Currently Browsing: History 50 articles
Eddie Cantor and Black Lives Matter
On what would have been his 130th birthday, Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan reflect on the famous Jewish performer and racism. Eddie Cantor was perhaps the first true modern celebrity. There were certainly famous performers before he arrived on the scene, but Cantor was the first to enlarge his fame by devoting himself to humanitarian […]
Running to Remember
Julie Carbonara reflects on an unusual way to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were supposed to be a showcase for the Aryan race to dazzle, show its power, demonstrate its superiority over the other, inferior humanoids – at least that was Adolf Hitler’s plan. But which is the event the 1936 Olympics […]
The Kosher Beatles
As The Beatles: Get Back streams on Disney+, Nathan Abrams considers the Beatles’ Jewishness. As we know, beetles are not kosher but maybe the Beatles are. Let’s put this in context. Liverpool, where the Beatles hail from, has been a magnet for Jews since the eighteenth century. According to JCR-UK, there have been over 20 […]
Ridley Road
Joseph Finlay reviews the history and politics of Ridley Road and prays there is not a second series. Before September 2021 I didn’t know I needed a BBC drama about British Jews fighting fascists in 1960s London. And having seen all four parts of Ridley Road — I’m still not sure I do. As a […]
Jews & Brews
Martin Elliot Jaffe discusses the history and joys of Jewish coffee house culture. ‘One cannot attain presence of mind without the aid of coffee’. These words of Italian Rabbi Hezekiah Da Silva from the early 1600s fueled my immersion into the rich Jewish role in the rise of European coffeehouses and the cultural, political and […]
A Jewish Magician Among the Spirits
Efram Sera-Shriar remembers Harry Houdini’s investigations into spirit and psychic phenomena at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1926, the famous American magician Harry Houdini (née Ehrich Weisz) participated in a series of congressional hearings to determine whether ‘fortune telling’ should be made a criminal offence in the District of Columbia. For many observers […]
A flashy new diamond
Sue Fox visits the revamped Manchester Jewish Museum and bemoans the lack of storage for an umbrella and raincoat. My father, Jack Fox, who was an insurance broker, had his office in St Marks Lane, Cheetham Hill. There was a kosher slaughterer/ chicken shop and Mr Perlman the greengrocer in the narrow alley, On a visit back […]
Benjamin Franklin and the Parable against Persecution
Shai Afsai explores how Benjamin Franklin’s parable has a Jewish source. According to Ben Franklin’s correspondence with Benjamin Vaughan, the inspiration for two of his parables was taken ‘from an ancient Jewish tradition.’ One of these parables — commonly referred to as either the Parable against Persecution or as Abraham and the Stranger — is […]