Judaism

The roots of Labour’s bigotry

Another word which has gained a new meaning in the present decade, along with ‘vulnerable’ and ‘diverse’: survivor. Once it meant a person who had been transported to Auschwitz but somehow came out alive. Or a person who had been involved in a terrible car crash but had escaped with only a broken neck. Today it means someone whose nipple was perhaps gently tweaked by a light entertainment star 40 years ago. Or someone who was mildly and almost certainly justifiably bullied at school. I’m also getting a little weary of the elephant in the room. It has become for me, when talking about transformative grammar, the elephant in the

How’s your father

Menashe is a drama set amid Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. It is performed entirely in the Yiddish language. It is peopled exclusively by Hasidic non-actors. (Real-life grocer Menashe Lustig plays the title character.) It is small and specific, admittedly, but it also tells a universal story about a father’s struggle to hold on to the son he loves, and it tells this story tenderly, thoughtfully, beautifully. It may even be my favourite frum film of the year. Thus far. (Still a few weeks to go.) This marks the feature debut of director Joshua Z Weinstein (no relation), who made documentaries previously, and who wrote this with Alex Lipschultz and Musa

The clown prince

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, myself), the dregs are drawn to Islam. And leaving aside the dozy broads who gravitate to it for kinky reasons after watching one too many Turkish Delight ads (Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Booth), there is something about this religion which attracts the very weakest of Western men. We think of those often half-witted types who learn to build a bomb online. Then there are the imam-huggers of the left who never met a wife-beating mad mullah they didn’t like. A lot of the reason left-wing men seem to have

Eat the forbidden fruit

Eating human brains, burying one’s face in dead people’s ashes and publicly deriding the president of the United States as a ‘piece of shit’ are not among the activities usually associated with serious religious historians. But Reza Aslan is something else. An American academic born in Iran, brought up as a Muslim, converted to Jesus by the Jesuits and back to Islam through his own free will, he came to prominence following an interview on Fox TV to promote his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013). He was repeatedly asked how being a Muslim qualified him to write about Jesus, to which he responded by

Unesco has enacted a grim piece of historical revisionism against Israel

Until its liberation in the Six-Day War, Jews were not allowed to climb beyond the seventh step outside Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs. Despite being built on land purchased by Abraham almost 4000 years ago, despite being the burial place of the patriarchs and matriachs of Judaism, despite the stone walls around the location being erected under King Herod, successive Arab and Islamic occupiers forbad Jews access to their second holiest site. Unesco has kicked Jews back down the steps. The UN body nominally responsible for promoting peace through culture has voted to designate Ma’arat HaMachpelah a Palestinian heritage site. It is a grim act of historical revisionism,

The appeal of mysticism

This extraordinary book has two main characters: Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), an early Zionist and the founder of the modern study of traditional Jewish mysticism, and the author George Prochnik, who was 28 when he first moved with his then wife to make a new life in Israel. Stranger in a Strange Land has as subtitle ‘Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem’; but it also tells the story of Prochnik’s search for his own identity. If this sounds complicated, it is. The reader needs to pay attention to the shifts from one period and place to another. Scholem went to Palestine in 1923 when hardly anybody from the German bourgeoisie made

Patience on a monument

As a food writer Patience Gray (1917–2005) merits shelf-space with M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. Fleeing from the dreary predictability of her Home Counties upbringing, Gray became, among other things, the first women’s page editor of the Observer; co-author of a bestselling cookery book (the 1957 Plats du Jour with Primrose Boyd); and, nearly 30 years later, sole author of a classic, the 1986 Honey from a Weed. She was also a jewellery maker; textile designer; student at the LSE, where one of her tutors was Hugh Gaitskell; an intrepid traveller; research assistant to H.F.K. Henrion, one of the designers of the Festival of Britain; something or other

When will the Six-Day War finally end?

This week, Israel is marking the 50th anniversary of its improbable victory over Arab assassins. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser saw annihilation of the Jewish state as a uniting mission for his project of pan-Arab nationalism and had declared: ‘Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood.’ In June 1967, he enlisted Syria and Jordan in his plans for invasion and few thought Israel, then a meagre strip of land nine miles wide at its narrowest point, could withstand the onslaught. Herzl’s dream in the desert was about to be unwilled.  In a stroke of tactical cunning, though at the time it looked to be an act of suicide, Israel

Anti-Semitism is alive and well

As the size of Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island still haunts me, I had always rejected the idea of visiting Auschwitz because I feared my tears would make the trip about me and not the victims. But thanks to persuasion from my longtime friend Richard Glynn, a former CEO of the bookies Ladbrokes, I spent most of Thursday at the camps an hour from Krakow in Poland. Nothing prepares you for Auschwitz. The stats are stark: 1.1 million victims, mainly Jewish, perhaps 230,000 of them children. If you didn’t die in the gas chamber, you would die in the field, because the SS gave prisoners so little food that

You’ve got to have faith

Of all the reasons for choosing to live in a ground-floor flat rather than a first-floor one, it might not occur to you that your choice could be the game-changing clincher in your child’s educational prospects — but so it is. In the terrifying admissions criteria for Britain’s oversubscribed faith and church primary schools, you will often find these words: ‘If applicants share the same address point (for example, if they live in the same block of flats), priority will be given to those who live closest to the ground floor and then by ascending flat-number order.’ That detail gives a hint of the desperation of these schools to seem

