Currently Browsing: After the pandemic 19 articles
JewThink writers explore how the Jewish world will look after the pandemic is over.
The Pandemic and British Jewish Culture
Welcome to JewThink. To kickstart our first ‘issue’, we issued an open invitation for reflections on the following questions: 1. What will British Jewish culture look like after the pandemic? 2. How has the pandemic affected how we think about British Jewish culture? 3. What types of British Jewish culture have you been consuming during […]
Pandemic, Jewish Learning and Us
There is liberation to be gained through reading and writing. One can feel a kind of freedom through the process of placing words and finding order, by the idea that there could be necessity of a function in narrative. Reading and interpretation form much of our Jewish experience, and I wonder how might lived and inherited narratives be used within our private and public lives to develop strategies for […]
Auto-Generation: Religious services on Hendon’s streets
They have always been religious, they have always been rich, and I am welcome there. They don’t need anything from me, I don’t need anything from them. It’s Shabbos many months into coronavirus lockdown and because the dozen or so synagogues within a 15 minutes’ walk are closed, prayers are happening on my parents’ street – average age 60. Someone spoke to the […]
Covid has made me more engaged with the community
A former frummer, my life used to revolve around Shul, Shabbat meals, family and learning. Social interactions have also played a massive role in my life, and this hasn’t changed significantly. I’ve slowly become less religious over the past decade, and my relationship to Judaism has changed, evolved and adapted. My identity is now expressed […]
What if nothing changes?
WiIl the impact of Covid-19 be as ephemeral as the impact of the death of Diana?
A welcome democratisation of British Jewish culture
For me, the pandemic has produced a welcome democratisation of British Jewish culture. No longer is living in a remote fringe of the United Kingdom, a hindrance to full participation in British Jewish cultural life. The current situation has led to a levelling up: Jewish culture, once previously inaccessible either because of location and/or cost, is now free and accessible. I no longer […]
How the virus turned us all a little bit Jewish
There was a moment during the lockdown when it seemed the whole world was turning Talmudic. ‘What if?’ became the question on everybody’s lips. Even the letters page of The Grauniad (noch) was filled with arguments straight out of the yeshiva. ‘I live alone’, one reader wrote, ‘If I go and meet my son and his partner in the park, I am breaking the rules […]
What types of Jewish culture have you been consuming during the pandemic?
To answer this question, I return to a beginning – a discovery in graduate school where my work concentrated on the history and theories of British literature. When we reached the twentieth century, devoid of Jewish content, it was the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen who inspired my fascination with British Jewish history and culture. Although I found Bowen a compelling writer, it was her treatment of British antisemitism […]
Davening during the Pandemic
I am a regular shul goer and wherever I am I try to attend services. On a Shabbat I’m usually in shul and on a Sunday morning at home in Leeds I head for the 8.00 a.m. minyan. The pandemic has put a stop to all that. But since 22nd March 22, I have been a member of a virtual community led by the Reverend Albert Chait of the United Hebrew Congregation […]
Davening during lockdown
Davening during the lockdown due to Covid-19 has been an entirely different experience. During normal times, davening is confined predominantly to morning Shabbat and Yom Tov services in shul. But during the pandemic, it has involved attending virtual Shacharit services led by Senior Minister Albert Chait of the United Hebrew Congregation, Leeds. I made a […]