A chronological archive of everything I’ve published…
For Jewish News Feb 2024 In a gravelly voice, a man faces the camera and tells the audience: “Two old Jews on the Titanic. One starts sobbing. The other say, what are you crying for? It’s not YOUR boat”. Welcome to “Is Anything Okay?”, a series of riotous, free, online webinars from YIVO, the New […]
For the JC February 2024 Out of interest, I Googled how long it might take to walk the 90 plus kilometres from the Polish town of Mezritsh to the once important Jewish centre of Lublin. Twenty or so hours, was the answer. For Manya Wilkinson’s hapless trio of young boys trying to make the same […]
For Jewish News February 2024 One of Israel’s leading lawyers and feminists has said she feels “betrayed” by the reluctance of international women’s organisations to speak out about Israeli women who were sexually abused during the Hamas terror attacks of October 7 last year. But Ayelet Razin Bet Or, speaking to an audience at Hendon […]
Sylvan Adams for Jewish News January 2024 The Canadian-Israeli businessman Sylvan Adams, renowned for bringing both Madonna and international cycling to Israel, has made what he calls a “wow factor” donation of $100 million to Ben-Gurion University, with the aim of transforming the southern Negev. Adams, a youthful 65, is a wonderfully maverick decoration to […]
Moti Kahana for Jewish News Oct 2023 An ambitious plan to secure the release of all the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip — together with the bodies of fallen Israel soldiers held by Hamas since 2014 — is being put together by American-Israeli entrepreneur Moti Kahana, Jewish News can reveal. The two-stage plan, put […]
Dennis Ross For Jewish News Nov 13 2023 America’s most experienced Middle East diplomat, Ambassador Dennis Ross, says Israel has “an excruciating dilemma” in its war with Hamas. But he told Jewish News that although he is firmly against a ceasefire, because he believes Hamas will only use the opportunity to regroup and re-arm, nevertheless […]
For the Jewish Chronicle September 29 2023 Lavie Tidhar’s Maror was one of the sensational novels of 2022, a violent rollercoaster and drug-fuelled ride into Israel’s history, with a particular focus on the Lebanon war of 1983. Now, in Adama, Tidhar reaches even further back, first to the death camps of Europe and then to […]
For the Sunday Telegraph October 1 2023 For decades, the police station in Iași stood as a grim reminder of one of the darkest chapters in Romania’s history. In its courtyard in June 1941, some 13,500 Jews – more than a tenth of the city’s population – were rounded up and slaughtered by a mob […]
For Jewish News October 5 2023 What do you think of when you hear the word “Romania”? Perhaps some weak jokes about Transylvania and Dracula, echoed by the rubbishy fridge magnets and keyrings I saw last week in the duty free shop at Iasi airport. It’s certainly not mass murder of Jews which springs first […]
For Jewish News Sep 2023 It is safe to say that the music mogul Harvey Lisberg is no Walter Yetnikoff, the infamous record industry executive whose career — even by his own lights — was a litany of drugs, drugs and even more drugs. But Lisberg, speaking from his home in Los Angeles where he […]