Latest news with #Jewishness
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Skyrocketing antisemitism in Canada sparks concern for country's Jews ahead of election
Antisemitism in Canada has exploded in the aftermath of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, reaching record numbers last year and becoming a central issue for the country's Jewish community ahead of an April 28 federal election. Last week, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, the main challenger to Prime Minister Mark Carney accused pro-Hamas protesters of staging "hate marches" and vowing to deport antisemitic foreigners from Canada. "The rampaging chaos that we see in our streets, the targeting of synagogues and Jewish schools with hate, vandalism, violence, fire bombings ... these things were unheard of 10 years ago," Poilievre said. He also had a warning for foreign agitators. "Anyone who is here on a visitor visa who carries out lawbreaking will be deported from this country," Poilievre said. Senate Approves Peter Hoekstra As Next Us Ambassador To Canada "To Canada's Jewish community," Poilievre added, "you are not alone, you have friends. Canadians stand with you. You have the right to wear your Star of David, your kippah, and have your mezuzah on your door. You should feel proud to be Jewish and should never have to hide your Jewishness in order to stay safe." Read On The Fox News App On Friday, Poilievre shared on X the Montreal Jewish Community Council's call for Jewish voters to endorse him. In the video, the group's executive director, Rabbi Saul Emanuel, referencing Poilievre's support for the community, stated, "We remember who stood with us when it mattered most, and now we can all make a difference." Emanuel noted that Jewish voters could play a decisive role in as many as 14 districts in Canada. "Our vote matters, our voice matters. That's why I am proud to support Pierre Poilievre and I urge you to do the same," he said. Carney has also used social media to condemn antisemitism. In a tweet wishing Jewish Canadians a happy Passover, he condemned the growing incidents, stating in part, "Together, we must confront and denounce the rising tide of antisemitism, and the threat it poses to Jewish life and safety in communities across Canada." Yet despite his strong words against antisemitism, Carney recently faced criticism following a campaign rally in Calgary, where someone yelled at the Liberal Party leader, "There's a genocide happening in Palestine." "I'm aware," Carney replied. "That's why we have an arms embargo [on Israel]." The next day, Carney, who in March replaced longtime Premier Justin Trudeau, claimed he had not heard the anti-Israel demonstrator correctly. His backtracking did not stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from entering the fray. He posted on X that "Canada has always sided with civilization. So should Mr. Carney. "But instead of supporting Israel, a democracy that is fighting a just war with just means against the barbarians of Hamas, he attacks the one and only Jewish state," Netanyahu posted. According to an annual audit released this month by B'nai Brith Canada, the total number of reported cases of Jew hatred in the country hit 6,219 in 2024, a 7.4% increase over 2023 and the highest number since the survey's inception in 1982. Antisemitic incidents in Canada have skyrocketed by 124.6% since 2022. Northern Border 'Quiet Crisis' Brews As Expert Floats Unconventional Solution To Combat Human Smuggling "Over the last 18 months, a new baseline has been established for antisemitism in Canada, and it's having a detrimental effect on the lives of Jewish people," Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B'nai Brith Canada, told Fox News Digital. "We are seeing an increase in certain forms of antisemitism, specifically anti-Zionism." Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister and attorney general of Canada for the Liberal Party, told Fox News Digital "antisemitism has become mainstream, normalized and legitimized in the political, popular, academic, media, entertainment and sport cultures. All this happened in the absence of outrage," he said. "I hope that whichever party gets elected, we will see deliverables in combating specific hate crime, hate speech, harassment, assault, vandalism and all the things you find reported in the [B'nai Brith] annual report. From my experience, even those statistics are not telling the true story. They are underreported." "The community of democracies must act because the security of our collective freedom is at stake," Cotler warned. Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed told Fox News Digital many local Jews "feel vulnerable, unsafe and unprotected by law enforcement bodies, governments and education systems that have stood by as antisemitism reached crisis levels." He noted that Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, is obligated to act when Jews in the Diaspora are in distress. "Equipping teachers with the resources to teach about antisemitism and the Holocaust is essential to ensure future generations understand the dangers of hatred and continue to embrace peace, tolerance and equality," he added. Trump Takes Center Stage In Canada's Prime Minister Election Debate The antisemitism survey highlighted numerous incidents, ranging from Quebec daily La Presse publishing a cartoon depicting Netanyahu as Nosferatu, a vampire associated with Jews in Nazi-era propaganda and a pro-Hamas protester at the University of Toronto shouting at a Jewish student that Hitler should have "murdered all of you." In May, an arsonist ignited a fire at the entrance to the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue in Vancouver as prayers concluded. The same month, shots were fired at the Bais Chaya Mushka girls' school in Toronto, and the school has since been targeted twice more by gunfire. In August, a bomb threat affected Jewish institutions across the country. In December, a firebomb struck Congregation Beth Tikvah in Montreal, the second such attack since Oct. 7, 2023. Thereafter, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called on the Canadian government to take action to "stamp out" antisemitism. "The world must wake up. Words are not enough. Synagogues burned. Jews attacked. Never again is now," he said, employing the adage stressing a commitment to preventing another Holocaust. Anthony Housefather is the MP in the House of Commons for Mount Royal, an area with a large Jewish population held by the Liberals since 1940 being viewed as a bellwether for where the community stands. "The alarming numbers [of antisemitic incidents] make it clear as to why every level of government in the country needs to work together to implement all the recommendations set out in the justice committee report of last December and the commitments made at the national summit on antisemitism in March," Housefather told Fox News Digital. Trudeau, who was widely panned for failing to adequately address the groundswell of antisemitism, had announced the summit within hours of Herzog's condemnation. Neil Oberman, the Conservative Party candidate running against Housefather, told Fox News Digital that in Mount Royal "personal safety and security have become serious issues. "It's a stark reminder of the urgent need for a federal government consisting of adults implementing actions instead of putting together summits and position papers and blaming everybody else to combat hate and protect vulnerable communities," Oberman article source: Skyrocketing antisemitism in Canada sparks concern for country's Jews ahead of election
Fox News
20-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Skyrocketing antisemitism in Canada sparks concern for country's Jews ahead of election
Antisemitism in Canada has exploded in the aftermath of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, reaching record numbers last year and becoming a central issue for the country's Jewish community ahead of an April 28 federal election. Last week, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, the main challenger to Prime Minister Mark Carney accused pro-Hamas protesters of staging "hate marches" and vowing to deport antisemitic foreigners from Canada. "The rampaging chaos that we see in our streets, the targeting of synagogues and Jewish schools with hate, vandalism, violence, fire bombings ... these things were unheard of 10 years ago," Poilievre said. He also had a warning for foreign agitators. "Anyone who is here on a visitor visa who carries out lawbreaking will be deported from this country," Poilievre said. "To Canada's Jewish community," Poilievre added, "you are not alone, you have friends. Canadians stand with you. You have the right to wear your Star of David, your kippah, and have your mezuzah on your door. You should feel proud to be Jewish and should never have to hide your Jewishness in order to stay safe." On Friday, Poilievre shared on X the Montreal Jewish Community Council's call for Jewish voters to endorse him. In the video, the group's executive director, Rabbi Saul Emanuel, referencing Poilievre's support for the community, stated, "We remember who stood with us when it mattered most, and now we can all make a difference." Emanuel noted that Jewish voters could