Currently Browsing: History 24 articles
Naivety not Nativity: 40 Years of Limmud
Alastair Falk looks back at four decades of Limmud. For forty years, every Christmas, Jews have been wandering the wildernesses of deserted university and school campuses. This is because of Limmud, the energetic alternative to the traditional festivities in Britain. This year’s Limmud Festival ( even the name now hints at its seasonal feel) may need to […]
Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the Jews
In the third instalment of our series on Jews & Sex, Nathan Abrams considers the darker side of the work of the feminist pioneer and her relationship to Jews. Dr. Marie Stopes (1880-1958) is best remembered as a feminist and a birth control pioneer. As the most forceful sexual revolutionary of her age, as well as […]
A Jewish army doctor and the gift of a German war widow
Myra Woolfson reminisces about her late father and the interesting set of items he brought home from the war. My late father, Captain Vernon Smith, was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps from November 1941 until March 1946. He joined up towards the end of his first hospital job following graduation. When he […]
Introducing the best kept secret of Georgian Jewry: The Lailashi Codex
Thea Gomelauri introduces the crowing glory of Georgian Jewry
Jews & Chess
Tim Cowen asks if chess is a Jewish game. Beth Harmon, a 9-year-old orphan chess prodigy, walks into a high school. She beats all 12 of the school’s best players simultaneously. The Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit is entirely fictional, but it reveals the reality of the ancient game. An orphan girl can succeed against the […]
The Secret History of Hava Nagila
The Secret History of Hava Nagila is an animated short story that could change everything you thought you knew about Jewish history.
Is She or Isn’t She . . . Jewish?: ‘The Queen’s Gambit’
Vincent Brook reviews new Netflix series, The Queen’s Gambit. SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains major reveals! We all know about Bobby Fischer, the paranoid, self-hating Jewish chess wiz featured in two American movies (Meeting Bobby Fischer, 1993; Pawn Sacrifice, 2015). Fischer became U.S. champion at fourteen and, marred by his antisemitic rantings, defeated the […]
A Great Film but Strangely Washed of Jewishness
Jack Shamash reviews the new release The Trial of the Chicago 7. Last Friday, the film The Trial of The Chicago 7 was released in cinemas and on Netflix. It depicts the Chicago Conspiracy Trial that began in 1969 and ended in 1970. It stars, among others, Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin and Sacha Baron […]
‘Is It Good for the Jews?’ is giving us a moral blindspot
Jon Abrams reflects on the responses to his piece on Anglo-Jewry and slavery. The responses to our recent article published by JewThink, ‘Why we need more research on how Anglo-Jewry profited from slavery’, have been baffling if not downright disturbing. Apart from a few exceptions, most of the comments have completely ignored the content of our article that argued for greater […]
‘Chlandidneh’: The Jewish History of the Queen of Welsh Resorts
As many of you consider, go on, or return from your staycation this summer, one place that remains a draw is the north Wales town of Llandudno. The Daily Telegraph recently described it as, ‘The old-fashioned seaside town that’s suddenly back in vogue’. It is so popular with Haredi visitors that they were even willing to break England and Wales’ lockdown […]