch-hunting was the fact that […]
The problem of love in Corbyn’s Labour Party: Reflections on Left Out
How Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire’s ‘Left Out’ shows how love was always a greater problem than hate in Corbyn’s Labour Party
As We Are
Time To Heal
Emma Franks, a practising visual artist describes how her brother’s increased religiosity and Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox inspired her commitment to producing work that explores the female narrative and perspective. In the middle of the global pandemic last year, when we noticed birdsong and the joys of being at one with nature people also discovered the […]
