Judaism
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
The ‘historic’ national dishes which turn out to be artful PR exercises
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…
I can feel my heart hardening as the war goes on
Palm Sunday in Perugia. Umbrians were scuttling around with twigs and leaves, but I was in town to celebrate another…
Howard Jacobson superbly captures the terrible cost of becoming a writer
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
Our new era of Jewish-Muslim relations
Reactions to the recent passing of F.W. de Klerk transported me back to my childhood in South Africa. The horror…
From family home to mausoleum: the Musée Nissim Camondo
The potter and author Edmund de Waal revisits familiar terrain at an angle in his third book, Letters to Camondo.…
The uncomfortable truth about ‘shonky’
A reader sent in a television preview from the Daily Star for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds in which ‘Brad Pitt leads…
Spring lamb and the bread of affliction: 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…
The cannibal feast: Mother for Dinner, by Shalom Auslander, reviewed
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…
Bill de Blasio isn’t an anti-Semite but…
Bumbling Bill de Blasio is all thumbs, and not just on Twitter. Slow to respond when Orthodox Jews suffered an…
Jonathan Sacks: Joy is the Jewish way of defeating hate
Last Monday night and Tuesday were our Jewish festival of Purim, when we recall the events described in the Book…
Sanders and Bloomberg take the American Jewish feud public
You wait decades for a Jewish candidate for the White House, and then two come along at once — like…
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…
AOC: ignorant or anti-Semitic?
When my grandmother Masha was liberated by the British Army from the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, she was 19…
Angels through the ages
A good question for your upcoming Lent quiz: where are angels mentioned in the Nicene Creed? I asked this at…
The ‘other’ life of Harvey Milk
This is the story of the ‘other’ Harvey Milk. We all know about Harvey the San Francisco politician who was…
The origins of Labour’s racism
Another word which has gained a new meaning in the present decade, along with ‘vulnerable’ and ‘diverse’: survivor. Once it…
Is Prince Charles so fond of Islam because he distrusts Jews?
It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe,…
Reza Aslan doesn’t fear God. But should he fear his fellow Muslims?
Eating human brains, burying one’s face in dead people’s ashes and publicly deriding the president of the United States as…
