SALONICA TO ATHENS AND PLACES INBETWEEN

July 2016 marked a new chapter in the 15-year story of Jewish Renaissance magazine, when an eight-page section, Sephardi Renaissance, was introduced to provide a regular focus on the Sephardi world in the UK and beyond. This debut Sephardi supplement revealed a new generation of henna parties and uncovered a synagogue that’s based in a bus station café. We featured Ottoman merchants and communities both ancient and modern in a 14-page Greece special, while nearer to home we headed north for the stage version of The Mighty Walzer, and further still to speak to the Jewish comics headed to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Elsewhere in the magazine radicals, kooks and other 1960s upstarts peppered our books section, and film director Mike Leigh wrote affectionately about his friendship with the late Arnold Wesker.