Currently Browsing: Gloria Tessler 13 articles
Mourning a Monarch
In the wake of the Queen’s funeral, Gloria Tessler reflects on the intense Jewishness of mourning. Does it make me a royalist that like so many I was glued to the screen watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II as endless queues silently snaked past the coffin which stood draped in the colours of 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
Pax Materna
Gloria Tessler wrote these poems in memory of her birth mother, Dorothy, who died when she was two years old. Dorothy One When I look at you in your photo frame, Contained and smiling, your auburn curls, Re-touched rose cheeks and painted eyebrows, Photo-shopped, old-style, as though your beauty Is not enough, as though I […]
Do Not Underestimate the Determination of a Quiet Rabbi
Gloria Tessler considers the welcome activities of some of our rabbinate but decries the misguided priorities of others. When we think of great rabbis we sometimes look back to philosophers of the past. Maimonides, the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Breslau, Abraham Heschel, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Great thinkers who have died and left us […]
If A Teddy Bear Could Talk….
Gloria Tessler reviews a remarkable online exhibition about refugees. Imagine as a child, being told you are going on a journey from which you may never return. You are asked to choose one toy – just one – that would represent all the memories of your lost childhood. What Would You Bring is a new […]
Ambivalent Jewishness
As antisemitism is on the rise again, Gloria Tessler asks if some of us feel a certain ambivalence about our Jewishness. My parents, both European refugees, had a deep-rooted belief in God and the values of Judaism; they were not religious – we rarely went to shul – but they were not secular either. Like […]
The Auto-Destructive-Creative World of Gustav Metzger
Gloria Tessler looks back at the work of Gustav Metzger, the subject of a forthcoming retrospective. If you get down on your hands and knees and crawl on the ground beneath the yellow-star-coloured cover, you can touch an enlarged photograph of Jews forced to scrub the pavements of Vienna clean. The figures are larger than […]
Bone Woman
On Yom HaShoah, Gloria Tessler dedicates this poem to her grandmother Irma Kien, who was murdered in Riga. Bone woman, I am woman of bone. lone-woman, my eyes are stone. I break easily, small fissures have marbled me like cracked china. Do not expect me to sing for Old Zion under the sad willow The […]
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 […]
Shylock
Gloria Tessler shows how Shakespeare turned antisemitism on its head. I have often thought the Bard was the most enlightened philosemite of them all. And the reason? His controversial play, The Merchant of Venice. Many Jews applaud Michael Morpurgo’s decision not to include The Merchant in his forthcoming children’s book, Tales from Shakespeare, but I […]