Age of Confidence: The New Jewish Culture Wave
David Benmayer and Rebecca Taylor (Eds)
The History Press, £12.99
Buying and sailing a yacht was once memorably described as “standing in the shower ripping up hundred-dollar bills”. Launching and running a cultural magazine affords a similar experience without the shower bit, as I have learned myself over the past dozen years thanks to my involvement in two such publications, Standpoint and The Critic. To succeed, magazines need vision, enthusiasm, a clear editorial stance, a willingness to entertain ideas — and a backer (or ideally, backers) with deep pockets and endless patience.
The quarterly Jewish Renaissance has met these criteria since its foundation by Janet Levin 20 years ago.
Back then, her friends thought the Renaissance wouldn’t last more than a couple of issues.
It did seem a long shot but the friends have been proved wrong; JR, as it is affectiontely known, is still going strong, now helped by bolt-ons like events, tours and podcasts.
Another factor was the demise of the rival Jewish Quarterly, which itself has since been successfullyrevived under Australian direction.
In JR’s case, the deep pockets belong to the Dangoor family, who have helped to fund it since its launch, while the magazine’s masthead shows plenty of other generous donors.
To celebrate the anniversary, JR has published a stimulating book containing some of its most distinctive articles from past issues linked by five essays on various aspects of what its editor Rebecca Taylor and former publisher and now trustee David Benmayer term in their introduction “the new Jewish culture wave”.
They detect, over the two decades of JR’s existence, a resurgence of Jewish cultural creativity, in the UK and elsewhere, often focused on the issue of Jewish identity. (I’m sure they’re right: Jews will be arguing about identity until the arrival of the Mashiach and probably afterwards, too.)
Their choice of essayists — Bryan Cheyette on literature, Judi Herman on theatre, Monica Bohm-Duchen on art, Nathan Abrams on film, and Vanessa Paloma Elbaz on music — is well-judged.
Cheyette provides a welcome summary of the achievements of British Jewish writers this century, and an astonishing reading list it is. Cheyette picks out Naomi Alderman and Jeremy Gavron for particular praise, although he concludes by wondering where the dramatists, writers and poets aged under 40 are. Herman and Abrams follow a similar path: Abrams’s guide is useful because, as he points out, there has been no guide to Jewish film in book form over the past decade. He, too, detects a burst of creativity over that period, especially in Israeli-made films and TV series, as a glance at the Netflix listings will confirm.
Bohm-Duchen takes a similar line, noting a “bolder, more confident tone” in the work of British Jewish artists since 2001, with many drawing on the experiences of their parents, often immigrants and Holocaust survivors, for inspiration.
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz adopts a more personal approach, describing her own experience as a Colombian-born authority on Sephardi music. She believes that Sephardi Jewish culture, with its rich North African heritage, provides “a bridge for a greater understanding of Muslim culture”, which she identifies as a vital task in the aftermath of 9/11.
Let’s hope the creativity highlighted in these pages and nobly promoted by Jewish Renaissance continues to flourish.
Robert Low is a freelance journalist
