Not a Jew. Says Who?
Loolwa Khazzoom reflects on Ella Emhoff’s Jewishness and who gets to decide. On Inauguration Day, I was very emotional – not only because Kamala Harris is the first African- and Asian-American woman in the White House, and not only because her husband, Doug Emhoff, is the first Second Gentleman in the White House, but also […]
Congahead: Martin Cohen
Martin Jaffee reflects on Martin Cohen’s lifelong love affair with Latin music. On stage, hidden behind my full set of congas and bongos—a warm evening at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the Workmen’s Circle Klezmer Orchestra ( now Tischler Klezmer Orchestra) launches into Ich Hob Dich and I latch onto a sinuous Latin rhumba on […]
Discounted Jews
Nathan Abrams finds flaws in David Baddiel’s new book about antisemitism Jews Don’t Count. I finally got my copy of Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel’s new book about antisemitism. Despite being a longtime fan and bearing more than a passing physical resemblance to him, I desperately didn’t want to like this book. Maybe it’s because the media only seems to pay attention to these issues when it’s a celebrity like Baddiel, Simon Schama or Anthony Julius. As he puts it himself in the book, ‘I am, […]
Jewish Space Lasers
When Republican Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene blamed the Californian wildfires on a secret Jewish Space Laser, the internet went wild with memes. Mel Brooks’ ‘Jews in Space’ featuring Star-of David-shaped spaceships, flown by haredim, singing of the glories of ‘defending the Hebrew race’ was particularly popular. As was the Death Star of David. There were also […]
What kinda goy has the first name Lenny?
Nathan Abrams reviews a new memoir by musician Lenny Kravitz. ‘I am deeply two-sided’, Lenny Kravitz writes in his memoir, Let Love Rule, which recounts the first quarter-century of his life, from birth until the release of his debut album in 1989. That is because of the two halves of his identity: ‘Black and white, […]
Who Killed Poetry?
A new poem by Shai Afsai. Poetry has been dead for decades. Its ghost surfaces from time to time for funeral home eulogies, graduation ceremonies congressional speeches, presidential inaugurations, and the like – but that only demonstrates its lifelessness, the way Elvis impersonators prove the King of Rock and Roll surely is no more. […]
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 […]
George Orwell: Oracle, Political Visionary, Antisemite?
Martin Elliot Jaffe considers the reputation and writings of George Orwell. During my years as a graduate student at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio during the 1970s I read a great deal of political theory and history of England during the 1930’s— the denial of the reality of European fascism, insularity, class-bound decadent aristocratic political […]
A 300lb Behemoth: Robert Maxwell
Nathan Abrams reviews a new biography of media mogul Robert Maxwell. Press baron Robert Maxwell was larger than life. It might be a cliché but never was the expression more fitting. Born into nothing, he became a billionaire newspaper magnate, bestriding the world like a giant, gaining the ear of world leaders. He weighed some […]
Time To Heal
Emma Franks, a practising visual artist describes how her brother’s increased religiosity and Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox inspired her commitment to producing work that explores the female narrative and perspective. In the middle of the global pandemic last year, when we noticed birdsong and the joys of being at one with nature people also discovered the […]