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 […]
JewTh!nk’s Year in Review
Given that we only launched in July, this will have to be a half-year review. Here is our roundup of the top five films, television shows and books of (the second half of) 2020. Films Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Was this the best Jewish film of the year? Technically and aesthetically, probably not but in terms […]
Up Schitt’s Creek
Schitt’s Creek may not be The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, says Vince Brook, but It Is Marvellous and Very, Very Jewish! Let’s start with Eugene and Dan Levy, co-creators of the hugely popular, Emmy-monopolizing CBC sitcom Schitt’s Creek (2015-2020). This actual Jewish father and son team also co-star in the series as the fictionally Jewish Johnny […]
Dear Mandy: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group
In the second of these paired posts, Abda responds to Mandy‘s letter published yesterday. Dear Mandy Thank you for your insightful letter. I never imagined when we met that such a wonderful friendship would bloom, not only with you but with so many remarkable women. Nisa Nashim book club is so much more than a […]
Dear Abda: A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, and an interfaith book group
In these paired posts, Abda and Mandy, members of the Nisa-Nashim West Midlands Book Group, reflect on learning from reading Jewish and Muslim books, and from each other. Dear Abda, Over twenty years ago, my Jewish reading group started, reading Jewish writers – mostly fiction, poetry, and memoir. We are reading our brothers, fathers, and […]
‘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 […]
Mank the Mensch
Nathan Abrams offers another view on David Fincher’s latest movie that reveals the hidden Jewishness behind the film. Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) is widely regarded as a classic, if not the best movie ever made. It’s routinely taught at universities; indeed, I have taught it many times. Rarely, though, until now, has it been […]
A letter in support of Professor David Feldman and the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
While JewThink has no editorial ‘line’, it exists to be a platform for debate and discussion within and outside the UK Jewish community. We were approached by the organisers of the following jointly-signed letter that was published in the Jewish Chronicle on 23 December 2020. They wished to ensure that the letter was more visible […]
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 […]