In defence of a maligned state

Hungary, the country of my birth, gets a fairly bad press in the antisemitism stakes. Naturally, the recent rise of the ultra-nationalist Jobbik Party - blatantly no friend to Jews or Gypsies - hasn't helped.

More..

Soviet shame over hero's name

Let's give the Russians a little kicking, shall we? Lord knows they deserve it. Throughout the 20th century, they blighted whole populations with the evils of communism, now they poison our world with their chief exports of organised crime and corruption.

More..

Good riddance to Dr Williams

So the Archbishop of Canterbury, has finally announced his resignation. I believe the operative word is "Hallelujah". I have long felt that the incumbent of this illustrious office has been what we nowadays call a "waste of space".

More..

Blind Brits and sighted Yanks

So, for those pro-Palestinian demonstrators who disrupted the Proms and forced the BBC to take its live broadcast off the air, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was a proxy for the "repressive" Israeli state.

We are all entitled to engage in non-violent protest, but I do get that Groundhog Day feeling whenever our anti-Israeli agitators rear their ugly heads.

More..

Could Bloomberg be the man?

As we near the 2012 American presidential elections, once again there are rumours that the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, might enter the race, thereby making himself potentially the country's first Jewish president.

More..

So, will the left blame Islam for Breivik's acts?

There has been a tidal wave of media coverage about Anders Behring Breivik and his murderous rampage in Norway. Was he a solitary monster or part of a network of virulent white supremacists? Sane or a psychopath? Could he have been influenced by our own extreme nationalists, the English Defence League?

Speculation has been rife. But one line of thinking has been absent.

More..

It's bleak in the halfway house

I was in my early 20s when I found out that I was half-Jewish. Until then, as far as I was aware, I was merely a lapsed Catholic who, by the age of 10, had had enough of the confession-and-communion game and heartily embraced the secular life (my Catholic mother didn't seem to mind). Then in adulthood came the stunning discovery of my Jewish blood.

More..

Cut the baby-boomer boasts

My high-school graduating class of 1970 recently held its 40-year reunion in New York. This has been followed by copious emails between the attendees and other class members who (like me) did not attend but have re-connected via cyberspace. And it's been a typical exercise in baby-boomer myth-making.

More..

Names are there to be changed

I have just been reading the most recent autobiography of nonagenarian movie star Kirk Douglas (his fourth). The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Douglas started life with the name Issur Danielovitch. It was Americanised for the sake of his film career.

In his book, Douglas remarks that sometimes he still mourns the passing of Issur, the erstwhile identity he was forced to "kill off". Particularly since the major stroke he suffered in 1996, which caused him to re-evaluate his life and embrace Judaism.

More..

A Holocaust survivor hierarchy? How absurd

After all that I have read, researched and written about the Holocaust over the past four decades, I considered myself fairly au fait with the subject. I have known a number of survivors, as well as rescuers - starting with my own mother, the Hungarian singer Vali Racz, a Righteous Among the Nations. But I guess there is always something new to learn, and recently I was able to add to my general knowledge of the Holocaust a little-known - and somewhat disturbing - aspect of it.

More..