play a decisive role in as many as 14 districts in Canada. "Our vote matters, our voice matters. That's why I am proud to support Pierre Poilievre and I urge you to do the same," he said. Carney has also used social media to condemn antisemitism. In a tweet wishing Jewish Canadians a happy Passover, he condemned the growing incidents, stating in part, "Together, we must confront and denounce the rising tide of antisemitism, and the threat it poses to Jewish life and safety in communities across Canada." Yet despite his strong words against antisemitism, Carney recently faced criticism following a campaign rally in Calgary, where someone yelled at the Liberal Party leader, "There's a genocide happening in Palestine." "I'm aware," Carney replied. "That's why we have an arms embargo [on Israel]." The next day, Carney, who in March replaced longtime Premier Justin Trudeau, claimed he had not heard the anti-Israel demonstrator correctly. His backtracking did not stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from entering the fray. He posted on X that "Canada has always sided with civilization. So should Mr. Carney. "But instead of supporting Israel, a democracy that is fighting a just war with just means against the barbarians of Hamas, he attacks the one and only Jewish state," Netanyahu posted. According to an annual audit released this month by B'nai Brith Canada, the total number of reported cases of Jew hatred in the country hit 6,219 in 2024, a 7.4% increase over 2023 and the highest number since the survey's inception in 1982. Antisemitic incidents in Canada have skyrocketed by 124.6% since 2022. "Over the last 18 months, a new baseline has been established for antisemitism in Canada, and it's having a detrimental effect on the lives of Jewish people," Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B'nai Brith Canada, told Fox News Digital. "We are seeing an increase in certain forms of antisemitism, specifically anti-Zionism." Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister and attorney general of Canada for the Liberal Party, told Fox News Digital "antisemitism has become mainstream, normalized and legitimized in the political, popular, academic, media, entertainment and sport cultures. All this happened in the absence of outrage," he said. "I hope that whichever party gets elected, we will see deliverables in combating specific hate crime, hate speech, harassment, assault, vandalism and all the things you find reported in the [B'nai Brith] annual report. From my experience, even those statistics are not telling the true story. They are underreported." "The community of democracies must act because the security of our collective freedom is at stake," Cotler warned. Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed told Fox News Digital many local Jews "feel vulnerable, unsafe and unprotected by law enforcement bodies, governments and education systems that have stood by as antisemitism reached crisis levels." He noted that Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, is obligated to act when Jews in the Diaspora are in distress. "Equipping teachers with the resources to teach about antisemitism and the Holocaust is essential to ensure future generations understand the dangers of hatred and continue to embrace peace, tolerance and equality," he added. The antisemitism survey highlighted numerous incidents, ranging from Quebec daily La Presse publishing a cartoon depicting Netanyahu as Nosferatu, a vampire associated with Jews in Nazi-era propaganda and a pro-Hamas protester at the University of Toronto shouting at a Jewish student that Hitler should have "murdered all of you." In May, an arsonist ignited a fire at the entrance to the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue in Vancouver as prayers concluded. The same month, shots were fired at the Bais Chaya Mushka girls' school in Toronto, and the school has since been targeted twice more by gunfire. In August, a bomb threat affected Jewish institutions across the country. In December, a firebomb struck Congregation Beth Tikvah in Montreal, the second such attack since Oct. 7, 2023. Thereafter, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called on the Canadian government to take action to "stamp out" antisemitism. "The world must wake up. Words are not enough. Synagogues burned. Jews attacked. Never again is now," he said, employing the adage stressing a commitment to preventing another Holocaust. Anthony Housefather is the MP in the House of Commons for Mount Royal, an area with a large Jewish population held by the Liberals since 1940 being viewed as a bellwether for where the community