ROSH Ha’shana, the Jewish New Year is welcomed with apple and honey but for many Soviet Jews it is the taste of bitter herbs which lingers. In the Jewish year 5746 (1985/6), approximately 1,000 were permitted to leave the Soviet Union. Although Anatoly Shcharansky, Ilya Essas and the Goldshtein brothers have all been permitted to … Read more
“War is Peace” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four THE recent expulsion of the head of Syrian intelligence in Britain is an indication of the concerted effort to thwart attacks on Jewish and Israeli institutions in this country. At the Tokyo summit, it was decided to take specific measures and to improve coordination in an … Read more
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Oscar Kokoschka, one of the great figurative painters of this century. He is perhaps best known for his portraits, painted between 1909 and 1914 in Vienna and Berlin, of actors, musicians, artists and intellectuals—such as the satirist Karl Kraus, the architect Adolf Loos and Herwarth Walden, … Read more
Anachnu Kan (‘We are here”), the popular Israeli song and dance ensemble, recently visited Britain to sing in the Yom Ha’atzmaut concert. Many of the members were amongst the wave of immigrants who were permitted to leave the USSR following the mass protests and sit-ins at the beginning of 1971. As their name suggests, this … Read more
Last summer, Boris Bennett, a successful businessman, passed away at the age of eighty-five. Toan older generation, he was known simply as “Boris the Photographer”. For, in his younger days, Boris was the doyen of Jewish portrait photographers. Many Jewish families who originated from London’s East End possess at least one “Boris” masterpiece. Boris’s technique … Read more
One suspects that only in the Jewish world could a conference of journalists be deemed to “preserve” a people. Accordingly, the recent Jerusalem-based International Colloquium of the Jewish Press was subtitled “The role of the Jewish press in preserving the Jewish people”. This odd premise was variously interpreted by the conference speakers. Chaim Herzog, President … Read more
A few months ago, in London, Alexander Bernfes—a pitiful and tragic figure, known to any as a collector and archivist of photographic cords of the Holocaust, died at the age of seventy-six. His body was found, weeks after his death, in a state of decomposition, on a pile of papers in the room which served … Read more
IN the midst of Shimon Peres’s triumphant visit to London, Israel announced that she had agreed to participate in Mr Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative—Star Wars. In March 1985, Israel was invited to detail—in Mr Caspar Weinberger’s words—”the areas of your country’s research excellence that you deem most promising for this programme”. Since it has taken … Read more
Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy ROBERT WISTRICH Weidenfeld £18.95 IN AN AGE when epithets such as Fascist and Nazi are as liberally sprinkled as political confetti, it is a sobering experience to be confronted with the Hitlerite madness. The first part of Robert Wistrich’s book is also a cultural antidote to the fantasy, … Read more
The Dulwich Picture Gallery in London will be playing host to an exhibition of the work of the little-known artist Sam Rabin. Born in Manchester in 1908 of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents (his father had been a cap-maker in Vitebsk), Rabin won a scholarship to Manchester School of Art and later studied at the Slade. Returning … Read more