New posts

Some recent posts on my new blog:

• Living in denial over Samir Kuntar
• Barack Obama, Shabbos Goy
• A Chassidic rebel goes public
• Why were the terms of the POW exchange not clear in advance?
• Divorces increase in the Orthodox community

...and much more

Blogging again

I seem to have started a new blog at the revamped Jewish Chronicle website.

It's all currently in beta so please bear with us... but do visit.

Some recent articles

• A crisis of faith does not make you a bad Jew - Jewish Chronicle, August 31, 2007
• Confused view on settlements - Jewish Chronicle, August 24, 2007
• Global warming? I'm a heretic - Jewish Chronicle, July 13, 2007
• Learning to live with the daily prospect of terror - Glasgow Herald, July 24, 2007
• What we can learn from the Americans - Jewish Chronicle, June 29, 2007
• Silence won't end British boycotts - National Post, June 27, 2007
• Why clever girls can't find love - Jewish Chronicle, June 8, 2007

Some recent articles

• A Sexually confused generation (opinion) / Friday, May 25th, 2007 / The Jewish Chronicle
• Life after Death (book review) / Friday, May 25th, 2007 / The Forward
• How we killed respect for the dead (opinion) / Friday, May 5th, 2007 / The Jewish Chronicle
• For Israel's shrillest critics, a boycott too far (opinion) / Thursday, April 20th, 2007 / The National Post (Canada)

A new beginning...

To Bloghead's readers --
Thank you so much for all the mazeltovs on the occasion of little Eliana's birth (left, at five weeks, below, at eight). It's taken a long time to get back into the swing of things (unfortunately I had a run of bad luck and was in hospital for 3 weeks after delivery) -- but I am now almost fully recovered, and the baby, of-course, is gorgeous, which is the main thing!
Now that I'm feeling much better, I'm going back to blogging. However, I'll be at a new address. I'm joining the (London) Jewish Chronicle's brand-new group blog, which has just been launched and which is busy taking shape. The contributors will consist of the JC's own writers. At the moment it's me and Jeff Barak, the former editor of both the JC and The Jerusalem Post, and other JC journalists will join in the near future. It promises to be extremely lively -- so please check it out and adjust your bookmarks! See you there...

IT"S A GIRL!!!!!

BREAKING NEWS

-- to Miriam and Danny, London UK, Friday afternoon July 14. Mum and baby doing well!!!

-- from the proud Grandfather.

UPDATE: 'Eliana Lia'.

What I've been reading

• The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky -- Ken Dornstein writes about his brother David, who was killed on his way back to the US from Israel in the Pan Am bombing. I didn't expect it to be terribly good -- too often these books just tend to idealise the terrorism victim (for understandable reasons) and are too predictable -- but this one was touching because it was so honest.
  David, who was in his mid-20s when he died, had been obsessed with becoming a writer and with fame. When he died, he left hundreds of boxes of notebooks with his writing, and Ken, who was several years younger and had always looked up to David, decided to go through them and publish some of the material.
  To his horror, he discovered nothing publishable -- just half-baked ideas and unfinished stories. Gradually the picture of David becomes rather sad. He emerges as a charismatic and idealistic dreamer, but a dreamer nonetheless, who died without achieving his potential as an artist -- and who probably didn't really ever have the potential. Strangely, in several of his notebooks he wrote that perhaps his life would only have meaning if he died young and even foreshadows death in a plane crash. It is ironic that in the end, he does achieve a form of immortality through art -- that of his brother.
  Another element is how Ken deals with the aftermath of the bombing and of-course with his renewed understanding of his brother. He struggles to emerge from David's shadow and to work out how best to keep his memory alive. For a while, he actually dates some of his ex-girlfriends -- and even marries one of them (they are still married). His openness about this emotional journey is what makes this book worthwhile.
• The Lie that Wouldn't Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by former Israeli judge Hadassa Ben-Itto -- I'm still in the middle of this one so I won't say too much about it, other than that a. it is a pleasure to read a 'Jewish' book which isn't about the Holocaust / women / Israel / a small handful of other topics which seem to dominate the 'Jewish book' scene b. So far, it is an absolutely fascinating account of the Protocols' origins and dissemination as well as the various Protocols-related trials that took place in the past century. I'm not sure how much here is new -- not much, I suspect -- but I didn't know most of it. C. One of the enjoyable aspects of this book is that it includes a relatively personal account of Ben-Itto's encounter with the forged document. She begins by explaining in detail how she became aware of its continuing influence and importance and intersperses some of the history -- particularly the accounts of the trials -- with her own thoughts. This is somewhat unconventional in this kind of book but it seems to work here, mainly because of her judicial past and her experience on the international diplomatic scene.
• Londonistan by Melanie Phillips -- a truly scary account of the way radical Islam has been accepted and even welcomed into Britain. You can find links to reviews in almost every major publication on Melanie's own website. Even many of the positive reviews tend to qualify their approval with complaints about her 'hysterical' tone -- it seems to be socially unacceptable in Britain today to say anything nice about her without distancing oneself at the same time -- but the truth is that sometimes even hysterical people have something to be hysterical about, as I fully believe she does; and if you believed that your country was under serious threat from terrorists and a radical agenda and everyone dismissed you, you would become hysterical too.

Back -- temporarily....

It's a week and a half to my due date and I'm on maternity leave -- so I finally have some time to blog. In fact, after just a few hours at home I am bored out of my mind and really welcome the distraction! So, until the baby appears (pg), here goes.......
(One caveat: I'm supposed to be taking things easy because of high blood pressure. So I'm going to try and avoid discussing the current situation in Israel -- and especially the way it's being covered in the media -- for health reasons.)