stands. "The alarming numbers [of antisemitic incidents] make it clear as to why every level of government in the country needs to work together to implement all the recommendations set out in the justice committee report of last December and the commitments made at the national summit on antisemitism in March," Housefather told Fox News Digital. Trudeau, who was widely panned for failing to adequately address the groundswell of antisemitism, had announced the summit within hours of Herzog's condemnation. Neil Oberman, the Conservative Party candidate running against Housefather, told Fox News Digital that in Mount Royal "personal safety and security have become serious issues. "It's a stark reminder of the urgent need for a federal government consisting of adults implementing actions instead of putting together summits and position papers and blaming everybody else to combat hate and protect vulnerable communities," Oberman said.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘October 8' Review: Somber Doc Tracks Recent Rise of Antisemitism on College Campuses
'Wars today,' we hear early in 'October 8,' are fought 'not only in battlefields but also on different media outlets. It's very challenging: the war of the narrative, and sometimes even the war over truth.' It has become increasingly arduous to determine objective truth in the modern era, particularly on subjects as fraught and ideologically riven as the Middle East. But documentarian Wendy Sachs ('Surge') narrows her focus, and sets her sights closer to home. She aims, in this passionate and timely documentary, to explore how a culture war has unfolded across U.S. universities since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Under ordinary circumstances, it might feel uncontroversial to make a film about the recent rise of antisemitism on college campuses. There was, we learn, a 140% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2023, the highest on record. Surely this is a trajectory worthy of concern and exploration. But as the movie makes clear, it's not just Zionism but Jewishness itself that has become a third-rail issue. Some viewers may object strenuously to the fact that Sachs barely addresses the Palestinian cause, or the Israeli government's reaction to the October 7 attacks. It's quickly clear, though, that her attention is purely on the way the war has been used as an excuse by some to push simmering antisemitism to a boiling point. In the movie's press notes, she asserts that 'We are not litigating the war in Israel and in Gaza or advocating that anyone be denied their land or statehood.' Instead she zooms in, interviewing professors and students who share their experiences as individuals caught in both anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish furor. More impactful still is to see this firsthand via plentiful footage, in which Jewish students are threatened by peers, and dismissed by leaders. She also offers evidence that many of these demonstrations are seeded by groups and even countries dedicated to Israel's destruction. Sheryl Sandberg, Debra Messing, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congressman Ritchie Torres are among a range of talking heads who discuss the rise in antisemitism over the last year. Most memorable, however, may be Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father is Hassan Yousef, the co-founder of Hamas. Yousef is openly stunned that so many American students are vocally aligning with the concept of Intifada. 'It will be a threat against all civilized people who want to live in harmony, who believe in tolerance, who believe in peaceful dialogue with their neighbors, who believe in diversity,' he warns. Of course, like other movies designed with advocacy in mind, this one is most likely to preach to an already-sympathetic choir. For that reason, 'October 8' is often at its strongest when Sachs touches on broader perspectives within her thesis. For example, political advisor Dan Senor freely acknowledges that 'criticism of the state of Israel is normal, and is important.' But, he adds, 'Somehow, when there is a debate about Israel, it often gets into a reductionist approach where quickly the question is 'Well, does Israel have the right to exist?' We don't have that discussion about any other country.' Or, as M.I.T. student Talia Kahn — who shares that her mother is Jewish and her father Muslim — notes about the rights of everyone to live in peace, 'It's not an either/or.' 'October 8' is now playing in select theaters. The post 'October 8' Review: Somber Doc Tracks Recent Rise of Antisemitism on College Campuses appeared first on TheWrap.
