When Jonathan Sacks was installed as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations at the beginning of the decade, he was determined not to provoke the publicity and public criticism of his predecessor. Lord Jakobovits was always prepared to speak his mind on Likud’s Israel and to puncture the wall of silence erected by the … Read more
Dr Levenberg (few people addressed this very private man by his first name) was born in Kursk in the reign of Nicholas II. He barely escaped the murderous embrace of Reds and Whites in the Civil War a decade later: his parents fled to Riga, where he spent his formative years studying law and … Read more
Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 19141933 / by Michael Berkowitz. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. – ISBN 0-521-47087-0 £35 305pp Borrowing a phrase from Eric Hobsbawm, Berkowitz prefers to view Zionism as an ‘invented tradition’ which was remarkable for its adaption to the situation of assimilated Jewries and its ingenious ability to build … Read more
Barring an electoral upset of unimaginable proportions, Tony Blair will be the next Prime Minister of this country. But is it — to put it at its most crudely — good for the Jews? Many Jews have answered this question already both by flocking to his banner and no doubt by contributing to Labour’s campaign … Read more
Zionism has always posed a problem for the ultra-orthodox. Unlike the religious Zionists of the Mizrachi, they always preferred the actual arrival of the messiah rather than his indeterminable coming to inaugurate a new era in the Holy Land for the Jewish people. Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel, was nothing less than a blot … Read more
The Hiding Room by Jonathan Wilson (Secker and Warburg 1995) The Rabin assassination showed that seemingly normal Jews are ready to kill their brethren for a cause. After all, Yigal Amir was no American import attempting to turn the West Bank into the Wild West. Amir’ s group was guided by the life and times … Read more
Despite the depressing campaign of the suicide bombers, many Jews are recalling the birth of the return to Zion by commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State. Its publication proved to be the catalyst which launched the Zionist Congresses and changed a small number of disparate groups into an international movement which … Read more
The Stern Gang : Ideology. Politics and Terror 1940-1949 (Frank Cass) by Joseph Heller Blood in Zion (Brasseys) by Saul Zadka Jerusalem: Backgrounds or Memory (Biblios) by Amos Elon Jerusalem: the Endless crusade (Century) by Andrew sinclair When Joseph Heller’s comprehensive study of the Stern Group (Lehi) was first published in Hebrew, it aroused the … Read more
So who, then, was responsible for the murder of Yitzhak Rabin? Yigal Amir, certainly. The General Security Services for their complacency, undoubtedly. But who else beyond the immediate participants of that black deed? At which point does the delineation between certain blame and political accusation become blurred? Indeed, the Brooklyn-based Jewish Press told its 350,000 … Read more
From the NNLS Memorial Service Monday 6 November 1995 Colin Shindler Today is a black day for the Jewish people, but as King Hussein said this morning, it is also a day of remembrance and commitment. It has been said many times today that Yitzhak Rabin was a man of war who became … Read more