Currently Browsing: israel 20 articles
Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah 5784/2023: A collective memoir
Perhaps we should mourn the festivity that was taken away from us, just as we mourn the deaths and suffering that occurred during that festival. JewThink solicited contributions from British Jews reflecting on their experiences of the festival. Let us remember these ruptures even as we try and come to terms with the wider rupture.
Who By Fire
Martin Elliot Jaffe recalls Leonard Cohen In The Sinai. “I was afraid at first that my quiet and melancholy songs weren’t the kind that would encourage soldiers at the front—but I learned that these wonderful kids don’t need glorious battle anthems—now between battles they don’t need glorious battle anthems. Now between battles, they’re open to […]
Keeping Kosher
A new story by MJ Popplewell. Joseph struggled upstairs and into the apartment with his bags. He laid them on the kitchen table and took out a selection of pans: small for milk, medium for vegetables and a large one for meat. He had also bought some cutlery: knives, forks, spoons and so forth, and […]
The Meaning of Antisemitism: An Exchange
Daniel Randall and Judah Bernstein discuss antisemitism. Events such as the hostage-taking at a synagogue in Coleyville, Texas, remind us that antisemitism is not a historical relic, but a potent ideological force capable of impelling violence. Does the antisemitism that motivated Malik Faisal Akram, the Coleyville gunman, belong to a single historical thread linking all forms […]
Israel and Covid
Sue Fox charts the hassle of flying to and from Israel in the age of Covid. Israel here we come. Never mind PASSENGER LOCATOR FORM, what I need is a brain locator form. Flights to Israel were bought pre-Covid. It was barely two years ago but I seem to have aged another decade. When Israel […]
A Jewish Panther
Aidan Beatty reviews a new biography of Meir Kahane. It is now generally well recognised that America has never recovered from the 1960s; the Civil Rights Movement brought about the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation in the South but that was then replaced by the mass incarceration and unreformed police brutality that Black Lives Matter […]
Tempering Jewish Fear & Anger
Dan Jacobs argues that diaspora Jews are letting their fear and anger determine their reactions to recent events. During the recent Israel/Palestinian fighting, Jews have been targeted by antisemites around the world. In the UK Jews were verbally attacked by pro-Palestinian protestors waving flags and shouting ‘death to Jews’, ‘rape their daughters’. These types of […]
‘The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man’
Shai Afsai writes on how The Independent’s Joe Sommerlad’s ‘A brief history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict’ plagiarises Rawan Damen’s four-part Al Nakba documentary. Al Nakba — written and directed by Rawan Damen, produced and first run on Al Jazeera Arabic in 2008, and re-versioned by Al Jazeera World to English in 2013 — is precisely […]
Peace under fire
Dana Mills reports on her experiences working for Peace Now in Israel while under fire from Gazan rockets There is never a more urgent time to be a peace activist during a war. However, working for peace and to end the occupation under fire brings to light all the challenges and contradictions that this path […]
Pointless
Loolwa Khazzoom shares the story behind ‘Pointless’ a new song on her band’s debut album, Iraqis in Pajamas (June 4 release). The BackstoryThe world knows little or nothing about indigenous Middle Eastern Jews, like my family, who lived on the land of Iraq for 1300 years before the Arab Muslim conquest of the region. My family lived on […]