Asterix the Jewish Gaul for Times of Israel posted May 23 2018 Children all over the world are familiar with the comic creation, Asterix the Gaul, and his sidekick, Obelix. The pair, along with a raft of characters from Druids to Romans, rejoice in a series of adventures where Rome, uncharacteristically, is usually defeated. The […]
Times Diary May 15 2018 OSBORNE GETS HIS WISH George Osborne recently discovered that he is Jewish via his maternal grandmother, a Hungarian immigrant who never mentioned her roots. This has given the former chancellor great joy. A few years ago he told guests at a Jewish community event that he had had so many […]
Column for Jewish News October 31 2016 As we enter the dying days of the US presidential race it is instructive to look at an unexpected side- effect of the allegations of sexual misconduct committed by the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. It’s been a matter of record for years that Israeli society is riddled with […]
For the Jewish News July 8 2017 The controversial South African sheikh who quoted a Joseph Goebbels speech referring to Jews as “fleas” said this week that he thought it was “fair” to say “that a people who had gone though oppression should not mete it out to others”. Sheikh Ebrahim Bham was a keynote […]
For the JC posted April 28 2017 A Jewish leader in Scotland has protested to the Scottish Parliament over an attempt to throw her and two colleagues out of a meeting where antisemitism was to be discussed. Micheline Brannan, the chair of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (Scojec), said she had written to the […]
For the Times of Israel posted April 26 2017 LONDON — Andrew Percy is a successful Conservative politician. He’s a Member of Parliament and Minister for the Northern Powerhouse, a campaign to boost economic growth in Britain’s northern cities. As of March, he has also become Jewish. Percy’s improbable story, he says, has come about […]
For the Times of Israel published February 10 2017 LONDON — She is the grande dame of Anglo-Jewish arts, but at a scarcely believable 90 years old, Lilian Hochhauser is not yet ready to hang up her ballet shoes. She is bringing Russia’s outstanding Mariinsky dance company to London this summer for a three-week long […]
For the Times of Israel published February 5 2017 LONDON — It’s a cold and windy day in central London. The main road is deserted, but duck down a side street and suddenly there are hundreds of small children — in what’s generally not a child-friendly area. Here, queuing up outside some unpromising-looking office blocks, […]
Paul Simon for the JC by Jenni Frazer December 4 2016 Homeward Bound, the Life of Paul Simon, by Peter Ames Carlin, Little Brown, £20 pp415 As it happens, they played a Simon and Garfunkel track — written, of course, by Paul Simon — on this morning’s Desert Island Discs, and it was another opportunity […]
I do not have, and never intend to have, a Facebook page. But very occasionally I will use this space to air some thoughts. I have just written a long and complicated piece for A Newspaper — no need to name, I know it and so do they. I rarely have problems with being subbed […]