Currently Browsing: Longer Reads 6 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.
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 […]
Sexual Fantasy and Antisemitism
In a continuation of our series on Jews & Sex, Aidan Joseph Beatty argues how antisemitism is often a deeply pleasurable, even erotic, experience for the antisemite. In January 1904, a relatively young Irish Catholic priest named John Creagh began a campaign of intimidation against the small Jewish community in Limerick. Using his religious pulpit, […]
The Kabbalist of Co-Working: Adam Neumann, WeWork and the Story of a Capitalist Cult
Nathan Abrams reviews a remarkable book about the spectacular rise and fall of the co-working start-up WeWork and its Jewish founder, Adam Neumann. In 2005, software engineer Brad Neuberg coined the term ‘co-working’. He wanted to find a balance between the grind of office life and the solitude of freelancing but without having to fight […]
Faithful, Fruitful
A short story by Tamar Hodes. The winter of 1876 was cruel, even by Lithuanian standards. Citizens and animals were numb with cold; foliage was edged in frost; the soil froze. My great-grandfather was a woodcutter in the Algirdas forest where firs stood like giants’ legs against a vanilla sky. All day, he chopped trees […]