Middle East Eye
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
In Trump's new order, anyone can become Palestinian
'He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian.' With these words, US President Donald Trump did not merely insult Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer - he exposed something far more insidious. In Trump's world, Palestinian is not just a nationality. It is an accusation, a sentence of exile, a mark of delegitimisation. Schumer's crime was questioning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's increasingly authoritarian government. Schumer, a staunch Zionist who has long positioned himself as one of Israel's most unwavering defenders, dared to suggest that Netanyahu's extremism was harming Israel's future. That alone was enough for Trump to strip him of his Jewishness, to brand him as something else - something meant to be demeaning. This is not the first time Trump has wielded the word 'Palestinian' as a slur. He has used it against former President Joe Biden, against Schumer previously, and indeed against anyone who dares to question Israel's policies. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The message is clear: to be called Palestinian is to be cast out. Your voice no longer counts. Your legitimacy is revoked, your rights erased. Had Schumer not been Jewish, Trump would have called him antisemitic. But even that category is losing its meaning. This is not about identity. It is about obedience. Because in this new political order, anyone can become Palestinian. Erased from history To be Palestinian in Trump's world is to be without rights. A Palestinian can be starved, bombed and expelled. A Palestinian can be erased from history - just as Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did when they engineered the Abraham Accords, bypassing Palestinians as though they did not exist. A Palestinian can be stripped of legal protections, even if they hold US residency and have committed no crime. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student, is facing deportation for nothing more than expressing his political views. The same institutions that once championed open debate are now being forced into policing thought A Palestinian can be arrested for protesting, fired for speaking, or blacklisted for dissenting. And now, anyone can be treated as one. This is the real warning in Trump's attack. You don't have to be Palestinian to be punished like one. You don't have to be Arab or Muslim. You only have to step out of line. Even Jewishness is no longer protection. Your identity has become conditional, your history disposable. You can be declared a traitor, an enemy within, someone who has forfeited their place. The moment you question Israel, you become Palestinian - not by birth, but by decree. Because in this world, a Palestinian has no rights, nor does anyone who defends them. A new McCarthyism is taking hold in America, and this time, it is not communists in its crosshairs. It is anyone who refuses to fall in line with Israel's agenda. Historical purge In the 1950s, repression was justified as a crusade against subversion, a purge of those deemed enemies of the state. Today, the same machinery of silencing is at work under the guise of combating antisemitism. But this is not about protecting Jewish people from hate; it is about criminalising criticism of Israel. It is about silencing students, journalists, academics, activists - anyone who speaks out against occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. And the hypocrisy could not be more glaring. Who is Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian student activist facing deportation from the US? Read More » Trump and his allies have built their brand on railing against political correctness. They claim to be defenders of free speech, warriors against censorship. Just a few weeks ago, Trump's vice president, JD Vance, stood at the Munich Security Conference and scolded European leaders for restricting expression. He lamented the West's supposed retreat from free debate. And yet, in the US under Trump and those who champion his ideology, free speech does not apply if the topic is Israel. Pro-Palestinian students are arrested, expelled and stripped of their degrees. Professors who challenge Israeli policies are pushed out. Journalists who report on Israeli war crimes are blacklisted, harassed and silenced. Films documenting Palestinian suffering are cancelled. Human rights organisations are smeared as terrorist sympathisers. Universities and colleges - once bastions of free inquiry - are under siege, with the Trump administration threatening to strip their federal funding if they do not suppress pro-Palestinian activism. The same institutions that once championed open debate are now being forced into policing thought. The consequences extend beyond campuses. The US Department of Education, which is supposed to protect students facing discrimination, has been ordered to prioritise antisemitism cases - some of which are politically motivated - over the needs of vulnerable children. Parents of students with disabilities are struggling to access the support to which they are legally entitled, because civil rights resources have been diverted to police speech on Israel. A system meant to safeguard the marginalised is now being repurposed to shield a foreign government from criticism. Witch hunt