Before the opening of the new Parliament in London last week, MPs swore allegiance to the Crown on the King James Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Sundar Gutka prayerbook, the Koran and the Hebrew Bible. All this demonstrated the wide diversity of British society in 2024. This positive imagery was shattered by the election of … Read more
Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East By Robert Fisk, published by HarperCollins (Fourth Estate) 2024 pp.644 Robert Fisk, a long-time foreign correspondent for the Independent, died in Dublin in October 2020. This posthumous book which picks up from where his 2005 book The Great War of Civilisation left off and which covers the … Read more
When courses on Israel Studies first began in universities several decades ago, they were depicted by some as teaching a fictitious, invented subject – nothing less than an offshoot of the hasbarah industry. For those in communal leadership, it was often seen as just that – an opportunity to promote Israel within academia. The problem … Read more
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