Cleaning for Pesach
Cleaning the kitchen for Pesach yesterday I heard the voices of my loved ones who are gone but whose memories live on and return to keep me company. I kneeled to scrub the inside of the oven and suddenly could smell the chicken soup and matzah balls that my grandmother used to make in her […]
On (not) celebrating Jewish diversity
Keith Kahn-Harris explains how highlighting the diversity of British Jews through photography raises some uncomfortable issues
Johanna Kaplan’s Miraculous Ear
Donald Weber reviews an author whose work might not be so well-known in Britain. Johanna Kaplan arrived on the literary scene almost fifty years ago as a superb interpreter of American Jewish life at mid-century, a time of social mobility, yet also an era haunted by the still raw traumas of the past. Loss of […]
Uncle Boris the Prophet
Alex Gordon remembers his great uncle Boris, Kyiv, and the Holocaust. My grandmother Rosa’s brother Baruch, whom we all called Boris, was a prophet. Why did my grandmother’s brother stop being called by the Jewish name Baruch and start being called by the Christian name Boris? Spinoza’s name was Baruch, which means “blessed” in Hebrew. […]
Seinfeld Yomi: The English Patient
In another instalment of his Seinfeld Yomi, Jarrod Tanny discusses the episode, “The English Patient”. Day 144, Thursday, March 24, 2022, s8e17, first aired on March 13, 1997. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697691/ MISHNAH: Hillel: The English Patient Shammai: Sack Lunch Hillel: Neil Armstrong Shammai: Neil Diamond Hillel: Cubans Shammai: Dominicans Hillel: World’s Greatest Sage Shammai: Number one Sage […]
How the Anne Frank Cold Case Team Betrayed the World
Ruben Vis explains how the recent revelations about Anne Frank’s alleged betrayer are wrong. Who betrayed Anne Frank and the others who were hiding with her? The question has been a source of speculation and research ever since Otto H. Frank, Anne’s father and sole survivor of the eight, returned from Auschwitz in the summer […]
Pax Materna
Gloria Tessler wrote these poems in memory of her birth mother, Dorothy, who died when she was two years old. Dorothy One When I look at you in your photo frame, Contained and smiling, your auburn curls, Re-touched rose cheeks and painted eyebrows, Photo-shopped, old-style, as though your beauty Is not enough, as though I […]
All About Eva
In this exclusive extract from his new book, All About Eva: A Holocaust-Related Memoir, with a Hollywood Twist, Vincent Brook reminisces about his German Jewish parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany and their early years as refugees in Los Angeles, where Vincent’s mother, Eva, had an extramarital affair with famed Polish Jewish actor Alexander Granach. When […]
Borowski’s Brutal Vision
Donald Weber reviews Here in Our Auschwitz and Other Stories by Tadeusz Borowski. The publication of the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski’s Here in Our Auschwitz and Other Stories is a significant event for students of Holocaust literature. Sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner in 1943, at the age of 21, and released from Dachau […]
After I’m Gone
When I die, let death come without pain. Let flowers and birds weep and sing a sad lament. Let Heaven open and soak the earth with rain. But, please, let there be no pain. Just the gentle kiss of a loved one’s lips on my cheek. The whisper of goodbye, the touch of a hand […]