Judaism

Tuesday

The Spectator

Spectator event: An evening with Simon Schama on the history of the Jews

There was a row earlier today when a leading figure in the EDL linked (inadvertently, he says) to a website of anti-Semitic sympathies. It is dispiriting that, more often than not, Judaism and Jewish people only receive mainstream media coverage when there is a public spat about anti-Semitism, for there is so much more to their history than persecution. As it happens, Simon Schama will be telling this, for want of a better phrase, “alternative history” in a BBC TV series this autumn. But readers of the Spectator don’t have to wait for the telly or the DVD because Schama will be giving us an exclusive talk at Cadogan Hall

Thursday

Christopher Howse

The Serpent’s Promise, by Steve Jones – review

The weight of bacteria that each of us carries around is equal to that of our brain, a kilogram of the creatures, billions of them, ten times as many in the gut alone as the number of human cells in the body. There may be 10,000 distinct kinds, with a different community on the forehead from that on the sole. There are fewer kinds in the mouth or stomach than at the back of the knee, which has a more diverse population than any other part. This is surprising and interesting, and we would like to know more about this teeming personal nature reserve. The intestinal appendix, Steve Jones explains,

Tuesday

Emily Rhodes

The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal – review

The Exiles Return has been published as a beautiful Persephone Book, with smart dove-grey covers and a riotously colourful endpaper. Before this glorious incarnation, it existed for many years as a ‘yellowing typescript with some tippexed corrections’, one of the few things that Elisabeth de Waal held on to during her ‘life in transit between countries’, one of the few things eventually handed down to her grandson, celebrated author and potter Edmund de Waal. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal told the astonishing and very moving story held in his collection of netsuke, which was also passed down through the generations. Now, in getting Persephone Books to

Friday

Douglas Murray

What if the terrorists were Jews?

‘Would you say the same thing about Jews? Gays? Or any other minority?’ This is one of the witless questions asked of anyone who writes about Islamic extremism.  And it is a fascinating point in a way, taking in – as it does – everything other than the facts. Yesterday another radical Muslim cell in the UK was found guilty of terrorism offences. Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali had hoped to carry out a wave of suicide bombings in Britain which would have exceeded 7/7 and rivalled 9/11 in terms of impact and casualties. They were radical Islamists, inspired by radical Islamist preachers and had travelled to Pakistan

Saturday

James Forsyth

Ken’s identity crisis

Jonathan Freedland’s column in The Guardian today, explaining why he can’t vote for Ken Livingstone, is a remarkably direct piece of journalism. Freedland states that he ‘can no longer do what I and others did in 2008, putting to one side the statements, insults and gestures that had offended me, my fellow Jews and — one hopes — every Londoner who abhors prejudice’. Now, as Paul Goodman argues, we shouldn’t overstate the importance of a traditionally Labour supporting Guardian columnist coming out against Ken Livingstone. But Freedland’s reasons for doing so are ones that, I suspect, will resonate with a significant section of opinion. The issue with Livingstone is that

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The Vatican plays the “Jewish Card”

Speaking in a Good Friday homily, with the Pope listening, the Pontiff’s personal preacher, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, likened the drive by the victims of abuse to seek justice from the Vatican, whose priests committed the sexual crimes, with the persecution of Jews. Victims’ groups and Jewish organisations have said it was inappropriate to liken the discomfort of the Catholic Church to hundreds of years of violence and abuse. But it is more than inappropriate. It shows either an ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism; a desire to relativise the Holocaust; a near-pathological disregards for other people’s suffering; or a wilful aspiration to shift the blame away from the Vatican. The

Monday

Patrick Marnham

Disastrous twilight

With the opening paragraph of The Dogs and the Wolves (first serialised in France in 1939 and never previously translated) Irène Némirovsky takes us to the heart of her story: the complexities of Jewish life in eastern Europe and France in the first part of the 20th century. The Ukrainian city in which generations of the Sinner family had been born was, in the eyes of the Jews who lived there, made up of three distinct regions. It was like a medieval painting: the damned were at the bottom, trapped among the shadows and flames of Hell; the mortals were in the middle, lit by a faint, peaceful light; and