The Pears Short Film Fund was set up by UK Jewish Film in 2006 to offer opportunities to create cinema engaging with British Jewish life. Previous winners have been shortlisted for Oscars, nominated for BAFTAs and won…
I am a Jew in London, watching from afar what is happening to close friends and family in Israel. Where do I stand? I am outside, trying to follow what is happening over there. I am in a city and fearful of the chants on the streets here. I am caught up in these dark times, but uncertain…
As I write this, fireworks explode in nearby gardens while my cat hides behind the sofa. Some 3,000 miles away, there are larger explosions, far more terrifying. There seems no end to the escalation of violence, while antisemitic attacks have increased everywhere. In London, graffiti is daubed…
I am a poet, not a politician. I am an activist, not a strategist. Yet here I am, feeling the need to write this piece as a way getting to grips with an impossible problem. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to take part in a reading as part of the Tsitsit Jewish Fringe Festival. Poet…
Escapologist Harry Houdini was a legend in his own lifetime. His headline-grabbing stunts, involving mystifying, often lurid escapes from chains, padlocks, water tanks and suspension from skyscrapers, ensured that his reputation would live on long after his death. He boasted that he…
I am folding the washing/ stepping over Lego strewn by the grandboys/thinking about egg sandwich for lunch/ But I am in Sderot/ remembering a bomb shelter by the bus stop we walked past/remembering Shula the peacenik/ Shula from the kibbutz next to Gaza/who took her…
Now close your eyes and try to stop being angry. Try to stop raging at all those who deserve your righteous fury. Close your eyes and allow yourself, just for a moment, to simply feel the pain. To hesitate. To be confused. To feel sorrow. Remorse. You still have your whole life to spend…
In light of the current tension in the Middle East and an increase in antisemitic activity around the world, it would seem there's little to laugh about right now. Cue the musical with idiosyncratic punctuation in its title, a UK debut from Israeli playwright and composer Uri Agnon that's not…
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…