Judaism
An unconventional orphan: Queen Esther, by John Irving, reviewed
At the heart of this vast, sweeping novel is a solitary, determined heroine, who – Jane Eyre-like – is a moral force unbound by conventionalities
What is the West without the Jews?
To the studio! Podcasts, if you ask me, are the one good thing to have come out of the digital…
The increasing fear felt by Britain’s Jews
If you walked down the Strand in London on Tuesday this week you would have been greeted by hundreds of…
Palestinian nationalism has come to Cornwall
This is West Cornwall, land of fishing, jam first and Trotskyite crafters. There is a sizeable community of nutters yearning…
Tim Franks goes in search of what it means to be Jewish
In a thought-provoking family history, the BBC journalist addresses questions of identity – and to what extent we are products of our forebears
A world without Jewish artists is a wasteland
It’s Christmas, and the far left have a gift for us in their stocking: a cultural boycott of Jews. They…
Notes from a national treasure
I’ve started rehearsals for the pantomime Beauty and the Beast at Richmond Theatre: two shows a day and just 13…
The Christian view of sex contains multitudes
Lower Than the Angels (that is the condition of man, according to the psalmist and St Paul) is a book…
David Baddiel’s father and mother must be the most talked about parents in Britain
Colin the Dinky Toys dealer, familiar from Baddiel’s TV documentaries, emerges from this memoir as a relentless bully, but at least the ‘fantasist’ Sarah provides suitably funny anecdotes
Does Keir Starmer’s atheism matter?
Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped,…
Even pilgrims are staying away from Jerusalem
Israel has a new train line: 25 minutes from Ben Gurion airport to Jerusalem. The Christian pilgrims would love it…
The invisible boundaries of everyday life
Maxim Samson investigates cultural or imaginary demarcations around the world, including the International Date Line, America’s Bible Belt and the Jewish eruvim
Feasts and fabrications
Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade
Poland, 1968: the last pogrom
‘Are you Jewish?’ the officious-looking Dutch diplomat asked my dad. ‘Yes’, he said, realising at that very moment, everything had…
A Ukrainian’s notebook
Palm Sunday in Perugia. Umbrians were scuttling around with twigs and leaves, but I was in town to celebrate another…
Finding a voice
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
Chief Rabbi’s Notebook
Reactions to the recent passing of F.W. de Klerk transported me back to my childhood in South Africa. The horror…
Wealth and misfortune
The potter and author Edmund de Waal revisits familiar terrain at an angle in his third book, Letters to Camondo.…
Shonky
A reader sent in a television preview from the Daily Star for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds in which ‘Brad Pitt leads…
Our Zoom seder
This week my son came home from school and asked me if it was true that the Jews killed Jesus.…
The battle for the soul of the Jewish community
There are two groups in the Jewish community – mainstream Jews who, while still religious, do their best to assimilate…
Yummy mummy
Seventh Seltzer is a nice family man, working as a publisher’s reader in New York, who happens to come from…
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: 1948-2020
The former chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, died yesterday at the age of 72. In an article for The Spectator, republished here, he wrote…
The Republicans have a race problem
Congratulations to Sen. Tim Scott for delivering one of the best speeches on the opening night of the Republican meta-convention,…
The woke war on religion
Though you wouldn’t know it from most American media outlets, the phenomenon of vandalizing and burning religious sites which is…
