Currently Browsing: Karen E. H. Skinazi 8 articles
A Scholarly Unorthodox
Karen H. Skinazi reviews Zalman Newfield’s Degrees of Separation. When my teenage son was little, he used to sway back and forth if he was concentrating hard on something—a book, a puzzle, a Lego creation. ‘Who knew shokeling was hereditary?’ we joked. My husband comes from Hasidische stock. If my son still shokels while he […]
A Trip to (Jewish) Shanghai
In need of a little armchair travel in lieu of the real thing, Karen Skinazi revisits a trip to Shanghai, where she is amazed by both the cosmopolitan city and the thriving Jewish community she finds there. When we’re not playing Settlers of Catan, or watching movies on Disney+, or going on chilly walks 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 […]
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? A Profile of Yehudis Fletcher
Karen Skinazi profiles Yehudis Fletcher, a Haredi political and social activist who helped to found Nahamu, an organisation dedicated to fighting extremism. ‘What would you do if, say, a transwoman who used to be part of the Haredi community lost the right to see her children in the civil courts?’ I asked (admittedly, it was […]
MRS AMERICA: Everything coming up Bagels
True story: About three weeks into a new job, my first in England, which had thus far included a lot of activities labelled ‘induction’ (a term unfamiliar to my North American brain, but which seemed to mean go drink coffee while having small talk about the weather and bad shows like The Great British Bake […]
Kinder Korner: Singers Hill Synagogue in Birmingham, UK–the Minecraft edition!
Momo Skinazi, 10 years old, recreates the beautiful cathedral synagogue of Birmingham Hebrew Congregation…in Minecraft. Take a tour here!
Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s Never Have I Ever: When is a Jewish stereotype useful?
In the first part of this two-part series on new culture and old Jewish stereotypes, I wrote about Jewish money, solidarity, and privilege in Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie. For this post, I’m going to move across the pond to discuss the new American Netflix series Never How I Ever. This series, like Queenie, has a diverse group of girlfriends at its core and a problematic Jewish figure framed in […]
What types of British Jewish culture have you been consuming during the pandemic? Part 1
This description embarrassed me, because it felt a little too real. Let’s face it: Jews make a pastime of touting our minority status. We are the victims of millennia of discrimination and oppression. We hold fast to this self-image, even when we share in much of the privilege of whiteness—and sometimes more of it than many white people.