Currently Browsing: Uncategorized 110 articles
To Life
Ophir J. Bitton Where does one go from here, In abundant clouds of marmalade – mobility is futile and success is falling down, feet were meant to be planted in the ground, with posthumous roots sprawling like streams of water seeking independent routs to a common destination Yet to fall in triumph, the soul must […]
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 […]
Fear Street
Mirushe Zylali reviews Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street. *Warning: this review contains spoilers* Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street is the story of a scapegoat revealing the truth. The enemies in this story? On a textual level, ambiguous prejudice; human hunger for power; the fear of not having control over one’s life and actions. On a subtextual level, […]
Shaddai
Mirushe ‘Mira’ Zylali reviews Loolwa Khazzoom’s new album. The Aramaic-language piyyut ‘Yah Ribbon “Alam”’ ends with a prayer for a restored Jerusalem. Written in the late 1500s by Rabbi Israel Najara, the then-rabbi of Gaza, it has been sung for four hundred years as a Shabbat hymn – that’s 21,000 Shabbatot. On Shabbat, God asks […]
What the Dickens?
by Clarissa Hyman I never learnt to tango or teach myself Russian (to read Tolstoy in the original, of course), nor did I excavate the loft, repaint the kitchen or sort out the old family photos. And don’t even bring up the subject of updating the website. I baked far too many loaves of banana […]
The Book of Sarah
Zanne Domoney-Lyttle reviews Sarah Lightman’s graphic novel The Book of Sarah. Sarah Lightman’s The Book of Sarah is an ambitious and moving text-image chronicle of her experiences from childhood to parenthood, embedded within a framework of Jewish feminist approaches. It is a biography intertwined with a hazy memory, family mythology, and some meaningful and other […]
The Power of Holocaust Art
Caroline Slifkin reflects on her Holocaust art for schools project. I first got involved in creating a schools Holocaust arts project for Bolton’s Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) events in 2011. The completed art display toured The Town Hall, The Market Place and Bolton University, raising awareness in the wider community. Due to the success of […]
Neshama Reggae
Forty years after his death, Martin Elliot Jaffe reflects on Boby Marley’s Jewish Soul. My heart pounds a bit as the stage lights dim and after a long pandemic-enforced hiatus we return to the jam night stage of the Winchester in Lakewood, Ohio. Guitarists await the count, the drummer signals me and I launch the […]
The Real-Life Inglourious Basterds
Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the true history of those Jewish commandos who fought against the Nazis and helped to win World War II. The idea that Jews went like sheep to the slaughter during the Holocaust is a common one. But a spate of recent books is challenging that idea. One of […]
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 […]