The death of Queen Elizabeth II has been described by many as the end of an era — a watershed in British history. The Queen’s remarkable reign of 70 years — a period only exceeded in recent times by the Sun King, Louis XIV of France — encompassed the end of empire and the decline … Read more
Sylvia Becker née Rosenhead Born 26 April 1925 Died 13 February 2019 Sylvia Becker was one of ‘those wonderful women in black’ – the 35s Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry – who quietly changed the course of Jewish history. Never one to push herself to the front, she spent the 1970s committed to this cause before … Read more
One of the celebrated Women in Black, the 35s Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry, Sylvia Becker, who has died aged 93, spent the 1970s committed to the cause before moving to Israel in 1980 and fading back into family life. Leeds-born Sylvia Rosenhead studied dispensing at Leeds University and was evacuated to Stoke Poges and … Read more
Obituary: Barry Davis The actor and Yiddish scholar Barry Davis was “a Hackney boy” — from beginning to end. It was his cultural milieu, a location to be embraced in all its intellectual richness. In 1991, he interviewed Harold Pinter. Instead of a detailed excursion into contemporary literature, these two old Grocers’ Company schoolboys (Hackney … Read more
MORE THAN anything, it was the abandoned shoes of the Holocaust that spoke most vividly to artist Jenny Stolzenberg about the suffering of concentration camp victims. Walking boots, high heeled shoes and baby bootees were turned into an art installation that reflected the full horror and pathos of those murdered by the Nazis. But Stolzenberg, … Read more
Ephraim Katzir was born in Kiev on 16 May 1916. His father, Yehuda Katchalski, was an accountant and an adherent of Zionism. Katchalski and his wife, Tsila, originally lived in Łódź, then in the Tsarist empire, now in Poland. Łódź was a centre of socialist politics and radical endeavour. During the 1905 revolution an uprising … Read more
Professor David Cesarani, who has died at the early age of 58, was an international expert on the Holocaust and on anti-Semitism who spoke on several occasions to the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS. During his career, he held posts at Leeds, Manchester, QMC, Southampton and finally at Royal Holloway. He was an advisor … Read more
Moshe Levinger, who died last week, was the symbolic initiator of the settlement drive in the West Bank, following Israel’s lightning victory in six days in 1967. With some of his students, reputedly posing as Swiss tourists wishing to hold a Pesach Seder, he booked in at a Hebron hotel in April 1968 – and … Read more
In 1970 the Jewish community in Britain initiated the first programme to train Jewish Studies teachers in the UK. An agreement had been reached between Jews’ College and Trent Park Teachers Training College in North West London. Any euphoria, however, was quickly dissipated. As with all new courses, the aspirational skills of the initiators far … Read more
Anna Finchas born Letchworth 11 April 1950 died Edgware 17 November 2010 Anna Finchas belonged to that undeclared tradition of Jewish women who hold the fabric of Jewish life together. Such people remain quietly in the background, doing good deeds and repairing the world. Following a diagnosis of breast cancer at the age of 32, … Read more