Currently Browsing: Gloria Tessler 21 articles
HaTikvah – The Failed Hope?
So many versions of Israel’s national anthem are being sent on social media during these times of trauma. Its title, Ha Tikvah: Hope. The lyrics, written in 1886 by Galician poet Naphtali Herz Imber, to Samuel Cohen’s melody based on a theme from Bedrich Smetana’s Moldau, focus on two stanzas: To be a free people […]
Humanity and War
I tuned in to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day recently, and I heard Dr Chetna Kang discuss Hindu values in times of battle. Without referring to the war between Israel and Gaza, she said it was important never to forget the humanity of the enemy. If you forget their humanity, she said, the torment […]
Painting Nuremberg
Gloria Tessler on the English impressionist who volunteered to paint the Nuremberg Trial. She was one of the best-known artists of the English Impressionist movement, celebrated for her figurative work, ballet dancers and circus performers. Then, as one of the few official women war artists during the Second World War, Dame Laura Knight painted women […]
Althea McNish
To mark the Windrush anniversary, Gloria Tessler remembers her late friend, Althea McNish. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush which first docked in Tilbury on June 22, 1948. What should be a happy event, celebrating the diversity of culture in Britain, has been marred, of course by the trauma experienced by […]
The Yellow Candle and the Sunflower Seed
Gloria Tessler reflects on the yellow candles, each bearing the name of a Holocaust victim, to commemorate Yom HaShoah. I am thinking today of two German Jews, 60 years apart in age. I have no family history with either of them. And it is unlikely their paths ever crossed in life. But I am thinking […]
Sparring Spares
Gloria Tessler suggests that Prince Harry could spare a thought for Joseph in his coat of many colours. Prince Harry’s revelations about sibling rivalry in his sensational book, Spare, will come as nothing new in the sense that they have exposed, as the late Rabbi Sacks has described it, the root of human conflict. Unsurprisingly […]
Where Do You Really Come From?
In the wake of yet another royal race row, Gloria Tessler reflects on where Jews come from. Where do you come from? No, where do you really come from? It’s possible that European Jews may have rarely been asked this question. Although it was put to me several times at school by kids who were […]
Atonement is At One Ment
A new poem about Yom Kippur by Gloria Tessler. At One Ment is to be an adult. To be an adult is to be Fractured, dissonant, Uncertain. Finding Footsteps in dark And silent places, Losing your way. At One Ment is to be a child. Graciously perceptive, Holding back tears That may hurt an adult, […]
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