NEXT WEEK, JOE BIDEN will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. While the hopes of many of the world’s Jews are with him, he faces an uphill struggle to repair his country after the chaos of the last four years. At an age when the politically aware quietly leave it to the … Read more
So now we know. President Biden will face the American people and Mr Trump will face the American courts. For many Jews, a long nightmare has come to an end, but how will we understand the Trump interregnum in the years to come? Can we draw any lessons from Jewish history and the trauma of the … Read more
Four hundred years ago, in September 1620, the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth Hoe in search of a promised land and a new world. On board, the travellers promised to ‘enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general … Read more
One hundred years ago, Rosh Hashanah 5681/1920, British Jews were beginning to look forward to a better future after the years of lethal stalemate on the battlefields of the First World War. Almost a million British soldiers had died fighting for King and Country in a terrible conflagration. The poet, Siegfried Sassoon, described the choking … Read more
IN MARCH 2019, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told the Christian Broadcasting Network he believed that God was acting through President Trump to protect the Jews of Israel. While Queen Esther had saved the Jewish people from certain Persian annihilation during Purim, today, Pompeo argued, President Trump was saving the Jews from the wrath of … Read more
“Israel can be a partner, a junior partner, but a perfect partner for China in the development of a variety of technologies that change the way we live, how long we live, how healthy we live − in every area.” So spoke Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to China in March 2017. He then went … Read more
Review of The Room where it Happened: A White House Memoir by John Bolton Published by Simon and Schuster, pp. 577 price £25.00 John Bolton is the hawks’ hawk, a maximalist who takes no prisoners — someone who even worried Trump by his views. A neo-con veteran of the Reagan, Bush père and Dubya administrations, … Read more
Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution by Shlomo Avineri Published by Yale University Press 2019, pp.221 Why should Karl Marx be included in Yale’s excellent Jewish Lives series when the subject of this fascinating book never referred to his Jewish origins? Shlomo Avineri, the eminent Israeli intellectual and academic, has attempted to unravel Marx’s connection to … Read more
Searching for Socialism, by academics Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, traces the odyssey of Labour’s “Old Left” from the 1970s until the defeat of the far left in last year’s elec-tion. It looks at the political voyage of left-wing Brexiteers from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn; and also indicates that the mindset of the far … Read more
One hundred years ago, Rabbi Harris Cohen ushered in the children attending the Stoke Newington Sunday morning cheder, called for quiet and told them: ‘‘Palestine is our land again. God’s promise to our fathers thousands of years ago is being fulfilled in our days!’’ The Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers had passed a … Read more