Another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has also been redirected - not to combat human trafficking or drug smuggling, but to hunt down students who express solidarity with Palestine. ICE has reportedly paused key investigations so that its agents can monitor social media, tracking and flagging pro-Palestinian students for their posts and likes. This is not law enforcement. This is a witch hunt. And now, the next step: legal oppression turning into outright state violence. Trump is prepared to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime measure that allows the president to detain and deport non-citizens without due process. Under this law, green-card holders, students, spouses of US citizens - anyone without citizenship - can be rounded up and expelled at the president's discretion. It was designed for times of war, for use against citizens of enemy nations. But Trump is repurposing it, transforming immigration status into a weapon of political control. And this process has already begun. Trump just deported Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese transplant specialist and professor at Brown Medicine, a legal resident on a valid H-1B work visa. There was no alleged crime, no hearing and no due process. A respected doctor was expelled at the stroke of a pen because she fits the regime's profile of the unwanted. This is not a legal system. This is ethnic and political cleansing disguised as immigration enforcement. Who will be targeted? We already know: Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims. Those who have protested, who have spoken out, whose very existence is now treated as subversive. The crackdown is escalating. First slander, then blacklists - now the threat of deportation without trial. This is how rights are destroyed - not all at once, but in stages, each step paving the way for the next. It begins with one group, then it spreads. Soon, dissent itself is an act of defiance punishable by exile. Crisis for democracy History has already shown us how this unfolds. McCarthyism began with communists, but it did not stop there. It spread to journalists, academics, labour organisers, civil rights activists - anyone deemed subversive. Lives were destroyed, reputations ruined, entire fields purged of independent thinkers. The same pattern is unfolding now. It starts with Palestinians, then students, then professors, then journalists, then public figures, then anyone who refuses to pledge unquestioning loyalty to the state of Israel. Today, it is Palestinians who are denied their humanity. Tomorrow, it is anyone who dares to dissent This is not just a crisis for Palestinians. It is a crisis for democracy itself. Israel and the US were not content with trampling on international law to wage their genocidal war on Gaza. Now they are trampling on hard-won rights and freedoms at home to silence criticism of their war crimes, erode democracy, and criminalise opposition. They are dismantling free speech in the name of combating antisemitism - when, in reality, they are weaponising it, reducing it to a political tool. And in doing so, they fuel the very antisemitism they claim to fight, conflating such repression with Israel and Jewishness itself. The moment we accept that criticism of Israel is a crime, we open the door to something even darker. Today, it is Palestinians who are denied their humanity. Tomorrow, it is anyone who dares to dissent. Because in a world where the mere act of speaking out is enough to strip you of your rights, your identity, your place in society - then anyone can become Palestinian. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Telegraph
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Award-winning author Manya Wilkinson: ‘You can't write directly about the Holocaust any more'
In the small Jewish village of Mezritsh, near the Poland-Belarus border, there once lived a trainee merchant. He was young and determined to make his fortune, so he set off one day on foot with two friends to sell brushes in the nearby Polish town of Lublin. His name was Elya and although he exists only in the imagination of the author Manya Wilkinson, she likes to think of him as a 14-year-old version of her grandmother's brother, whom she never met. 'He was a businessman who owned his own factory in Mezritsh, where my grandmother was brought up,' she says. 'When she and her other siblings emigrated to America in 1910, he stayed behind. They never saw him again.' Wilkinson's new novel, Lublin, loosely inspired by her family history, has just won this year's Wingate Prize, awarded to the best book to 'convey the idea of Jewishness to the general reader'. Part uncanny fable, part desolate comedy, with nods to Beckett and the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, it follows Elya and his reluctant friends, Ziv, a callow political firebrand, and the helplessly devout Kiva, who 'prays before every sip of water', on the road to Lublin with only a hand-drawn map for guidance. Yet, as this ill-prepared trio keep walking, convinced Lublin is just over the next hill, the landscape around them changes. More and more villages lie abandoned, the heat intensifies, hostile Cossacks menace the empty roads, and the air becomes thick with a violence that speaks of the atrocious events of the 20th century yet to come. The novel never refers to either the pogroms that obliterated much of Eastern Europe's Jewish population in the decades before the war, or the Holocaust, but that obliqueness holds the reader both entranced and appalled. 