Calev Ben-Dor

@fathomjournal published over 130 pieces in 2024. There was hopefully something for everyone (we used to promise that there would be one essay in every issue that someone wouldnt like!). Here are 13 of my favorites - a thread

The shiduch (unwittingly) made by a podcast we both enjoy @2jewsonthenews

@fathomjournal's interview with British novelist Howard Jacobson. Jewish life in the UK, antisemitism, Israel, ‘ashamed’ Jews, and much much more.

@DavidBolchover discusses Jewish footballers who were murdered in the Holocaust and what it demonstrates about Holocaust memory & 3 main forms of a "subtle and self-serving distortion at play" Presenting the Holocaust as a terrible, anomalous blip; universalising and dejudaising the victims; and limiting the perpetrators to an elite cadre of highly committed Nazis. fathomjournal.org/europes-forgot…

Karen E. H. Skinazi discusses the renaissance of Sephardic culture in the UK and reflects on the Birmingham Jewish community’s participation in the inaugural Jewish Culture Month. fathomjournal.org/the-uks-sephar…

Delighted to publish today’s @fathomjournal Highlight with three excellent pieces - Howard Jacobson, Karen E. H. Skinazi & @DavidBolchover on Jewish life in the UK, antisemitism, Israel, ‘ashamed’ Jews, Sefardi Culture & Holocaust Memory

Dan Jacobs contends that some forms of support for Israel, especially on the religious and political right, are bound up with antisemitic ideas. This form of antisemitism treats Jews as objects, does not respect Judaism or Jewish identity, and uses Israel as a means of managing Jews. fathomjournal.org/pro-israel-ant…

Anna Zawadzka describes how E.European countries adopted the notion that Nazism and Communism were equivalent historical crimes - an idea suffused with antisemitism - and explains how this has resulted in a new form of Holocaust distortion known as negationism. fathomjournal.org/the-camps-and-…

Excited to publish a new @fathomjournal highlight today

Haroun Elias argues that we can only understand the departure of Egypt’s minorities through laws that made life impossible for these groups & through the buildings that remain & testify to their presence. ‘Over three decades, the state’s definition of belonging shifted from a fluid, pluralistic model, inherited from the imperial era, to a centralised, nationalistic framework that increasingly tied citizenship to a narrower national identity’ fathomjournal.org/the-mechanics-…

Maxine Haddad reflects upon growing up in Syria and events of recent decades She describes how the Assad regime manipulated international isolation and in particular the fears of Syrian minorities to maintain their loyalty. She also details the uncertainty that Syrians confronted during the civil war and since the fall of the Assad regime fathomjournal.org/when-hamburger…

Today's @fathomjournal highlight features two voices from the Middle East and expert opinion from Elliott Abrams

@MegKeene hiya Meg - cant DM you (and not sure if we count as non-Jewish media) but id be happy for us to discuss this

Being pro-Israel is career suicide in publishing. The data I’ve pulled from Publisher’s Marketplace shows that since 10/7 *ONE* Jewish fiction deal has gone to someone who has made public pro-Israel statements, and she was already an established author. Jews as a whole, regardless of their stance on Israel, have not faired much better. (I have a data driven OpEd on this that I’m trying valiantly to get a mainstream publication to pick up. If any editor in the non-Jewish media is interested please let me know.)

David Stromberg explores his bond with Israel in relation to that of the writer Jean Améry. Like Améry, he feels alienated by aspects of Israeli politics. Unlike Améry, however, Stromberg’s bond with Israel is that of an Israeli and not of a Diaspora Jew. ‘I can relate to the ineffable nature of this connection – to the sense that something that can’t be put into words but that can be experienced in extremely powerful ways binds you to this country.’ fathomjournal.org/jean-amery-and…

@goldman1007 details what he terms the cynicism behind Israel's new death penalty law & maps how the Talmudic tradition and mainstream religious Zionist broadly opposes the death penalty. ‘The real story is not the gallows,’ he adds, ‘It is the mechanism by which a culture-war manoeuvre was laundered through the language or perversion of Jewish law, national security, and the grief of bereaved families.’ fathomjournal.org/death-to-terro…

@fathomjournal published a new highlight today with three pieces