My week in writing

First up: an exclusive story about the plans for the first ever museum exhibition dedicated to singer Amy Winehouse, which is to open in Camden two years after her death. Curated by her brother, it looks set to be a real celebration of her life and work, and it was a pleasure to write about the plans.

Keeping with the music theme, I spoke to someone who was there when Bob Dylan’s career began – the owner of the folk music centre at which the young Dylan listened to records and learn about the genre. I also interviewed a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor about his brave attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

In arts news, I spoke to director Natalie Abrahami, who has just landed herself a fantastic new role at the Young Vic theatre. And in comment I commissioned a piece by the journalist Abigail Radnor, who asked – and attempted to answer – a difficult and deeply personal question.

Over in the Guardian, I wrote for Comment is Free following Stephen Hawking’s announcement that he was boycotting Israel, arguing that the last thing this conflict needs is headline-grabbing interventions from famous names.

When politics doesn’t need poster children (Guardian)

Stephen Hawking, perhaps the greatest mind of our era, has backed a boycott in protest over the policy of the present Israeli government towards the Palestinians. Hawking’s decision not to attend a conference hosted by Shimon Peres has been greeted with delight by supporters of the boycott campaign. What better way to bolster their argument than a lauded intellectual refusing to stand by in the face of injustice?

The efforts of those who want Israel to be shunned – whether in culture, sport, academia or politics – garner plenty of interest, but never so much as when a celebrity gets on board.

When Hebrew-speaking thespians were invited to the Globe theatre, a chorus including Emma Thompson publicly professed indignation. The debate about Israel hosting next month’s European under-21 football championship went far beyond the blogs following the intervention of Frédéric Kanouté.

Conversely, when Rihanna or Justin Bieber perform in Tel Aviv, they suddenly attract the unlikeliest of fans. Indeed, those against the boycott jumped for joy when it briefly – and incorrectly – seemed that Hawking had cancelled for health, rather than political, reasons.

It’s natural, if you support a cause strongly, to crow when a prominent individual who is listened to far more than the average openly backs your cause. For some – Roger Waters comes to mind – preoccupation with the Israeli-Palestinian situation goes further than a signature, but for many, I’d hazard, wading in one way or the other comes not after years of study of the Middle East.

The famous have as much right as anyone to talk politics and if a prominent individual wishes to back a boycott, or rage against it, he is free to do so. The problem is the activists who seize on them as poster children.

It’s disingenuous, investing one signature with the weight of an entire political approach, and implying that because of a person’s notoriety, their pronouncements are gospel instead of what they are – the views of someone no more or less informed.

Many causes need glitter to get a hearing. The Rohingya Muslims, for example: their plight rarely makes the front page. George Clooney brought Darfur to the world’s attention. You can say plenty about Gaza, but you cannot claim it is ignored by the mainstream media.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extraordinarily complex. It requires activists with a vested interest to focus on the facts, to aim for more than point-scoring, and consider the real questions – how to end the cycle of violence, for one, and how to educate people on both sides as to why two states is the answer – not which celebrity agrees with them.

What the Middle East desperately needs is dialogue, which is why I believe a boycott cannot offer a constructive approach. The discussion could well benefit from meaningful interventions from intellectuals like Hawking, but these must go beyond headline-grabbing.

This article originally appeared on the Guardian website. Read the original here

Heard the one about the Orthodox Jewish woman suing Lancôme? (Independent Voices)

Advertising, as any consumer with their head screwed on is aware, isn’t really about telling the whole truth. That’s not to say that consistently eating Special K won’t give you the body of the fresh-faced model in red – simply that it’s just as likely you’ll end up with a stomach ache and a craving for chocolate. Buying that shampoo probably won’t leave your hair as salon glossy as Cheryl’s, unless you’re blessed with a personal hairdresser. And no matter how adorable the mascot, car insurance is surely not best chosen on that basis.

So the natural response, as we read with mirth of the woman who is suing Lancôme over the failure of her 24-hour-cream to last for that period, is to shake our heads. “How ridiculous,” we think. “Surely that’s not a real story.” Unfortunately, it is. Rorie Weisberg, who comes across as a veritable “disgusted of…” is apparently taking legal action so absurd that it is reminiscent of a case contested by Ally McBeal.

