If Miliband wills it, is it a dream?

There are plenty of Jews in the upper echelons of the Conservative party but none of them were tempted this week to follow Ed Miliband's example and share their family histories with the nation. I was hoping we might get into a "my roots are better than your roots" contest, but it was not to be.

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When Thatcher turned against Israel

Last month saw the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, an appalling event that proved deeply damaging to Israel's international reputation at the height of the Lebanon War. It is worth reflecting that Britain's relationship with Israel is in far better shape now than it was then.

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Eric Hobsbawm: A man trapped by theory

In 1940, Eric Hobsbawm, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, characterised the war against Hitler as one of rival imperialisms between the Allies and Nazism and not as an anti-fascist struggle.

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J S Bach, the misunderstood musician

The year 2012 is unlikely to go down well in the annals of Jewish-German relations.

In June, a German court ruled that religious circumcision of minors is a criminal act. Two months earlier, Germany's largest-selling daily broadsheet had published a poem by Nobel prize-winning author - and former SS recruit - Günter Grass, accusing Israel of endangering world peace.

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Photo archive allows virtual tour of Leeds cemetery

Relatives of people buried at the Leeds Hill Top cemeteries can now visit their graves online as the result of a photographic archive.

As the name implies, the cemetery — containing the burial grounds of a number of synagogues past and present — has a high location, above a labyrinth of mining tunnels and shafts.

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'Enemies' who fell in love with their adopted country

The issue of "enemy aliens" and identity raises some unique and often unexplored perspectives. At the outbreak of war in September 1939, the refugees who had fled Nazi Germany and Austria were classified as "enemy aliens" and, as such, had a number of restrictions imposed upon them by the British authorities.

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Reinventing ourselves, throughout the generations

How to define Jewishness? When Manassah Ben Israel petitioned for the readmission of the Jews to England in 1655 he referred to the Jewish Nation. In debates on emancipation during the 19th century, the term was Jewish Race. After emancipation, most Jews regarded themselves as Jewish citizens of the countries in which they lived. In this country, every new wave of immigrants tried to anglicise.

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