Columns
Columns are a difficult trick to pull off, not least if elsewhere in the journalistic field you are trying to report issues objectively. A column which works ought to leave the reader feeling better informed but also, perhaps, pulls together opinions and views which are in the wind. One thing you will never find me writing: confessional, first-person columns. Not my thing at all.
My problem with the Times
COLUMN Jewish News FEBRUARY 13 2015 I have a problem with the times. Actually, I have a problem with The Times, and I wonder what problem this venerable publication has with us. Twice in a week, The Times has devoted one of its presumably sought-after leader columns to the same subject – what it is […]
French Jews are being killed just because of who they are
It has been, I think we are all agreed, a terrible week. As a Jew and as a journalist, I have been consumed by the news of the tragic shootings in Paris, first the 12 deaths at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, that of a policewoman the next day, and then the killings of four […]
Charedi demands make as much sense as an Argentinian teenwolf
THIS WEEK, o’best beloveds, we are going to examine stories that make no sense. Example One: the president of Argentina has adopted a young Jewish man as her godson to stop him turning into a werewolf. Yes, you read that right. President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner had a fun-packed meeting with the Tawil family of […]
How do we live Jewishly in an ever-more non-Jewish world?
AS THE Christmas adverts close in on television, and one wonders vaguely if John Lewis’ Monty the Penguin might be Jewish, we celebrate Chanukah 2014 in a certain sort of denial – of remaining Jewish in a non-Jewish world. Every year, I read plucky little articles wherein the writer tries hard to cling on to […]
Hooray for Rivlin, a voice of sense to counter conniving Bibi
Buried deep within a Cabinet communiqué from the Israeli prime minister’s press office lies the startling information that Israel has decided to unify two ministries in order to create the Intelligence Ministry. Double-take, jaw-dropping news. They HAVE one? If its latest clod-hopping machinations are anything to go by, it’s not just an Intelligence Ministry that Israel […]
The Ched Evans rape case and Jewish concepts of forgiveness
If there is anything that might be said to be embedded in Jewish DNA, it is the spirit of forgiveness, the possibility of giving others a second chance. I’m not talking about Christian concepts such as turning the other cheek: our own cheeks have been turned so often we can practically see ourselves coming back. […]