But, I’d hazard, the reason it’s been so gleefully shared around the web? She’s not just any disgruntled customer. She’s from the Orthodox Jewish community, a world brimming with seemingly bizarre rules and restrictions, like not being able to put on make-up on the Sabbath. A sexist, antiquated, closeted world where, as Weisberg’s case clarifies, women slather on make-up on a Friday night and require it to remain until sundown. A world where women see nothing strange about doing this.

The public seems to have something of a fascination with the strictly Orthodox community, just as it does with any other supposed outliers – Gypsies, say, or Mormons, or the Amish, or indeed people with 16 kids, or the unbelievably obese. I’ve lost count of the number of documentaries casting an eye on the Jews of Stamford Hill, or the regularity with which stories about sex guides for the ultra-religious appear. A photograph of an ultra-Orthodox man wrapped in plastic on a plane was shared around the globe, and discussed with amusement on Have I Got News For You.

To an extent, there’s a natural intellectual curiosity about a closed society; media coverage, and indeed television and books, offers a rare window. If we cannot experience something ourselves, the next best is to be told about it. Yet there’s a fine line between curiosity and thinly-veiled contempt, between offering the opportunity for people to learn about something and giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card to laugh about it.

At the risk of disagreeing with the herd, I found watching the musical The Book of Mormon rather uncomfortable, given that we were essentially being asked to snigger at the ignorant, whether the Mormon missionaries or the generic African villagers. Oh, but it was actually poking fun at American exceptionalism, I’m told. Well, yes, but what about the fact that it involved smug, superior writers all but giggling like children at a culture distinct from their own?

The Mormons, of course, have reacted rather well to the show, and launched a recruitment drive off the back of it. Good for them. And of course we should be able to laugh at religion, to point out its absurdities, and still tolerate it as part of a healthy melting-pot society. I might be Jewish, but I’ve no more connection than the next person to the baffling decisions made in the name of faith by those on the extreme fringes of the community. I can see the comedy value in a passenger who has essentially cling-filmed himself because he is so devout; I can appreciate how ludicrous it is that the woman wouldn’t just reapply the next morning. And it’s not as if these stories are fabricated to cast strictly Orthodox Jews in a bad light – on the contrary – perhaps frustratingly for the rest of the Jewish community – they are all too real.

And I know exactly why newspapers, documentary makers and bloggers seize on these cases – they are funny and ridiculous, and they guarantee plenty of web traffic and twitter discussion. But it’s hard to be totally relaxed with the way laughing about extreme religious behaviour has become so mainstream, so trendy.

For by and large, there is no attempt at understanding, at examination. These anecdotes are not reported on because they tell us anything about those communities, only because they are humorous. They reveal absurd caricatures taking observance to the furthest extreme, and tar an entire community with the brush of the strangest member. As a supposedly tolerant, inclusive society, I’m not sure we should be so comfortable with that.

This piece orginally appeared on the Independent website. See the orginal here

My week in writing

Plenty of coverage of arts and entertainment this week, as I went to the launch of the new season of The Apprentice, covering what Lord Sugar had to say – reluctantly, on his part, since he seemed less than happy to be at the launch – and digging into the history of one of the candidates.

I also spoke to some leading names in the Jewish cultural world, discussing Culture Secretary Maria Miller’s recent comment on arts funding, and heard why the issue is not as simple as she made out. Following the Olivier Awards, I chatted to one of the winners, Top Hat producer Kenny Wax, and then spoke to the daughter of Irving Berlin, who composed the music that appears in the show.

Elsewhere, I looked into the BBC’s mysterious cancellation of a documentary about Jerusalem’s history, and spoke to the director to hear his version of the story. I heard from the US pollster Nate Silver at a speaking event, reporting on his views on Ukip.

And looking back in history, I covered the “Downton Abbey Jews” who fled Nazi Germany on domestic service visas in the 1930s: a fascinating and little-discussed slice of the past. And in comment I was pleased to relaunch the section, with teaser images and a new weekly book review column.

Over on Indy Voices, I argued that the fascinating with stranger-than-fiction stories of the conduct of religious people wasn’t necessarily healthy or constructive.

My week in writing

I spent Wednesday of this week with my head buried in old government documents – top secret files dating back to 1943 onwards. The papers in question were colonial records, newly released at the National Archives.

