{"id":70343,"date":"2026-06-25T15:26:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/70343\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T15:26:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:26:34","slug":"in-britain-a-jewish-culture-month-aims-to-move-the-conversation-beyond-oct-7-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/70343\/","title":{"rendered":"In Britain, a Jewish Culture Month Aims to Move the Conversation Beyond Oct. 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/a>Paul Collins, far left, keeper of the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum, delivered an address on Ancient Israel and Judah as part of Britain\u2019s Jewish Culture Month, June 11. The talk had been rescheduled after concerns that ticket-holders had intended to disrupt the event. (Courtesy Board of Deputies of British Jews)<\/p>\n

Kelly Hartog | JTA<\/p>\n

In the almost three years since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, Great Britain has seen \u201ca relentless focus on everything to do with the Jewish community in the public domain, and it\u2019s about antisemitism or Israel,\u201d said Adam Ma\u2019anit, the communications manager for the Board of Deputies of British Jews.<\/p>\n

Over several weeks, a flurry of performances, lectures and art exhibits has been an opportunity to move past that.<\/p>\n

The Board of Deputies, which represents a community of diverse and often competing views under its umbrella, created Jewish Culture Month, a first-of-its-kind series held under the banner of \u201cLess Oy, More Joy.\u201d The month was designed to bolster Jewish communal confidence and to introduce wider audiences to aspects of Jewish life that rarely make headlines.<\/p>\n

The month, which wrapped up June 16, sought to make clear that British Jewish identity is, and always has been, about far more than conflict. \u201cWe\u2019re not defined as a community by pain,\u201d Ma\u2019anit told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cWe\u2019ve got great architects, writers, and musicians as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those artists were featured in more than 150 events over four weeks across the country at major museums and galleries, including London\u2019s British Museum, Oxford\u2019s Bodlein Library, Bath\u2019s Little Theatre Cinema, Nottinghamshire\u2019s National Holocaust Museum and local synagogues and private homes nationwide.<\/p>\n

Among them was The Klezmer Village Band, which introduced Jewish culture to primary schools in Plymouth. \u201cWe wanted to bring Jewish culture back into the community,\u201d Plymouth Jewish Community Director Louise Clements said. \u201cThis is the first time in many years that something like this has happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the band\u2019s musicians, Ilana Cravitz, also noted after the event that \u201cmusic is a wordless language. People respond from inside \u2014 they stop thinking, they feel. And we really saw that today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notables featured throughout the celebrations included British broadcaster and television personality Vanessa Feltz, who spoke at the opening at London\u2019s Freud Museum; comedian Bennett Arron, who performed stand-up routines in Hampstead, London; and acclaimed British artist and vocal Israel critic Anish Kapoor, whose exhibit opening on Tuesday closed out the month.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of Jewish Culture Month is about us celebrating our own culture and being proud, British Jews, and asserting ourselves in an environment where it has been the most challenging to be that very British Jew,\u201d said Ma\u2019anit.<\/p>\n

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust noted another aspect of the festival soon after it kicked off on May 16. \u201cAt a time when division and prejudice continue to affect communities across the country, initiatives like Jewish Culture Month can help build understanding and strengthen social cohesion,\u201d it posted social media.<\/p>\n

However, some thought it difficult to focus on social cohesion when discussing contemporary British Jewish identity without discussing how that identity dovetails with British Jews\u2019 relationship with Israel.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something that Jewish Renaissance, the online magazine of Jewish culture, raised ahead of the opening. Freelance writer and former Jewish Quarterly editor Matthew Reisz wrote that while there was definitely diversity in the program, \u201cWe seem unlikely to hear much about the deep divisions within the community, not least in relation to Israel\/Palestine, or the crucial, though often tense dialogue with other minority communities on both shared and contentious issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ma\u2019anit insisted that the choice was a deliberate one. \u201cIt\u2019s not a rejection of Zionism or distancing ourselves from Israel,\u201d he said. \u201cQuite the opposite. The board\u2019s leadership remains openly supportive of Israel and many of the figures involved in the project have deep personal and family ties to the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli-born Ma\u2019anit is one of those figures. He is the cousin of the Idan family of Nachal Oz, a kibbutz close by the border with Gaza. Eighteen-year-old Maayan Idan was shot and killed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 while trying to help her father, Tsachi, hold their safe room door closed. The entire event was livestreamed by the terrorists. Tsachi was abducted into Gaza, where it was believed he was still alive as the war on Gaza raged. It was discovered only later that he had been murdered, with his body finally returned in the hostage deal in February 2025.<\/p>\n

Ma\u2019anit, who spent those years lobbying for the hostages\u2019 return, appearing on news programs and organizing hostage vigils in his hometown of Brighton, has been forced to meld the personal with the professional when it comes to the post-Oct. 7 era.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why, he said, Jewish Culture Month is about creating space for aspects of Jewish identity that have been overshadowed post Oct. 7. \u201cThe argument is not that Israel is unimportant,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s that Jewish life cannot be reduced to Israel alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even without a focus on Israel and Zionism, the month did not pass without the conflict in the Middle East affecting the program. In May, a culture month lecture titled \u201cAncient Israel and Judah\u201d at the British Museum had to be postponed, the museum said, because of \u201csecurity concerns\u201d over potential \u201cdisruptions\u201d by protesters who had obtained tickets.<\/p>\n

The rescheduled event, held June 11, was the best-attended of the entire series, with around 4,000 people joining in person and online.<\/p>\n

Ma\u2019anit called the incident \u201coverblown. It was just procedural,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople fill in the blanks and then it gets out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the speed with which the controversy escalated and elicited angry reactions from many in the community only served to highlight how questions about Jewish visibility and any event with \u201cIsrael\u201d in the name \u2014 even a reference to thousands of years ago \u2014 have become highly charged in the last three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just shows how on edge the community is,\u201d Ma\u2019anit said.<\/p>\n

That has intensified the need for something like Jewish Culture Month in the eyes of many British Jews. Steph Thwaites, head of a group dedicated to helping Jewish publishing professionals navigate an increasingly hostile publishing industry, said after a Jewish Culture Month event on the topic that the professionals felt \u201ca sense of community and a source of comfort,\u201d as well as a space to \u201ccombat anti-Jewish racism in publishing and to support Jewish creatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, as UK Communities Secretary Steve Reed put it in his speech at the launch of the festivities, Jewish Culture Month \u201cis a time to celebrate Britain\u2019s Jewish community and its contribution to our shared story. It\u2019s a time for coming together. It\u2019s a time for friendship. Jewish experience cannot just be about defending against fear; it also has to be an expression of hope and joy and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Collins, far left, keeper of the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum, delivered an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[494,6188,13,956,172,32391,18,46],"class_list":["post-70343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-britain","tag-culture","tag-great-britain","tag-jewish-culture-month","tag-news","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116811450456059731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}