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May 25, 2023, 3:06 PM

Ruth and the Fight for Workers’ Rights, Resilience and Advocacy

The Book of Ruth is traditionally read on Shavuot, and scholars offer various reasons for this choice. The book’s major themes of giving, kindness, and selflessness align with the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people on Shavuot. As a trade unionist, I personally...

May 22, 2023, 3:58 PM

My Hapless steps towards a fairer, funnier view of British Jews

Gary (second left), in a succah, directing an episode of series two of Hapless.

My sitcom Hapless series two launched on Prime last Monday. It again stars Tim Downie as an overly truth-seeking obsessive journalist for a fictitious paper The Jewish Enquirer. Early on in the post-production process I asked two critics, the lead (non-Jewish) TV reviewers at the...

May 10, 2023, 9:19 PM

How dare you call the Orthodox parasites?!

Sadly, many secular Israelis consider the Orthodox parasites. Their argument goes as follows: A material portion of the orthodox community: are either not Zionists, or anti-Zionists who will not contribute to the state in terms of national service (militarily or otherwise) ideologically choose a path...

Keith Kahn-Harris

Mar 24, 2023, 3:59 PM

Defending Israeli democracy: Can the coalition hold?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at 10 Downing Street, London, for talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Whatever their perspective on Israeli politics, British Jews can agree that today’s protests against Netanyahu’s visit to Downing Street are like nothing we have seen before. While plenty of British Jews have demonstrated against Israel, its politics and politicians, they have not done so waving...

Mar 23, 2023, 9:40 PM

BBC documentary distorts history and colludes in identity theft

A Palestinian family in a scene from The Holy Land and Us

BBC documentary series, The Holy Land and Us: Our Untold Stories, perfectly balanced on-screen time yet perfectly unbalanced content and contributors. Indeed, if you were setting out to produce a documentary that peddled every lie and libel from the Palestinian playbook; that used omissions and elision to...

Mar 22, 2023, 4:14 PM

For the BBC, Jewish refugees remain forgotten

The BBC ‘s recent two-part documentary titled The Holy Land and us was commissioned to mark the 75th anniversary of Israel’s birth. Not unexpectedly given the BBC’s ‘pro-Palestinian’ reputation, the series did not focus on the miracle of Israel’s birth, its tremendous achievements in the...

Mar 8, 2023, 3:25 PM

What’s a government for if not to protect all citizens?

Having written a blog on a completely different subject, only recently, I am loth to burden my readers with another one. Events in Israel, however, make it impossible to avoid speaking out. I am referring, of course, to the recent pogrom in Huwara. The fact...

Judith Flacks-Leigh

Mar 6, 2023, 3:39 PM

Creating equity is about more than leadership

When our communal organisations began marking International Women’s Day a few years ago – and by marking, I mean at minimum, acknowledging it on social media and at most, holding an event to provoke discussion – it was ground-breaking. We were, and still are dedicating...

Feb 28, 2023, 7:39 PM

Jane Austen’s important lesson for the anti-Israel lobby

Jane Austen

As someone who takes a more-than-casual interest in anti-Israel bias, I often wonder how so many people – often Jewish people; often decent, thoughtful, compassionate people – have been sucked into anti-Zionism, AKA anti-Israel prejudice. I often wonder what has prompted such people to align...

Feb 28, 2023, 1:13 PM

This might top the list of 100 most precious Jewish artifacts

The 'Codex Sassoon' Bible is displayed at Sotheby's in New York on February 15, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP)

Last Sunday, I visited Sotheby’s to see an exhibition with a difference. In Sotheby’s luxurious galleries, there were the usual impressive works of art, scheduled for future sale, from artists as varied as Kandinsky and Munch to Lucien Freud and Anish Kapoor. Among this glittering...

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