Aside from the thrill of being among the first people to study these documents in seven decades, it was fascinating, for the insight into the history and politics of the time, and for what they revealed about British manners in he 1940s. My research yielded several news stories: about British attitudes before the end of the Mandate period, the High Commissioner’s thought on the Jewish fighters, the situation of Arab nationalism during the Second World War, and about how the SS Exodus incident was viewed by British diplomats.

Elsewhere, I enjoyed a preview of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher, learning that she felt that the Finchley Tories were sacrificing Jewish voters. I covered a Channel Four documentary on the property boom in Gaza, speaking to the presenter about what he found, and reported on the sale of a poem by an extraordinary Victorian writer and feminist, whom Oscar Wilde viewed as a rare talent.

In comment, I wrote about why communal squabbling was not only childish, but ultimately destructive, and enjoyed the fact that all three of the commissioned comment pieces (not including the regular columns) were written by women.

I also familiarised myself with some of the history of Israeli art, from the latter part of the 19th century to modern day, and heard from the author of a new book on the subject why there is more to the country’s cultural heritage than pictures of camels.

Finally, I wrote for the Independent on the subject of role models, discussing whether the contributions of celebrities could ever be of educational value.

My week in writing

I started the week with a blog post responding to Justin Bieber’s questionably appropriate message in the Anne Frank House guestbook, arguing that while not necessarily tasteful, it could be utilised in a positive way.

Back on rather more serious matters, I covered the once-a-decade announcement of the Granta young writers list, interviewing five of those who were honoured and discussing whether we were seeing a revival in the Anglo-Jewish literary scene. Staying with literature, I wrote about AM Homes making the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the writers who were named as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in America.

I spoke to an artist about how his grandfather;s immigrant experience had prompted a sculpture of an upside-down-alien (now on display in London) and covered the annual Rich List, which marked its 25th birthday this year.

In domestic communal news, I reported on Laura Janner-Klausner’s decision to turn down an invitation to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and heard from her why she felt it appropriate, and looked back in the archives at how the community marked Winston Churchill’s death.

Over in the comment section, I was pleased to commission a piece marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and looking at the wider history of resistance, which was illustrated with a breathtaking rare photograph from inside the ghetto.

Justin Bieber and Anne Frank: Why the fuss? (The JC)

Dear Kitty (as Anne Frank never wrote),

“I’m soo sick of being stuck in hiding, because my dad keeps telling me to turn down the volume on my Justin Bieber CD. If only I could get out to go and see him on tour…”

Clearly, Anne– the teenage diarist forced into hiding by the Nazis, who eventually died at Bergen Belsen – had more serious considerations than the average 21st century western teenager. In her diary, perhaps one of the most well-known examples of Holocaust-era testimony, she wrote of an everyday existence blighted by fear, death and hatred.

How tragic, knowing what became of her, to read her words: “Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles.”

Yet those who have read Anne’s diary will recall that, for all that her life was unlike many young people then and since, she was in many ways a typical teenager – frustrated by her mother, confused about boys. She could be petulant, she could be irrational. In another life, it’s not a stretch to imagine she might have been – as Bieber claimed this week – a fan of some fairly atrocious music. One of the many tragedies of her story is that she never got the chance to be embarrassed by her teenage passions.

Bieber is facing opprobrium for writing in the Anne Frank House guestbook that “Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”

The correct response to a tale of persecution – to wonder whether the victim would have liked your latest video? Not to most of us, attuned to the sensitivities of discussing the Holocaust. As Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, noted, his message left her “a bit lost for words”.

Gillian Walnes, co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust UK, issued a sterner rebuke. “This is a place where Anne Frank spent two years,” she said. “Now 70 years later a pop singer is trying to hijack this for his own self-aggrandisement.”

She has a point, not least that Justin Bieber didn’t reach stratospheric levels of success without being a shameless self-publicist. If his visit had been purely a visit – rather than, at least in part, a publicity stunt – we wouldn’t even have heard about it.

Of course it trivialises the Holocaust to talk about whether one of its most famous victims would have been a fan of a singer with ridiculous hair; far more crucial to reflect on the piles of human hair, seized by the Nazis from their helpless victims, preserved at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Of course the legacy of a girl who died before her 16th birthday for no other reason than being born a Jew, deserves more than contemplation as to how she would have spent her weekends if they’d been hers to spend.

