Truman show’s real star

As ome of my best friends are Jews. It is a boast so thin and irrelevant that it has become an in-joke. So it was a surprise to discover, when reading the other day, that one of the most important and positive events in the modern history of the Jewish people took place because someone's best friend was Jewish. And I thought it was a story worth telling.

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She liked us because we were outsiders too

When, many years ago, Harold Wilson was delivering an election speech in the Chatham docks, he explained his support for a strong navy. “And why am I saying all this?” he asked rhetorically. “Because you’re in Chatham,” came a voice from the back of the hall.

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How dare she tell us all to leave

'Which do you find more difficult? Being a Tory or being a Jew?" It was another evening speaking at a synagogue and another characteristically blunt audience question.

I stumbled through a response: "Erm, well, before 1997 when the Tories were in power and very unpopular that was quite hard. But, um, after 9/11 I did get quite a few pieces of antisemitic correspondence".

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Here are my fifty shades of 'J'

Just before, ahem, Christmas, I received an email asking me to take part in the My Jewish Identity Project. You can, too. We all can.

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Feeling at home in the Synod

It's an odd thing, when you are called Finkelstein, to find yourself commenting on the internal debates of the Church of England. But such was my fate - both on television and in print - when the Synod made its decision not to allow women to become Bishop.

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Similar fathers, different views

Years ago, when Roy Hattersley published a book arguing in favour of equality of result rather than of opportunity, I remember remarking that, in which case, we would all have, like him, to aspire to be leader of the Labour Party. In fact, seeking that office would become compulsory.

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Tutu and a badly slipping halo

"If you like the president's politics, you probably like his voice and appearance as well". So writes social psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his wonderful book Thinking Fast and Slow. The Nobel laureate used the example to introduce his readers to the "Halo Effect".

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Why I support gay marriage

We Jews like to pray. We spend hours at it. And we've been doing it for thousands of years. Granted, it's in Hebrew so most of us are a bit hazy on the detail. And we aren't big on decorum, or even sometimes on appropriate behaviour.

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United by Galloway and Le Pen

On the night David Cameron entered 10 Downing Street, I wrote about the deal he had done with the Liberal Democrats. It seemed to be a significant moment in the development of the centre-right, postponing the day when Labour could annex the entire Lib Dem support.

That now looks correct in retrospect. Correct, but incomplete.

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Dr Williams is special (I think)

When I heard the news of the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, my thoughts went back to the beginning, to that day at the end of February 2003 when Dr Rowan Williams was enthroned.

I had wandered through to the features department at The Times to ask their advice about a tricky problem I had encountered, only to find that everyone was glued to the television.

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Dr Williams is special (I think)

When I heard the news of the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, my thoughts went back to the beginning, to that day at the end of February 2003 when Dr Rowan Williams was enthroned.

I had wandered through to the features department at The Times to ask their advice about a tricky problem I had encountered, only to find that everyone was glued to the television.

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This banker baiting worries me

Let me try something out on you. It may turn out you don't feel as I do. But I have a hunch that more of you will share my uneasiness than won't. It's about Fred Goodwin. In fact, it's about the whole banker thing.

We Jews may be more likely to perceive that the BBC is biased against Israel but, on common-or-garden political issues, we feel pretty much like our non-Jewish neighbours.

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Hitchens got it wrong on Israel

It doesn't seem all that long ago that, at a Jewish Book Week event, I met Christopher Hitchens. We parted with him saying that we should get to know each other better. But we never did. He went home to the United States and before we could meet up, he fell ill. I will always regret it. Friends of mine, who knew him well, attest that he was great company.

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Conspiracy of nonsense on Libya

I had just finished reading a book by the sociologist Duncan Watts when I heard over the weekend that Saif Gaddafi, the son of the former Libyan leader, had been captured and arrested. The book was called Everything Is Obvious When You Know the Answer.

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How I became a Jewish convert

Towards the end of his career, the late, great Jack Rosenthal wrote a television play called Eskimo Day, about the feelings of dislocation and emptiness that come when you see your children off to university, letting them go out into the big world without you. Quite a lot of people reading this column have, I suspect, experienced Eskimo Day in the past month.

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