A bit of Jewish light entertainment analysis for the festive season

As it’s nearly chrismukkah I thought it a lighter post might be appreciated. I also thought that it would be appropriate given the Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Xmas, out of which emerged Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (a text which I can’t help but see as indebted to Christian conversion narratives). This is a piece I wrote for the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton, where I did my PhD, as part of a series on Jewish historical sources. I chose to focus on a piece of low culture, a television sitcom from the 1990s that I grew up watching. As you can probably tell, I like it very much and feel that it has been unjustly forgotten. No doubt that is in part because it is a very British Jewish show, making it an ideal subject for this newsletter which is dedicated to celebrating how Jewishness has been expressed in our strange little corner of the diaspora. I could write another PhD on So Haunt Me, and on its star, Miriam Karlin, but the below will do for now.

Wishing you a jolly nittel, a merry khanike and a very happy goyish new year.