In the scheme of things, I realise this is a first-world problem; but I don’t know what to do with my cat photos. In normal times, I have a steady online presence and a…
I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes, I see the beautiful face of the girl with the blue eyes who was kidnapped. Or the Kutz family from Kfar Aza: the mother, the father and their three grown up children standing proudly, smiling…
On a Saturday morning, half a century ago, I see my reflection in the mirror of my room. I'm 12 years old and in a foul mood because my mother has forced me to wear clothes I detest and go to the dullest place in the Milky…
The expansive, stunning Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern enables us to follow the development of this prolific and important artist. Born in Canada in 1913 to refugee parents who had fled persecution in Ukraine, Guston (then Goldstein) was the youngest of seven…
The phone did not ring. The emails did not arrive. I have a large network of colleagues and friends who know that I am Jewish. I have written plays about Israel. And have worked with many artists on these projects. Not one contacted me after the invasion of Israel by Hamas on 7 October…
Truman Productions’ mission statement is to develop and amplify new, female-led contemporary Jewish writing. Its latest show, These Demons by Rachel Bellman, is a warm, funny and properly hair-raising drama that ticks all those boxes and more. In a run-down cottage in the woods…
The Łódź Ghetto, established by the Nazis in Poland, was always on the infamous list of places where Jews were confined before eventual deportation (for most) to the death camps. This partly fictionalised account of its inception is all too plausible. That the Russian writer…
On Wednesday 27 September, a group of Jewish Renaissance readers met at Golders Green station and set off for an overnight stay in Stratford-upon-Avon. While this was not the most far flung of the trips run by JR, it was certainly an interesting experience. That evening…
Shortly before the breakout of World War II, Ruby Wax's parents, both of whom were Jewish, fled Vienna and arrived in America in 1938. Less than two decades later, Wax was born in Evanston, Illinois. But she has never felt truly…
The dates and cities stamped on artist Gego’s passport read like a readymade, some Duchampian object in which many parts of her story are implied without needing to be stated outright. She was born Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt in Hamburg, Germany, in 1912, and fled the country in…