Colin ShindlerIn a few weeks, the triennial election for the Presidency of the Board of Deputies of British Jews will be upon us. For many, it will be an occasion of numbing irrelevance despite the quality of the candidates. The current state of the Board is deeply depressing for all committed and concerned British Jews. And … Read more
To judge by the noises of horror that greeted the appointment of Rehavam Ze’evi to the Israeli cabinet, one would imagine that the ideas he stands for—most notably, “transfer” of Palestinians out of the Occupied Territories—were outside the bounds of decent opinion. Even the defence minister, Moshe Arens, a prominent figure on the Israeli right, … Read more
1990 was a bad year for both Israelis and Palestinians. It was the year when the dialogue had to stop. The pragmatists on both sides who had advocated partition and compromise proved unable to restrain their vociferous maximalists, who spoke the language of violence and retaliation. Deep emotions and tribal passions pushed aside the voices … Read more
Andrei Sakharov died on 15 December 1989. The abundance of tributes accorded to him tended to concentrate on his more recent role is an opponent of the gradualist policies of the Gorbachev regime. Yet perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for the historic changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union and, … Read more
On the 800th anniversary of the York Massacre: Yom Kippur as Jewish History On Yom Kippur, Jews come to shul for a plethora of reasons. Many come for reasons of faith. Others come for reasons of culture. Still others come for reasons of both faith and culture. Some come out of a sense of guilt. Some … Read more
A new Jewish listings monthly, New Moon, appears on Thursday. A sort of Jewish Time Out, it sets out to appeal to the younger generation of Anglo-Jews whose needs and interests have remained unanswered by the official face of the community. Whether this initiative will be translated into financial stability is another question. The Jewish … Read more
Last Friday morning, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, president of the Board of Deputies, paid a courtesy call on Mr Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of Israel, and no doubt exchanged pleasantries of a non-controversial nature. If the Board delegation had walked toward the Damascus Gate on Shabbat afternoon, they would have witnessed another side of the Israeli … Read more
MARGARET THATCHER’S current difficulties seem to herald the end of an era: three foreign secretaries within as many months; the exit of an experienced team from the uppermost echelons of government to the back benches and less important posts; the trouncing of the Tories in the European elections — the first defeat since she entered … Read more
The Tory objective seems to be and is probably seen by most of them, including Mrs Thatcher, as the utopia of economic neo-liberalism: every man an entrepreneur, the triumph of the unrestricted market and the dismantling of state interference in the economy and the affairs of the private citizen. In short the anarchism of the … Read more
On December 30th 1988, the writer and translator, Yuli Daniel died in Moscow at the age of sixty-three. A few days later, Andrei Sinyavsky was allowed to return from self-exile in Paris to pay homage at his graveside at Vagavanskoye cemetery. For a whole generation, the names of Daniel and Sinyavsky were synonymous with the … Read more