Currently Browsing: Literature 6 articles
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 […]
Dear Mandy: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group
In the second of these paired posts, Abda responds to Mandy‘s letter published yesterday. Dear Mandy Thank you for your insightful letter. I never imagined when we met that such a wonderful friendship would bloom, not only with you but with so many remarkable women. Nisa Nashim book club is so much more than a […]
Dear Abda: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group
In these paired posts, Abda and Mandy, members of the Nisa-Nashim West Midlands Book Group, reflect on learning from reading Jewish and Muslim books, and from each other. Dear Abda, Over twenty years ago, my Jewish reading group started, reading Jewish writers – mostly fiction, poetry, and memoir. We are reading our brothers, fathers, and […]
The Art of Mizrahiness
Karen Skinazi argues that, in the Jewish diaspora, we don’t talk enough or think enough about the Mizrahi experience—but, with writers like Ayelet Tsabari, that’s changing. I don’t remember hearing the word ‘Mizrahi’ growing up. Almost all the Jewish people in my Jewish day school, and almost all the Jewish people in the stories we […]
The Jam, Jews and JFS: ‘To Be Someone’ by Ian Stone
Nathan Abrams speaks to Jewish comedian Ian Stone about his new book To Be Someone. Ian Stone might not be the first Jewish standup comedian you’d think of, but he’s been around for over twenty years, appearing on television, radio and podcasts. In his newly published memoir, To Be Someone, he recounts his lifelong passions of listening to The Jam […]
‘The Plot Against America’ comes back to haunt me
I can vividly remember reading Philip Roth’s novel when it was published in 2004 and being completely gobsmacked that Charles Lindbergh was the American President. We were on holiday in Portugal in the same place we’d gone back to every year since who knows when, for a week of walking, Scrabble and reading. I can still […]