Can film unteach Hasbara?
A new documentary, screened at the UK Jewish Film Festival this week, considers whether exposure to video footage of the plight of Palestinians can change the hearts and minds of Israel’s fiercest advocates.
An audience with Talia Lavin, American Nazi-hunter
Like a schlubby Jewish Virgil, the American journalist leads readers of her new book through the circles of white supremacist hell.
Why I stand with Jeremy Corbyn
The former Labour leader understands far better than his successor, who suspended him this week, that racism is born of a broken world, one we must utterly transform.
Where next for the Jewish left?
Vashti launched a year ago at a more innocent time. On the eve of her 1st birthday, she asks: where next for the Jewish left?
The forgotten women’s rituals of Yom Kippur
Cemetery- and grave-measuring were part of the female clerical role in Ashkenazi Jewish life, and powerful tools of ancestral connection.
Vashti meets Pink Peacock, the world’s first queer Yiddish cafe
The founders of the Glasgow establishment, due to open later this year, share their vision of luxury for all.
“I don’t think he would have the boldness to stand up in shul and say that”
In private messages to his former congregants, a leading British rabbi sounds off on race, gender and sexuality.
Spain’s Jews gave Vox an easy ride. Now they’re regretting it.
Many Jewish organisations sat idly by while the far-right stoked Islamophobia. It was only a matter of time, however, before the party and its supporters came for them, too.
How not to tackle antisemitism on the left
Zero tolerance plus zero discretion equals zero results.
“Resist”: The political street art of Jerusalem
A reading of the politics written onto the city walls.
A faustian pact between Chabad and Orbán
How Hungarian Ultra-Orthodoxy found an ally in Europe’s most notorious antisemite.
If Black lives matter to us, Palestinian lives should too
George Floyd and Eyad Hallaq were killed in the same week. The British Jewish press has spilt much ink on the former – and barely a drop on the latter.
Will the last Jew to leave Europe please turn out the lights?
Joann Sfar has been called France’s “messiah of the comic book”. His buoyantly optimistic early work rewrote narratives of Jewish-Muslim animosity by sketching a shared history and delineating a path forward for interfaith relations. So why is Sfar’s new novel so full of despair?
Vashti speaks to Michael Rosen
A few months ago, Aron Keller spoke to the author and broadcaster Michael Rosen about his new book, ‘The Missing’, and much else besides.
Israel is in denial about police brutality
Israeli politicians have expressed remorse at Eyad Hallaq’s killing, however it’s clear they view it as an aberration.
Jewish antiracism must start at home
#JewsForBlackLivesMatter risks reinscribing Ashkenormativity.
Stop calling Cummings a ‘svengali’ – and not just because it’s an antisemitic trope
We’re raging against the man, not the machine.
The Board of Deputies’ neutrality on annexation will doom it
The Board gained prominence through its forthright stance on Labour antisemitism. Its mealy-mouthed response to annexation will condemn it to irrelevance.
Starmer is serious about antisemitism – but not other racisms, it seems
Starmer has adopted the Board of Deputies’ Ten Pledges and with them, the Board’s disregard for forms of racism beyond Jew-hatred.
This Passover is different from all others
Three Jewish women reflect on Pesach under lockdown.
Coronavirus demands justice, not charity
The Jewish community has risen admirably to the challenge of Covid-19. We cannot now fail to let this crisis radicalise us.
Trump’s peace plan won’t just entrench the Israel-Palestine conflict – it will radically destabilise it
By mainstreaming the fantasies of the annexationist hard-right, this plan paves the way for an escalation of unforeseeable proportions.
Boris Johnson’s BDS ban must be opposed – not least by British Jews
The law would forbid even boycotts focused solely on the occupation, thereby framing opposition to the occupation as opposition to Israel as a whole.
It isn’t an easy time to be a new Jewish Labour MP – but it’s an important one
At this dark hour, the Jewish left must not shrink away. Our resolve to build an anti-racist movement must be hardened.
Young Jews are reviving the Jewish left – will they succeed?
The seeds are being sown for a Jewish left whose desire for a better world might be enacted in a way that has a chance of breaking free from the tendency towards obdurate self-ghettoisation that has dominated the far left.
Don’t be fooled, Brexit is a Jewish issue
Brexit is a Conservative attempt to overturn the internationalist legacy Jews have so heavily relied on. Why then does our communal leadership seem unbothered by it?
Left populism doesn’t create antisemitism – it’s our best hope of fighting it
Jews cannot be told that Corbyn’s programme is incompatible with the fight against antisemitism.
The climate crisis is our most urgent existential threat
While it might feel like the hounds of Brexit and antisemitism are snapping at our heels, we are in danger of letting them chase us off a cliff edge.
Labour must treat antisemitism as a human problem, not just a political one
From the back-benches to the front, Corbyn has fought for Jewish freedoms; yet it’s this fighting spirit that has latterly turned made him an intractable elder statesman who struggles to admit wrongdoing.