Currently Browsing: Uncategorized 114 articles
The Nazis’ British Blacklist
In advance of Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the Nazis’ British hitlist and who wasn’t on it. Around 1939, the Gestapo drew up a list. In the case of the Nazi occupation of the United Kingdom, some 2,600 named individuals were to be targeted for removal. They would have […]
Rabbi Zalman Schacter, My Career Counselling Mentor
Martin Elliot Jaffe reflects on work as a way of life or in the way of life as inspired by the writing of Rabbi Zalman Schachter. As a recently retired career counsellor with 35 years of expertise dealing with a diverse cross-section of Americans facing a turbulent era of career transition and the hollowing out […]
Conversations with a Blank Canvas
Artist and arts psychotherapist Isa L. Levy presents her creative memoir, From Nowhere to Somewhere: Decades of Change & Transformation In the summer of 2006, I was invited to exhibit a selection of my paintings at the Ben Uri Gallery in their Fortnight of Solo Artists, curated by Sarah Lightman. It was an opportunity for […]
How Finland’s Jews Fought Alongside the Nazis
Mark Bernheim reviews a remarkable book about Finland’s Jews during World War II. In the complex history of the Holocaust, Finland was the only European combatant country in which none of its Jewish citizens were sent to concentration or extermination camps. In many other ways, too, the history of its tiny Jewish community is unique. How […]
JewTh!nk’s Top Ten Most Read of 2020
In reverse order, here are our top ten most read pieces since our launch in July. 10. As part of our series on the pandemic, Alastair Falk reflected on how the pandemic made us all a little bit Jewish. Read the full piece here. 9. It would be no surprise that a piece about the […]
‘The Greening of America’ 50 Years Later
Martin Elliot Jaffe looks back at a landmark book and its enduring relevance for today. As a college student in 1970, I was captivated by the vision of a new America articulated by Yale Law Professor Charles Reich in his best-selling The Greening of America, where the ethos of enlightened, privileged middle-class college students were […]
Dear editor of the local Jewish newspaper – an epistolary poem
Thank you for agreeing to remove my essay from your website. I hope you won’t take what I’m writing as an attack on you personally, which isn’t my intention. However, I don’t understand why your copy editor altered my essay in the first place. I wonder why your copy editor felt the need to make […]
Six films that would have Roald Dahl turning in his grave
Nathan Abrams revisits those ‘Jewish’ adaptations of the famous author’s works. Roald Dahl has been much in the news this week following the revelation of his family’s apology for his antisemitic comments. ‘There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I […]
The expulsion of the Jews in 1496
Dora Guennes explores the first brain drain from Portugal. On December 5, 1496, King Manuel I signed the decree that expelled most of the Jews from Portugal. The resulting legal act – The Expulsion of the Jews and Moors from the Kingdom of Portugal – marked the diaspora of the Sephardi Jews, a community of […]
Ten Reasons Why ‘Shrek’ Is Jewish
Nathan Abrams provides ten reasons why Shrek is Jewish. Every year, the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry chooses 25 films of historical, cultural, or aesthetic significance to be marked for preservation. Among this year’s inductees is Shrek (2001). The Registry commended the film thus: Even by DreamWorks standards, the charm and magic of ‘Shrek’ […]