When Pinchas Rutenberg, one of the giants of the Zionist movement, died in 1942, his friend, the writer Moshe Smilansky described him as “a great engineer with the soul of a poet.” Nevertheless, Rutenberg is missing from the public consciousness, even among those who treasure Jewish history. He stipulated in his will that no funds should … Read more
Professor Colin Shindler, you have, for the first time, opened up a disciplinary field that did not exist before you. Indeed, you are surprisingly the very first Professor of Israel Studies in the United Kingdom. You are also the President and Founder of the European Association for Israel Studies. You have already written twelve books, … Read more
During the last decade, British Jewry have lost several of its best-loved historians including David Cesarani, Robert Wistrich — and Martin Gilbert. Routledge has now published the ninth edition of Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History which last appeared in 2010. To this have been added maps about Jews in Muslim Lands and Jews in the post-Soviet era. … Read more
This Thursday in the House of Commons, MPs will debate the possibility of holding a Jewish History Month. Nicki Aiken MP who has secured the debate, argued that it would compliment Black History Month and Islamophobia Awareness Month — both of which have celebrated the value of difference. Even so, it is worthwhile to ask … Read more
British Jews view the killings of 7 October as another tragic episode in Jewish history and recalled past massacres in eastern Europe or the Farhud in Iraq in 1941. In contrast, few of the marchers on last Saturday’s pro-Palestine march would have understood it as a pogrom of ethnic cleansing. Many Ashkenazi Jews in the … Read more
The history of Cuba and its Jews has always been a fascinating but under-researched subject. Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba by historian Robert M. Levine is a comprehensive and absorbing account of the travails of Cuban Jews. The first Jews to arrive in Cuba were those escaping the heavy hand of the Spanish … Read more
The mourners gathered round the body at Alice Shalvi’s funeral in Jerusalem last Tuesday and sang with great emotion and passion, Eshet Chayil – “a woman of worth”. Chanted each Friday night to welcome in Shabbat, it summed up a woman who was deeply loved and revered. Her family, friends, community, students and colleagues in their hundreds accompanied … Read more
One area of the tortuous Israel-Palestine conflict that has been under-researched has been the ties between Nazi propaganda and Islamism. The German academic, Mattihas Küntzel, has attempted to fill in the gaps in this short, but absorbing book. Nazi propaganda regarded the spoken word as more effective than the written word and began to broadcast … Read more
Fifty years ago, at exactly 14.00 hours on October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrians forces advanced in a coordinated attack on the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), stationed on the east bank of the Suez Canal and on the Golan Heights. For the Jews, the 19-day conflict has passed into history as the Yom Kippur war. … Read more
A few weeks ago, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in the UK published a report entitled, “What do Jews in the UK think about Israel’s leaders and its future?” Comparable to Australia’s Crossroads23 demographic analysis, its authors, Jon Boyd and Carli Lessof, honed in on Jewish attitudes towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the “judicial reform” controversy. … Read more