Jewish Folk Medicine
Efram Sera-Shriar explores an often forgotten or overlooked tradition. When I used to work for the Science Museum in London, I was often asked by friends and colleagues what my favourite object was in the collection. There is so much fantastic material in the museum’s store, and there are several objects that are dear to […]
Eyes Wide Shut
Nathan Abrams considers the Jewishness of Jordan Peele’s Nope. Two alternative names have been suggested for Jordan Peele’s latest film, Nope, but which have already been taken: “Don’t Look Up” and “Don’t Look Now”. I am going to suggest an alternative if already taken title: Eyes Wide Shut. This is because in quoting Stanley Kubrick’s […]
The Jewish mystical roots of His Dark Materials
The BBC and HBO recently aired the final episodes of the TV show His Dark Materials, based on the books of the same name by Philip Pullman, a self-described Church of England Atheist. When I first read the His Dark Materials trilogy 20 years ago, I knew the books were deemed as heretical. I read […]
Danny Kalb: Jewish Blues Icon
Martin Elliot Jaffe reflects on his musical inspiration since 1966. Reading the New York Times obituary for guitarist Danny Kalb, who died aged 80 in November, I was transported back in time: aged 15, Framus guitar in hand, struggling to find a chord progression as I listened to Projections, a new album from Kalb’s band, […]
The Scream in Kiev
Alex Gordon presents an original story. My grandfather Ilya Gordon was an assistant pharmacist in a Kiev pharmacy. He made and sold medicines, weighed portions of medicines on scales, and was always accurate in his work. He was allowed to settle outside the Pale of Settlement in Tsarist Russia and move from the shtetl […]
An Unfathomable Nightmare
Donald Weber admires a new translation of Lion Feuchtwanger The Oppermanns. “Berlin is a city full of future émigrés,” Lion Feuchtwanger declared in 1931, prophesying his own fate two years before the 1933 publication of his deeply prescient novel, The Oppermanns. By then, the well-known author, a political novelist and playwright affiliated with Brecht and […]
Jewish Culture in Kraków
Shai Afsai reflects on a pre-pandemic Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków. Prior to World War II, about one-tenth of Poland’s population was Jewish, and Jews made up almost a quarter of Kraków’s residents. By the end of the war, 90% of Poland’s Jews had died at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices. Those […]
Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe
Efram Sera-Shriar reviews a new book about Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe. Not so long ago I was having a discussion about traditional Jewish folk customs with my uncle, who is a lawyer. Like me, he’s always been interested in this aspect of Jewish culture, and we chatted about things such as the supposed […]
Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart and Jewish Anti-Defamation
Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel In response to Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live monologue about who really runs things, Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert suggesting he would make a better “spokesJew” than those who currently fulfil that role. But would he? And what should we expect from Jewish anti-defamation groups, in the United States and around the […]
The Hollywood Chanukkiah
Barbara Borts discusses an unlikely Jewish Film Star. How does one signal to the public that the characters in a film are Jewish? Well, let me introduce you to the unlit Chanukkiah, which made at least three different appearances in three different films during the 2022 UK Jewish Film Festival. In no particular order, this […]