It is not by chance that the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam has chosen this year, the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution, to hold an exhibition on the Lopes Suasso family; for, without them, stadholder William of Orange would not have crossed the Channel from the Low Countries to become King William III of Britain. … Read more
Is a Jewish education for children the basis of a Jewish commitment for adults? Many would passionately argue that the complexities of Jewish life and experience can be communicated and registered only by teaching them to the young. This, indeed, was the raison d’être of the Jewish day school movement in Britain. At its core … Read more
The recent exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluss drew large crowds in London and Leeds. It reminded many a visitor that 1938 was a year filled with fateful events—Czechoslovakia, Kristallnacht, the Evian Conference. It was a year of foreboding and premonition—the last full year of peace before the Shoah. It was also the … Read more
In writing on the first meeting of the World Council (Veltrat) for Yiddish and Jewish Culture in Jerusalem in August 1976, Jacob Sonntag asked: “What about the outcome of the Conference? Will it have a lasting effect or will it remain an isolated episode in the history of Yiddish? It is difficult to say.” It … Read more
Human Rights was a prominent and much trumpeted feature of the recent Reagan-Gorbachev summit. Many groups openly voiced their grievances in protests and demonstrations, the deposed Boris Yeltsin called for the removal of the conservative Ligachev and Yuli Kosharovsky, the veteran refusenik leader, spoke to millions of American viewers in a live broadcast from the … Read more
ALL British Jews alive today know that their survival during the Nazi period was determined essentially by geography and little else. Fortunately, the Nazi empire did not expand fast enough or last long enough to realize the finality of the Final Solution. Thus, for those Jews, for whom fate decreed that their forebears would settle … Read more
Anglo-Jewry tends to regard the 1980s as either a mini-renaissance of Jewish culture or the swan-song of a philistine community. Those with an optimistic bent will point to the outstanding East End Festival as evidence of a mini-renaissance. The media coverage and general interest in that festival indicates, above all, that there are many who … Read more
Those readers of THE JEWISH QUARTERLY who had their interest in David Bomberg whetted by the extracts from Richard Cork’s book published in our recent East End issue will be pleased to know that the Tate Gallery is shortly to host a major retrospective of his work. Born in Birmingham in 1890 to Polish-Jewish immigrant … Read more
Although Ernest Saunders’s (ne Shleyer) resignation from Guinness produced misleading talk in Britain about the “North London Jewish fraternity,” the Boesky scandal in the United States did have a direct connection to the Jewish community. Boesky was the Chairman of the fund campaign of the United Jewish Appeal—Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and a trustee of … Read more
At the beginning of April, an International Spinoza Institute was established in Israel in cooperation with the Hebrew University and Mishkenot Sha’ananim. It has attracted the sponsorship of Mayor Teddy Kollek and Professor Ephraim Katzir as well as many Israeli intellectuals and academics. The embryonic Institute has planned a series of hi-annual conferences up to … Read more