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Humanity and War
I tuned in to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day recently, and I heard Dr Chetna Kang discuss Hindu values in times of battle. Without referring to the war between Israel and Gaza, she said it was important never to forget the humanity of the enemy. If you forget their humanity, she said, the torment […]
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 […]
Althea McNish
To mark the Windrush anniversary, Gloria Tessler remembers her late friend, Althea McNish. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush which first docked in Tilbury on June 22, 1948. What should be a happy event, celebrating the diversity of culture in Britain, has been marred, of course by the trauma experienced by […]
Overcriticism and Forgiveness
Alex Gordon reflects on his father’s Jewishness. In 1935 my father met his idol, the French writer Henri Barbusse, winner of the Goncourt Prize. Barbusse, a member of the French Communist Party who also met with Stalin, sought to persuade my father, a newly minted graduate in literature from Kiev University, to become a communist. […]
Danny Kalb: Jewish Blues Icon
Martin Elliot Jaffe reflects on his musical inspiration since 1966. Reading the New York Times obituary for guitarist Danny Kalb, who died aged 80 in November, I was transported back in time: aged 15, Framus guitar in hand, struggling to find a chord progression as I listened to Projections, a new album from Kalb’s band, […]
Dating the Exodus
Annette Duckworth asks how did two different dates arise. In 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion, the French Egyptologist and linguist achieved his first true breakthrough in the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, with the decipherment of the two Pharaonic names, ‘Ramesses’ and ‘Thutmose’. This must have caused great excitement throughout the world of biblical scholarship because the Bible […]
The day before Passover
It’s the day before Passover and we’re preparing to flee Egypt again to leave behind all the tasks we never got around to doing to bid goodbye to old habits and routines that won’t take us anywhere but back to where we started to say farewell to the people who enslaved us and treated us […]
Cleaning for Pesach
Cleaning the kitchen for Pesach yesterday I heard the voices of my loved ones who are gone but whose memories live on and return to keep me company. I kneeled to scrub the inside of the oven and suddenly could smell the chicken soup and matzah balls that my grandmother used to make in her […]
Seinfeld Yomi: The English Patient
In another instalment of his Seinfeld Yomi, Jarrod Tanny discusses the episode, “The English Patient”. Day 144, Thursday, March 24, 2022, s8e17, first aired on March 13, 1997. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697691/ MISHNAH: Hillel: The English Patient Shammai: Sack Lunch Hillel: Neil Armstrong Shammai: Neil Diamond Hillel: Cubans Shammai: Dominicans Hillel: World’s Greatest Sage Shammai: Number one Sage […]