Review of Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Anti-Semitism and Gender ed. Jack Jacobs (Cambridge 2017) pp.374 This important book is based on an international conference on Jews and the Left held in New York in 2012. As the subtitle denotes, the chapters explore questions of religion, Zionism, anti-Semitism, Marxism and Soviet Communism and contain some remarkable … Read more
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Leon Trotsky once remarked that those who wanted a quiet life were unfortunate to have been born in the twentieth century. Those with a sense of history—a defining characteristic of the JeW’ish people—would certainly nod in agreement and remember the events of the past hundred years. The purveyors of popular entertainment in Britain will help … Read more
The last Rosh Hashanah before the millennium will no doubt be the occasion for passionate exhortations in synagogues around the world. Rabbis will in all likelihood circumvent the difficult linkage between a Jewish festival and a Christian happening and appeal to their congregants to reflect on the passage of Jews and Judaism through 1,800 years … Read more
Two demonstrations recently took place in Israel. One of these, ostensibly a prayer meeting, brought together a quarter of a million Jews—a mixture of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist haredim—onto the streets of Jerusalem to protest against the rulings, and raison d’etre, of Israel’s Supreme Court. Yeshiva students were told that it was ‘an obligation’ to be … Read more
The State of Israel and the Land of Israel One of the more interesting manifestations of the 1999 election campaign in Israel is the unraveling of the grand coalition which Menachem Begin assembled and coalesced as the Likud in 1973. It was based on Begin’s shrewd capitalising on the deep antagonism which many groups-—religious, Sephardim, the underclass, the far right–felt towards an indolent … Read more
Fifty years ago the United Nations approved a Declaration of Human Rights. It pledged to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small’. The Declaration was motivated by the Holocaust and the destruction of … Read more
A summer of football and flags has enabled tens of millions to proclaim their patriotism in a relatively harmless fashion. Big business, royalty and organised religion all jumped on this acceptable bandwagon. Jews, up and down the land, followed the team, for the Crusaders’ Cross no longer inspires fear. Nine hundred years after the slaughter … Read more
At the end of January, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu travelled to Washington for a tough meeting with President Clinton. At the top of the agenda for discussion were the redeployment of Israeli troops in the Territories and the percentage of West Bank territory to be evacuated. Netanyahu came to the talks with Clinton from a … Read more
Last year the Hale-Bopp comet traversed our skies. It was paying its first visit to the inner solar system for two and a half thousand years. The last time that Jews looked up and gazed in wonderment was during that terrible period of exile and return. Carrying with them the harrowing memory of the destruction … Read more