Good journalists are endlessly curious and should be endlessly enthusiastic. My features run the gamut from politics to travel writing. They all have one thing in common – to transmit that enthusiasm to the reader.
Esther Safran Foer for the Jewish Chronicle April 2020 Esther Safran Foer — though she will tell you in her book that she is very different from her mother — is a bit of a magpie, a collector, and a hoarder. The collections range from pieces of dirt carefully preserved in a series of Ziploc […]
For the JC March 2020 Normally, the weeks between Purim and Pesach gallop by, in a furious frenzy of lists and shopping and… more lists. This year, however, has a curious sense of time having slowed up, if not stopped completely. Somewhere in a parallel universe, I feel, Pesach is going ahead as normal. There […]
For the JC March 2020 Perhaps the last place you might think to look for a world-class collection of Islamic manuscripts and treasures of the Arabic-speaking world, would be Jerusalem. You might also be surprised by the part the JC— surely a bastion of Ashkenazi diaspora life — had to play in helping to establish […]
For the JC March 2020 Katie Glass barely knew her father was Jewish, until he died and she was contacted by a rabbi about funeral arrangements. Ten years on she’s made a radio programme about her quest to explore her roots It was screenwriter Nora Ephron’s mother Phoebe who famously said, “everything is copy” and, […]
For Jewish News Jan 2020 Holocaust ed for JN Jan 2020 by Jenni Frazer Hundreds of people in the UK and beyond have extended their knowledge of the Holocaust by visiting some of the sites in eastern Europe. What was once unthinkable — returning to the areas of mass slaughter — has become an accepted […]
For the JC December 2019 By May next year, the Metropolitan Police hopes to have an additional 1200 new officers on London’s streets. And, if all goes well, a good number of recruits could be Jewish. At the moment there are 117 declared Jewish police officers in the Met, 28 women and 89 men — […]
For the JN by Jenni Frazer Dec 2019 Slowly, and almost by stealth, the strictly Orthodox world is changing. And nowhere is that more apparent than in Israel and the vexed question of getting Charedi men into the workplace, something that was previously unthinkable, but is now, gradually, becoming more and more acceptable. One man […]
For the Times of Israel November 23 2019 LONDON — On the cover of photographer John Offenbach’s new book, the uncompromisingly titled “Jew,” there is an exquisite picture of a bald, lightly-bearded man. The viewer can gaze at this cover photograph and guess that he probably belongs to Israel’s Ethiopian community, but there are no […]
For the JC Nov 2019 This is a story of silk, skis, Picasso and Queen’s Park Rangers — and a promise made more than 20 years ago and now fulfilled. “The day my father died in 1992”, says Peter Ascher, “I promised that one day I would bring him back to Prague”. With the publication […]
For the JC by Jenni Frazer In June 2014, Israel’s Foreign Ministry decided to revive a project, inviting Jewish journalists from abroad for a week’s intensive media discussions. During the week of our visit, I, and the other Jewish journalists in Jerusalem, naturally tuned in to the big news story of the day: the fate […]