Confident Jews – are we sure?
Dan Rickman responds to Nathan Abrams Did Jews really start speaking out because of the Race Relations Act and Margaret Thatcher, as Nathan Abrams argues? When I was growing up in 1960s London, Jewishness was a very private affair and monoculturalism was the order of the day. With the memory of the Holocaust hanging over them, […]
Are our Jewish nightmares paling into insignificance?
Gloria Tessler asks has the pandemic deepened society’s consciousness and so we Jews have to worry less? Does it seem strange that during the pandemic so many important topics of conversation have suddenly assumed even greater magnitude? Racism in society, gender issues, women’s rights, everything is laid bare before us in terms that were muted […]
Groucho Marx and the Spirit of American Humour
Nathan Abrams learns a great deal from a new biography of Groucho Marx. I’m by no means a Marxist. By that I mean I am no Marx Brothers maven. In that context, I learned a great deal from ‘this biography of sorts’ of Groucho Marx by Lee Siegel. Born in 1890, Julius Henry Marx was […]
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 Party Started Three Decades Ago
Nathan Abrams responds to an article in The Guardian about British Jewry’s alleged awakening from its timidity. Hadley Freeman’s assertation that ‘British Jews have always been self-effacing, but we’re starting to show our chutzpah’ overstates the point. Freeman is right that Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour Party has obscured that fact but British […]
The Federalist Society Makes Aliyah
Joshua Michaels on the sophistry of the Federalist Society and the shande that is the attempt of right-wing legal activists to replicate in Israel. Desperate for a reprieve from the dullness of COVID lockdown, I stumbled upon a free online course on Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, hosted by Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard University […]
The Island
This illustrated story told with images and text by Helen Blejerman (translated by Adrian Nathan West) is a fictional narrative with autobiographical elements. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God […]
From Mount Sinai to the Blue Ridge
Martin Elliot Jaffe discusses Jewish Bluegrass Mountain Music. Join my wife and me on a pre-pandemic evening, Saturday night at Temple Tifereth Israel in Beachwood, Ohio as an enthusiastic crowd participates in a unique new American Jewish tradition: a night of bourbon tasting, soul-stirring, foot-stomping music by the wildly popular Jewish bluegrass group NEFESH Mountain, […]
How Ben Franklin Was Turned Into an Antisemite
Shai Afsai discusses how the American Founding Father has been used to spread hate. The myth that American founding father Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was antisemitic first emerged 87 years ago – 144 years after his passing – with the publication of a fraudulent and since then repeatedly discredited text […]
Adam and Eve
A new poem by Robert ‘Smokey’ Miles. The first man looked at the rib girlWho was ripped right from his chestHe said ‘You look cute in your birthday suitAnd I really do dig your breasts.’Then he palindromed ‘Madam I’m Adam!’She said, ‘I’m Eve, please don’t leave!’And soon they got up and at ’emAnd reproduced like […]