Jews
Why won’t the BBC use the word ‘Jews’?
I was intrigued to learn from the BBC Today programme on Tuesday that ‘buildings across the UK will be illuminated…
From riches to rags: The Effingers, by Gabriele Tergit, reviewed
Beginning in 1878, this family saga charts the success of two Jewish brothers in Berlin before the coming of the Nazis threatens not only their livelihoods but their lives
Why you are probably a hero
The Bondi murders painted a picture constituted out of the contrast between shade and light. This was the chiaroscuro massacre.…
There was no escaping the Nazis – even in sleep
Soon after Hitler came to power, a Jewish journalist, deprived of regular employment, began secretly recording her nightmares – and, as the terror increased, those of her fellow citizens
The world is now inexorably divided – and the West must fight to survive
One side wants to preserve core Judeo-Christian values; the other, driven by Islamist extremists, seeks to establish a dangerous new world of deracinated individuals, says Melanie Phillips
A helpful suggestion for Taylor Swift’s boyfriends
Sir Mark Rowley should not resign. We must try to break our habit of getting rid of each Metropolitan Police…
The dirty war of Sefton Delmer
Anything to break German morale was allowable in Delmer’s broadcasts from Wavendon Towers – which purported to come from a disgruntled character within Nazi Germany
Prejudice in Pennsylvania: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride, reviewed
Inspired by his own family history, McBride explores the problems faced by a Jewish shopkeeper and her black neighbours in the small town of Chicken Hill in the 1930s
Why the kids hate Jews
The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will…
Passports out of hell
Roger Moorhouse describes how various diplomats stationed in Europe risked their positions to issue as many forged ‘tickets to safety’ to Jews as possible
Across the wire at Belsen
Hannah Pick-Goslar, a survivor of the Holocaust and Anne’s friend in Amsterdam, movingly describes their snatched conversations in Belsen before Anne disappeared forever
The fate of castaways
Absent mothers resonate in the latest offerings from two heavyweights of French literature. Getting Lost is the diary kept by…
Will the world forsake him?
Cracks are beginning to appear in T.S. Eliot’s once unassailable reputation, says Philip Hensher
Why Jews don’t count to the ‘anti-racists’
Suppose you explain to someone spouting racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory ideas that they are prejudiced. You may begin by…
The outsiders
Tanya Gold on the journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Double trouble
American Pickle is a comedy based on a short story by Simon Rich, originally published in the New Yorker, and…
Strategies for survival
Late in his life, I asked my uncle René about his exploits in wartime France. What I knew was that…
Family matters
History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List. His brilliant tragic-comic play opens in the Jewish quarter of Vienna…
‘Utterly betrayed’: Britain’s Jews are now politically homeless
We Jews have evolved to be neurotic; so neurotic that, in certain circumstances, the Syrian border feels slightly safer than…
Do Jews think differently?
Sixteen years into a stop-go production saga, I got a call from the director of The Song of Names with…
Why did the Soviets not want us to know about the pianist Maria Grinberg?
Only four women pianists have recorded complete cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas: Maria Grinberg, Annie Fischer, H. J. Lim…
A major missed opportunity: Disobedience reviewed
Disobedience is an adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel about forbidden, lesbian love in orthodox Jewish north London, starring Rachel Weisz…
Strangers in their native land
Though it seems to begin as an affectionate memorial to his maternal grandparents, a testimonial to a rare and perfectly…
Why are children in Guernsey extolling Islam to their parents?
I have never been to the island of Guernsey. This is a large world and we have a finite amount…
