More than ten years ago we were invited out to dinner, to friends. I sat opposite a Rabbi, someone we knew, though we didn`t know each other well. This Rabbi had written and published one or two books, or perhaps three. I had read one of them and really admired it. About comparative religion. I […]
In the new year a collection of my short stories, `Tell it Not,` will be published by Red Heifer Press, publishers in California. Next week, at the UK festival of Jewish culture known as Limmud, I will present a session named One Collection or Two. Because the reason I looked online for a publisher in […]
We saw Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, and loved it. A play within a play, actually. It was a play by writer Paula Vogel, directed by Rebecca Taichman. And it was about another play – God of Vengeance – written in 1907 by Yiddish poet and playwright Sholem Asch. A stunning and moving production, […]
I seem to have been busy recently. And the world seems more alarming than ever. We watch our grandchildren, guided by our sons and daughters-in-law, with some apprehension – not because of what we, or their parents may have taught them, or handed down to them, but more because of the state of the world. […]
Whenever I think to myself…time for further reflections, I am taken back to my childhood. We laughed at so many things, my parents, my sisters and I, and as often as I recall adolescent years of uncertainty and self-doubt, anger, even despair, I also recall the laughter, not to mention the love. We all loved […]
Tomorrow the book entitled `Age of Confidence, the new Jewish culture wave,` is published. I note that the publisher The History Press, and other outlets – from Amazon to W H Smith, have added some detail to their previous blurbs. Below – from the History Press. “Taking the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as their starting […]
Someone posted a cartoon – I only glanced at it, finding it so repulsive I clicked `off` immediately – showing the recent escape from an Israeli prison of 6 Palestinian terrorists or freedom fighters, (whatever they truly are,) and alongside that, an escape from a concentration camp of some Jewish prisoners – who also dug […]
Autumn is approaching. Technically it`s already here. There are only five stories left from my collection that need further editing – by me, that is, before I send them all off to Peter Gimpel, of Red Heifer Press, who has come up with a great idea for a cover illustration. Meanwhile this arrived. A message […]
What surprises me, time and again, is not just that this ubiquitous plot motif continues to underlie series after series, story after story, plot after plot – the one about the dead wife/mother, I mean. What genuinely confounds me is that ( Jeff excepted, because he has learned from me,) I seem to be the […]
Defeated by the new lifestyle that we, like so many others, seem to be living, we return to Netflix from time to time, and see what`s there. As soon as I saw the title, `Hit and Run`, I wondered whether there was going to be a woman run over, leaving a grieving husband to fill […]