What’s in a Name? Lovecraft Country’s Hiram Epstein
Elyce Rae Helford takes another look at the troubling and antisemitic character of Hiram Epstein on HBO’s Lovecraft Country. In September 2020, in The Times of Israel, Philissa Cramer asked, ‘Why does HBO’s anti-racist ‘Lovecraft Country’ stumble into anti-Semitic tropes?‘ The question came to me as well, and Cramer does a superb job of clarifying […]
Thinking in Yiddish
Michele Byers reflects on learning Yiddish during lockdown. Not knowing Yiddish is one of those things I’ve been lamenting most of my life. And, in a way, the lamentation is itself as much a part of my secular Jewish identity as knowing Yiddish might have been. I expect that it’s like this for a lot […]
Jew vs. Jew
Vincent Brook offers another perspective on The Trial of the Chicago 7. Jewish writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s reputation as one of America’s most unflinchingly leftist filmmakers/television creators was secure well before The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), as was his penchant for interweaving his work with Jewish themes and characters. With his period docudrama about […]
The Secret History of Hava Nagila
The Secret History of Hava Nagila is an animated short story that could change everything you thought you knew about Jewish history.
Is She or Isn’t She . . . Jewish?: ‘The Queen’s Gambit’
Vincent Brook reviews new Netflix series, The Queen’s Gambit. SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains major reveals! We all know about Bobby Fischer, the paranoid, self-hating Jewish chess wiz featured in two American movies (Meeting Bobby Fischer, 1993; Pawn Sacrifice, 2015). Fischer became U.S. champion at fourteen and, marred by his antisemitic rantings, defeated the […]
Vessel
In this personal essay, Polish translator Marta Dziurosz explores her Jewish roots, her uneasy path to engaging with them, and how literature helped her along the way. There are rooms of silence attached to this piece of writing. Things I don’t know; things I should know; things I’ve been asked not to write about; things […]
Art in a Socially Distanced Age: Artist & Instagrammer Jo Israel
Martha Richler talks to artist and instagrammer Jo Israel about her artwork. Perhaps you have seen photographer Jo Israel’s mysterious creations on Instagram (@jo_israel_art and www.jo-israel.com). Her transposed images are both surprising and captivating: sepia in tone, ghostly in appearance, and poignant at a time when many of us can only glimpse each other through […]
An Uncomfortable Period of British and Zionist History
Nathan Abrams reviews a new book which sheds light on an a forgotten snippet of British Imperial History. In her new book, The People on the Beach: Journeys to Freedom After the Holocaust, Rosie Whitehouse explores that forgotten period in Britain’s history, the years between the end of the Second World War and the birth […]
The Art of Mizrahiness
Karen Skinazi argues that, in the Jewish diaspora, we don’t talk enough or think enough about the Mizrahi experience—but, with writers like Ayelet Tsabari, that’s changing. I don’t remember hearing the word ‘Mizrahi’ growing up. Almost all the Jewish people in my Jewish day school, and almost all the Jewish people in the stories we […]
Dinner with Ivana and Ivanka
Sue Fox recalls a memorable evening in the company of Ivana and Ivanka Trump. A post-concert dinner in the atrium of the Barbican Centre looked like it was going to be fun. Each table had a flag and name of a famous opera house. I was seated at the Bolshoi. Dearly beloved was far away […]