Tahitian tales (and the selfish desire to sail away)
I fell for the same Edenistic charms that Melville, Gauguin and Robert Louis Stevenson had all succumbed to. Tahiti, it was then.
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Memory
It’s just a place (What I’ve learnt about being Jewish in strange new places)
I guess what tribe I belong to can’t only be explained on scientific, or genealogical lines. Maybe I simply shudder in a particular way when I hear the name ‘Adolf Hitler’. Maybe Jews aren’t related just by blood but in our synapses?
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Why we’re not just our neuroses (and how we can transcend the pain from our past)
Neuroses matter to me, because – forgetting the scientific bit for a moment – they damn well frighten me. What’s more, they damn well piss me off.
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Pride, shame and some pride today (and still shame)
There’s pride for some of us this Pride Season. For others, such terrible, corrosive shame remains. Worse, prejudice and, yes, punishment remains for countless millions, simply on account of their being lesbian, bi, trans or gay.
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We’re all storytellers. You might not know it yet.
When I was in the Royal Free hospital, recovering from my kidney operation, I needed to search for my story. I was releasing painkillers into my body every five minutes: the pain stabbed at my sides. Sleepy, I thought to myself, ‘why am I here, why have I chosen to donate my kidney, and what comes next?’
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From medieval times to the Modernists (The surprise stories of anti Jewish prejudice)
What can any of us do in response to the newer challenges – of anti-Semitism today? I would simply start by saying please open your heart or mind to what Jewish people themselves say needs to change. All too often in recent years, Jews warning journalists, politicians and others about anti Jewish prejudice have been accused of playing political games, of effectively ‘crying wolf’.
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The Hidden Histories
Whatever (or whomever) we lose, we must lament and later mourn, commemorate and acknowledge. Whatever lessons history teaches us, let’s at least agree, there are lessons that need to be learnt, that we can’t let our histories simply fade.
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What’s in a name? Coming out as Andrew Kaufman
I’ve been called various things throughout my 39 years.
At school I was called ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Igor’ (the character in cartoon, ‘Count Duckula’) and ‘Gonzo’ and various other nicknames, owing to my prominent nose. I now plan to reclaim my family past, reclaim my name from its early 20th century past. I’m coming out as Andrew Kaufman.
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The power of remembering (and not letting others distort our stories)
Memoir can and must be written because each of us has our own created version of the past. We own it, no one else does, no matter how incoherent our history is.
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The silence of others
it is very difficult to be open and to protest loudly when living under the most intolerable and oppressive forms of government. I can’t criticise those who remained silent. What I can criticise is those who remain silent now, who still repeat when it’s put to them, ‘why not remember the victims of the past?’ – “these things are better left in the past”.
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