Yet look on almost every news site around today. Yes, there are headlines about Bieber. But there are also headlines about Anne Frank, and the Holocaust – articles that his mostly tween fanbase would be unlikely to peruse without Bieber’s photograph accompanying them. Anne is even a trending topic on Twitter.

And it matters. It matters because in 2009 a survey revealed that one in 20 British kids thought Hitler was a football coach, and because in a decade, there won’t even be survivors left to talk to them at schools, or grandparents around to share their memories. It matters because when Baroness Thatcher died, the interest of a confused generation was piqued mainly by a tweet from Harry Styles. It matters because children listen far more to their role-models than they do to well-meaning teachers.

We can lament that as a sign of a generation brought up on reality TV and 140 characters of trash, or we can see it as an opportunity, and look to these “stars”, with their poor spelling and ignorant remarks, and recruit them to spread the word about important issues. They’ll do it if it gives them good publicity; teachers and organisations should seize on that.

We’ll never know whether Anne Frank would have been a “belieber” and, if we had the chance, I’d hope it wouldn’t be the first question we’d put to her. But if even one 14-year-old asks his parents or teachers today about why she lived in an attic, or reads her moving diary, then we’ll have Justin Bieber and his ridiculous remark to thank.

Silicon Valley’s superwoman should stop writing and start campaigning (Running in Heels)

Sheryl Sandberg (Photo: Jolanda Flubacher)

It might be when she talks about sauntering up to her Google bosses and demanding a better parking space that Sheryl Sandberg’s advice to women starts to rankle. Or perhaps it’s the anecdote about finding nits in her children’s scalp en route to a business meeting – while on eBay’s private jet – that makes your blood boil, just a little. Or the way that each interview she’s done has been full of diversions – about being a geek, breaking down at work, or being terrible at walking in high heels – that are clearly designed to prove how much of an everywoman she is but instead come across as characteristics of the modern feminist icon that her publicist has selected straight from central casting. Here she is: Silicon Valley superwoman, Facebook’s second-most recognisable face, well-coiffed with the perfect family to boot, plus  a litany of career successes under her belt – and all before her 45th birthday. And she’s telling all the other women out there that it’s easy to be just like her; they’ve merely got to be more assertive.

Sandberg discussing her book Lean In…

To be fair to Sandberg, that’s a slightly narrow interpretation of her new book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which is being marketed as something of a manifesto for the 20th century career woman. In the extracts and interviews with her I’ve read so far (of which there have been several – her marketing team needs a rise), her advice follows a familiar thread. Women, she explains, need to be less afraid of success and learn to appreciate achievement as the other half do.

Shesays: “Women internalise the negative messages we get throughout our lives-the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men-and pull back when we should lean in.” Sandberg isn’t wrong, and her advice is far more tolerable and constructive than that of women who have broken through the glass ceiling and can’t see why everyone else is making such a fuss about it. She’s absolutely spot on when she talks about the phenomenon of women feeling like “frauds” when they are successful, rather than simply soaking up praise for a job well done. Her suggestion that women hold themselves back rings true; in my own experience, it’s noticeable how male writers are usually willing to pitch opinion pieces out of the blue, while female writers seem surprised that they might be able to float an idea. They wait to be asked, a trend that Sandberg acknowledges, in a way that men simply don’t.

Of the women I know – intelligent, capable and qualified twenty-somethings with bright careers ahead – many speak of the very concerns Sandberg raises. They confess to feeling inadequate, as if they were imposters in their roles, to believing that they need to better than the best just to keep up with their (mostly male) colleagues. Most assume that the myth of “having it all,” sold to us during our school years, is just that, that something, somewhere, will have to give.

The problem isn’t that her advice is unwelcome, unreasonable, or even that she’s stating the obvious. It’s that, ultimately, it’s meaningless. Sandberg is correct that pregnant women should get better parking spaces; that we should be demanding equal pay, and the appreciation men in the workplace take as their birthright. But it’s hardly a revelation – we’ve known for years that we should be heeding these feminist rallying cries. The problem is that we don’t. We haven’t yet, and it’s unlikely enough of us will.

