Sex and Feminist Jewish Art
Continuing our series on Jews & Sex, Rachel Garfield discusses feminist art. In 2006, in her book Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art: Ghosts of Ethnicity, Lisa Bloom explored the relationship between art by second-wave American feminist artists and the elided Jewishness of many of those artists. The journey to the explicitly articulated Jewishness of a new generation of artists in […]
Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the Jews
In the third instalment of our series on Jews & Sex, Nathan Abrams considers the darker side of the work of the feminist pioneer and her relationship to Jews. Dr. Marie Stopes (1880-1958) is best remembered as a feminist and a birth control pioneer. As the most forceful sexual revolutionary of her age, as well as […]
Manchester’s King of Glamour and Strip
In the second part of our series on Jews & Sex, Sue Fox reminisces about her Uncle Arthur and his striptease business. My uncle Arthur Fox died in 1970. Mancunians of a certain age might remember his name. He owned The Revue Bar in George Street. I don’t know where George Street was or even if it still exists. Uncle Arthur was the (very non-PC) black sheep […]
Jews & Sex
In 2008, my book, Jews & Sex was published. It reflected on the relationship between Jews and issues of sex and sexuality, opening up what Keith Kahn-Harris called ‘the hidden worlds of Jews and sex’. This included essays on lesbian Yiddish poetry, Jews in the porn industry, representations of Jews and sex in the work […]
J.A.P and S.E.X.
In this first instalment of the Jews & sex series, Jenny Caplan reflects on the stereotypes of the Jewish American Princess. How can you tell a JAP is having an orgasm? She drops her nail file. What is the definition of JAP kinky sex? She moves. What do you call a JAP’s nipple? The tip […]
Jews, Money and Globalisation
Nathan Abrams reviews two new books which tell us surprisingly little about the links between Jews and global capital. Jews might be considered the archetypes of globalist capitalists. And with the figure of Sir Philip Green looming large in the press over the weekend, the negative connections between Jews, globalisation, capitalism and finance once again […]
A Jewish army doctor and the gift of a German war widow
Myra Woolfson reminisces about her late father and the interesting set of items he brought home from the war. My late father, Captain Vernon Smith, was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps from November 1941 until March 1946. He joined up towards the end of his first hospital job following graduation. When he […]
Introducing the best kept secret of Georgian Jewry: The Lailashi Codex
Thea Gomelauri introduces the crowing glory of Georgian Jewry
Jews & Chess
Tim Cowen asks if chess is a Jewish game. Beth Harmon, a 9-year-old orphan chess prodigy, walks into a high school. She beats all 12 of the school’s best players simultaneously. The Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit is entirely fictional, but it reveals the reality of the ancient game. An orphan girl can succeed against the […]
The Top Ten Jewish Chess Movies
The Queen’s Gambit, a novel that has been adapted for and is currently streaming on Netflix (read a review here), has caused an uptake in the game of chess. Jews, as we know, excel at the sport, perhaps because it requires no physical contact, is played indoors and takes brains to master. In fact, the […]