Kippah

What, asks the columnist Philologus in the online magazine Mosaic, is the difference between a kippah and a yarmulke? I’m glad he supplied an answer, for I know no Yiddish and less Hebrew, and the Oxford English Dictionary is reticent. Kippah first appeared in the OED in 1997, with the bare etymology ‘from Hebrew’. Philologus observes that it denotes ‘any skullcap worn by a Jew for religious reasons’. He suggests that kippah derives from a word in early rabbinic Hebrew (from the time of the compilation of the Mishnah, the first century in AD-dating). That Hebrew word meant ‘dome’ or ‘vault’, either of a building or of the heavens. This

Raising the roof

It is a ‘fantastic night out’, insists the theatre’s artistic director. Gemma Bodinetz is right, of course, but it is easy to see how those unfamiliar with Fiddler on the Roof might take some convincing. The first act ends with a pogrom, the second with the village’s Jews being expelled from the country. This doesn’t immediately suggest an evening of joyous, life-affirming entertainment. ‘It’s the story of people being forced to leave their homes by the powers that be, and that scenario, sadly, is still playing itself out all over the world today. But it’s also about family and joy and love and it has terrific songs,’ says Bodinetz. It

Flight into Israel

I’ve always lived in London. I grew up near Baker Street and went to school in Camden. Even when I was at college in Kent, I lived in Islington and commuted. Five years ago I moved to Belsize Park and I’ve been here, the nicest place I’ve lived, ever since. I didn’t mean to stay — I was going to see the world, but my father died and my mother said she needed me to be close. She said it with a tremor in her voice, so I stayed. London is in my heart and in my blood, but the wind has changed, like it did for Mary Poppins, and I

An emperor’s inauguration

Given that Donald Trump is not the most popular president the USA has ever seen, even among his own party, it is salutary to be reminded what induction ceremonies can be like for those who devised imaginative routes to power. Pertinax, who started life as a schoolmaster, was a governor of Britain and a highly respected consul before succeeding the ghastly Commodus as emperor on 30 December AD 192. But the military did not appreciate his immediate attempts to restore discipline and financial stability, and he was assassinated three months later. There then followed an auction: the assassins put the office up for sale to the highest bidder, and Didius

François Fillon could become the face of France’s Catholic revival

It strikes me that it’s not much fun being a Catholic in France these days. Strolling back to my apartment in Paris on Christmas Eve, for example, I passed my local church. Inside a midnight Mass was in progress; outside a policeman stood guard. It was the same across France, an army of gun-toting men and women protecting the nation’s cathedrals and churches. They’ll be back at Easter, and on the Ascension and the Assumption. For how long? Who knows how long the country that is known as ‘the eldest daughter of the church’ because of its Christian heritage will need to protect its flock. There’s been just one fatal attack

The cheesecake of the apocalypse

Harry Morgan is a Jewish delicatessen and restaurant in the style of New York City on St John’s Wood High Street in north London. St John’s Wood is home to wealthy Muslims and Jews, who are attracted by a lone mosque, many synagogues and more cake shops than even the greediest hedge-funder could eat his swiftly receding feelings in. I am aware I sound like an estate agent. It is really a stage set for the inter-faith organisation the Imams and Rabbis Council of the United Kingdom, about which the joke is, although it isn’t very funny: the Jews pay for it all. I am also aware that I am

Smaller than life

For Jonathan Safran Foer fans and sceptics alike, Here I Am comes as a wonderful gift, a truly painful, honest book which purports to be about a lot of things but is mainly about one thing: the breakdown of a marriage between a whiny, self-obsessed Jewish novelist turned scriptwriter and his blameless wife. Whether or not Foer drew inspiration for the book from the much-publicised breakdown of his own marriage to fellow novelist Nicole Krauss I have absolutely no idea and care less. Like any fully functioning adult, good fiction outgrows its origins. Or at least it should. A large part of Here I Am concerns itself with the very

Are there any Jews who still support Labour?

Many years ago, sometime in the last century (how worldly I feel writing that!) I was at the launch party for the dear dead Modern Review mark II and feeling mildly appalled by the whole flimsy thing when a young man introduced himself to me as Nick Cohen and told me he’d be writing for us. ‘O, a Cohen!’ I exclaimed happily, all innocence. ‘Just what this magazine needs – a clever Jew!’ Did I ever get a mouthful! ‘I’m not a Jew – my family rejected Judaism decades ago…never been so insulted…’ ‘But your name is the name of Moses’ brother – Aaron!’ I pointed out. ‘How can you not be a Jew?

Brass tacks

The last time I reviewed a restaurant in Selfridges, a PR man rang up to ask what he could do to change my opinion of Selfridges. Don’t worry, I told him, Spectator readers don’t go to Selfridges to sit in a fake Cornish fishing village, because they are too busy eating the remnants of the Labour party. And they don’t care about shopping. You don’t dress a Spectator reader. You upholster it. I felt guilty about mocking the stupid fake Cornish fishing village so I avoided the next themed restaurant in Selfridges, which was a fake forest on the roof (‘inspired by an autumnal forest’… because who can be bothered

France has become a religious battleground

The new year has not started well for France. On the last day of 2015 – the most traumatic year for the French in decades because of the twin attacks in Paris – president Francois Hollande warned the nation in his traditional New Year’s Eve address: ‘France is not done with terrorism… these tragic events will remain for ever etched in our memories, they shall never disappear. But despite the tragedy, France has not given in. Despite the tears, the country has remained upright.’ Hollande’s warning was borne out within 24 hours. On the first day of 2016 a lone motorist – inspired by Islamic State – drove at a