Colin ShindlerThe election of Meir Kahane to the Knesset sent shock waves through Israel and the Diaspora. At the time, public relations pundits in Britain dismissed it as more or less a freak result. It was not regarded as part of a prevalent trend toward irrational policies in Israel. A year later, several opinion polls suggest … Read more
The people of Israel are remarkably innovative and Moshe Efrati’s dance company is a good example. It is called Kol Demama—the Voice of Silence. Such a name may conjure up many misleading images—for many of Efrati’s dancers are totally deaf. How do the deaf and the hearing communicate with each other? How do the worlds … Read more
EARLY ONE hundred years ago, the progenitor of cultural Zionism, Ahad Ha’am visited the Land of Israel for the first time. 0n his return, he wrote an acerbic article in Hamelitz, the St Petersburg Hebrew daily. Although his central theme was his castigation of the Hovevei Zion settlers for unethical financial practice, he also registered … Read more
MOST READERS will already know that Tony Lerman has relinquished the editorship of the Jewish Quarterly—especially since his decision to do so was followed by a long exchange of letters in the correspondence columns of the Jewish Chronicle. Whilst this is neither the time nor the place to delve into the minutiae of the controversy, … Read more
Sharon: an Israeli Caesar by Uzi Benziman, published by Robson Books, 276 pp, £12.95 Anyone with, what might be termed “a liberal conscience” always tries to locate the good, those small islands of common humanity, in the views and actions of an opponent. However, by the time I had passed page 200, with the war … Read more
EARLIER this year, Harvard University hosted the first conference on the American-Jewish Press. It was attended by over one hundred journalists, editors and publishers from the East coast, the deep South and the mid-West. Since 1823, when the first Jewish newspaper, The Jew, was published, there has been a tremendous proliferation of English language Jewish … Read more
SINCE our last issue, THE JEWISH QUARTERLY has had more words written and spoken about it than could possibly have been anticipated, Amidst a pot-pourri of truth and invention, only a handful saw fit to pay tribute to Tony Lerman for the tremendous contribution that he has made to THE JEWISH QUARTERLY during the last … Read more
The recent death of Fred Uhlman at the age or eighty-four is of more far-reaching significance than it might appear; for, quite apart from the sadness felt by those who knew him personally, it reminds one that a whole generation of central European emigres who came to this country in the 1930s and contributed so … Read more
HERITAGE: Civilization and the Jews was televised in the summer on Channel 4. Why is it that a particular programme is made? Why does it get shown? The answers to these questions are at present embedded in acrimonious debate in the United States. The programme’s producers approached the New York Public Television Station, WNET, with … Read more
DESPITE the erroneous impression that American Jews were part and parcel of the neoconservative camp, last year’s US presidential elections showed that they remain liberals at heart. Two thirds of US Jewry voted for Mondale, with almost 75 per cent of New York City’s Jews rejecting President Reagan. Another instance of the liberal conscience is … Read more