This week Sandberg – former chief of staff to a US treasury secretary – told The Times: “really, honestly, I’m not going into politics.” Perhaps she’s just fooling us, or even herself. Let’s hope so. For if more women like Sandberg – the ones that have “leaned in to overcome their fears and sit at the table – were in politics, maybe some of what she is urging would take effect. If Sandberg could secure that parking space with minimal heartache, just imagine what she could do as a politician if she took on businesses over maternity rights or flexible working. Surely in the fight for more affordable childcare, someone like Sandberg should be leading the charge?

Ultimately, as she admits “the blunt truth is that men still run the world”. No amount of well-meaning advice is going to change the fact that this is, for many, a reality. Books and words advocating equality are great. But they would be far more valuable if she turned them into action.

This post originally appeared on Running in Heels.

My Week in Writing

After last week’s front-page story about new research into the scale of the Holocaust, it was another week spent delving back in time – back to the 1860s, in fact. A new exhibition has opened in Edinburgh featuring photographs of the Prince of Wales’ trip to the Middle East in 1862, and with it his journal of the period has been published.

The diary was full of insights about his time in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, and it prompted me to look back into the JC archives to explore how the paper covered it and what the community felt about his trip. It turned out there was great interest, with readers expressing hope that the prince’s presence would lead to progress on an intractable issue.

Researching for that piece also led me to a short report about Passover and the cost of goods for families in 1862 – a problem that readers maintain remains today. The clipping formed the basis for an opinion piece, in which I considered how far the community has come since then, but at the same time how many things have not changed.

Elsewhere, I analysed the latest trade figures for the UK and Israel, noting in particular the growth in the trade of pharmaceutical and medical goods. I also reported on a planned demonstration against Uefa in May, and on a project in East Anglia to study forgotten poetry of the Holocaust.

Keeping with the literary theme, I covered the fact that five of the long-listed authors for the annual Women’s Prize for Fiction are Jewish, including Francesca Segal, whose novel the Innocents I reviewed last year, and an American novelist called Deborah Copaken Kogan. Writing about her novel sparked my interest, and I am now midway through the book and very much enjoying it so far.

I also covered the anniversary of Shlomo Argov’s death, marked at a ceremony hosted by John Bercow, and on a sweet – if slightly unlikely – campaign set up by a group of students in Prague urging the Nobel Committee to recognise a British Holocaust hero. In foreign news I covered the app that has been launched to accompany president Obama’s trip to Israel – where, incidentally, he will not be eating any bread.

Elsewhere, I blogged about Sheryl Sandberg’s new book for Running in Heels, arguing that while her mission is admirable, we’d be better served if she went on the campaign trail. And for Optima Magazine, I discussed whether witches are the new vampires, given the plethora of films about black-hatted sorceresses out at the moment.

My two weeks in writing

Last week saw Israel go to the polls for a general election. Following the surprising show of support for centrist Yair Lapid, I wrote for the Independent about how he was essentially “the main character of Aaron Sorkin’s as-yet unwritten series about Israeli politics” and expressed my hopes for the future.

With Holocaust Memorial day on the horizon, I challenged former Respect parliamentary candidate Lee Jasper on his comments comparing Israel and the Nazis, a comparison which was made later in the week by Liberal Democrat MP David Ward. In particular, his use of the phrase “the Jews” drew condemnation and a swift rebuke from party officials.

Elsewhere, I covered the row over a particularly gruesome Sunday Times cartoon attacking Benjamin Netanyahu – then wrote for the Independent about why I felt it was not antisemitic, merely unpleasant.

I  also interviewed former BBC presenter Robin Lustig on his distinguished career and why he is such an advocate of Twitter, covered the lunch of a new parliamentary probe in electoral misconduct and looked into why a holocaust education programme is not available in Northern Ireland. I also spoke to MP John Mann about his visit to Hungary and his thoughts on the rise of an extremist party there.

The fruits of my recent trip to Glasgow were also visible this week, with an extended report on the future of Scotland’s sole Jewish school, Calderwood Lodge, which has been the subject of a particularly fraught disagreement.

In Optima, to mark the bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I looked at the continued cultural significance of the novel. And I also questioned whether the tradition of changing a name after marriage was still relevant in the 21st century – not that I have made up my mind yet.