The Muslim Vote campaign has been criticised for engaging in sectarian politics in the election, but in reality everyone is doing it
Thing I’ve been reading / listening to
This Jewish Currents podcast, on Arab Jewish / Mizrachi identity and politics is a must listen, and happily contains some British accents, being based on a retreat which took place in the UK.
I’m reading Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family. It’s a historical book, tracing a prominent American Jewish family with ancestors who were slaves in the Caribbean.
A good piece on the recent Tel Aviv peace conference by Haggai Matar
A thoughtful and thought provoking debate between Matan Kaminer and Andreas Malm on October 7th and the war on Gaza.
Brian Cheyette’s lecture Decolonising Testimony, connecting the testimonies of Frederick Douglass and Primo Levi
I didn’t write about the election during the campaign. There was nothing for me to say, because, blissfully, there was little discussion of Jews. The only exception was Keir Starmer saying that he tries to stop work at 6pm on Friday evenings to be with his family, clearly a reference to Shabbat dinner given that his wife is Jewish. Laughably, the Tories tried to paint this as an example of the Labour leader being lazy. Otherwise, nobody was talking about Jews, and this was a huge relief. In the 2019 election, and the year or two preceding it, it seemed like almost every programme or article felt the need to say something about Jews and antisemitism, with much of it being total nonsense. The experience of being constantly talked about, and feeling compelled to rebut it when it was wrong, was exhausting and unwelcome. This time round, no Jews was good news.
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