'I was trying to compress time, trying to bring that lost Jewish world, and its moment of dissolution, into the present. But I did worry whether non-Jewish readers would get it'. She wasn't alone in thinking that. Lublin is a masterful book, but it took her a long time to find an agent. 'They would tell me, 'It's wonderful, I love it, it will win prizes, but I can't sell it.'' She shrugs. 'I think it's partly because that aspect of Jewishness, the Yiddish culture, with all its humour and traditions, has become lost within the contemporary conversation about Jewishness. The way we talk about Jews today feels quite narrow.' We are sitting in the front room of Wilkinson's house in a quiet suburb of Newcastle. Wilkinson, who tells me she is 'over 65', but 'would prefer not to specify', has lived here for decades – since meeting her husband, a Newcastle native, in America and with whom she has two grown-up sons. She published a first, more conventional novel, Ocean Avenue, a family saga set between America and Europe, in 1991, and has also written short stories and many radio plays, but she spent most of her career teaching creative writing at the University of Newcastle, only embarking on Lublin after retiring five years ago. It is, I tentatively suggest, an odd place to find a Jewish New Yorker. She agrees that we don't tend to hear much about Jewish culture in Britain beyond that of north London. 'That perspective also tends to be a very male one. We can definitely expand on that view.' Did she ever encounter anti-Semitism? 'A bit. Although most people assumed I was English, since I used my English name, Margaret, instead of my Yiddish name, Manya. I'd overhear the odd talk about Jewish landlords, that sort of thing. But there's also an enormous Hasidic community in Gateshead, although I never felt any connection to that.' The Hasidim come in for a bit of pointed flak in Lublin through the character of Kiva, whose knowledge of the world largely consists of whatever he has studied in yeshiva. ('Kiva's knowledge of the Holy Land is prodigious. If only he'd known as much about Poland, things might have turned out differently,' comments the narrator.) 'I was once sitting on a plane to New York next to two Hasidim who asked to be moved because they didn't want to sit next to a woman,' Wilkinson says when I bring it up. 'It made me feel awful. There's a lot of that [within that community] and we need to admit some of it.' She sees Lublin as a personal reclaiming of sorts. Much of it is based on stories her grandmother would tell her about early-20th-century shtetl life, and the novel retains in places the outsized quality of a children's story: the hand-drawn map, for instance, features Jewish settlements with names such as Village of Girls, Village of Fools, and Russian Town – 'a dangerous place for Jews'. Yet it's also an attempt to reckon with the gaps. Her parents, who were both born in America, only spoke Yiddish at home. 'Those were the years of the melting pot in the US,' she says wryly. 'We were not encouraged to hold onto things.' Including their own history. No one in her family talked about loved ones who had died in Europe long before Hitler came to power. Nor the family members who died in Treblinka, although she remembers a story about a brother who escaped by hiding in a barn. 'My parents, my grandparents, no one would discuss it. What hints there were were terrifically disturbing and intriguing. I remember a photograph turning up of my grandmother's family and she said 'they are all gone' in a way that made me know not to ask more. That silence became something I was carrying, like a weight. It was a generational thing: the Holocaust was something best forgotten.' She is a little uneasy about the relationship between Jewish writers today and the Holocaust: 'A degree of Holocaust fatigue sets in, and it can't help but flatten the reader.' I tell her I think the publishing industry tends to milk it in quite shameful ways, churning out endless memoirs of dubious quality, and she nods. 'A memoir is an art form like anything else. The fact you went through something is not enough [to always justify it]. I personally feel you can't write directly about the Holocaust any more. It's not that there aren't new things to say, but we need to find new ways of saying it.' She's been asked to write a sequel to Lublin and feels torn. 'I don't want to be pigeonholed as a Jewish writer. On the other hand, this territory now feels very precious to me.' She also finds herself torn to an almost unbearable degree by the events of October 7 and Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza, and horrified by the anti-Semitism that has sprung up in its wake. 'I don't agree with Israel's current Right-wing government. I know Jews who do, although few feel able to say so publicly. I'm so tired of Jews being judged by one crazy government policy, but then there has always been a history of Jews being blamed whenever something horrendous takes place. 'As a Jew, it's hard to put your head above the parapet right now,' she adds. 'It feels very scary and I'm not very brave.' If she could speak out, what would she say? 'I'd say, I'm not just a foreign-policy decision. There is so much more to my culture that I want you to listen to and respect and enjoy.' Lublin is published by And Other Stories, £14.99
