You can now download a collection of my selected journalism, reviews, essays and music criticism here.
Articles
(With Joel Schalit) In Search of an Israeli Left In Open Democracy 22 August 2010
Why is Turkey Only Now the Villain of the Piece In The Jewish Chronicle (Northern and Web editions) 1 July 2010
What Drove Melanie Phillips to the Right? In Guardian Comment Is Free 18 June 2010
(With Joel Schalit) Israeli Post-Democracy: Origins and Prospects In Open Democracy 10 June 2010
Unreasonable Doubt In New Humanist May/June 2010.
It’s time to put the point back into the pen of scholarly writing’ In Times Higher Education 6 May 2010
(with Joel Schalit) ‘An Israel-Palestine Like No Other Nation’ In Guardian Comment Is Free 21 April 2010
‘Tea Party Spirit Firing Red State Britain’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 4 April 2010
‘JNews: A Potential Voice for Peace’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 20 March 2010
‘Share our synagogues and community centres with other religions’ on Miriam Shaviv’s Jewish Chronicle blog 8 March 2010.
‘The Legacy of Antisemitism’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 23 February 2010
‘What is British Jewish Politics?’ in ‘New Conceptions of Community’ published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 2010 Download it here
‘A Tango Between God and Satan: Heavy Metal With a Hippy Peace Message for the Middle East’ in The Forward 27 January 2010
‘Israel and Britain’ in Zeek Print Edition. ‘Israelology’ issue, fall 2009
‘We all have views on Israel so let’s hear them’ in Jewish Chronicle 31 December 2009
‘Civilizing the debate’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 16 December 2009
‘Bring back rejection letters’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 13 December 2009
‘An End to the Left’s Decent Split’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 19 October 2009
‘The Politics of Brisket: Jews and The Wire,’ Darkmatter, no. 4 29 May 29 2009
‘Jews talking about talking about Israel’ in Haaretz Online 22 May 2009
‘Why were there two versions of The Shield’s finale?’ in Guardian TV and Radio Blog, 19 May 2009
‘Debating the Debate’ in The Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2009, 50-54
‘A Jewish Awakening’ Prospect web exclusive, 1 March 2009
(with David Hayes) ‘The Politics of ME, ME, ME’ in Open Democracy 9 Jan 2009
‘British Jews and Israel: A New Relationship?’ in Guardian Comment is Free 13 Jan 2009
‘In Praise of Part-Time Musicians’ in Guardian Comment is Free 19 December 2008
‘The Jewish Community in Britain: It Still Doesn’t Feel Right’ in Manna issue 101 Autumn 2008
‘Is Britain Good for the Jews’ in The Jerusalem Post (paper and online editions) June 18 2008
‘Impaired (Euro)Vision’ in Guardian Comment Is Free 19 May 2008
‘It’s Not Just for ME That I Ask’ in Times Higher Education 15 May 2008
‘What It Really Means To Be Healthy’ in Guardian G2 Section 6 May 2008
‘A Real Peace Movement?’ In Guardian Comment Is Free 6 March 2008
‘TV Drama as Sociology: In Praise of The Wire’ in Street Signs, Spring 2008, 41-2
‘How to talk about things we know nothing about’ in Open Democracy 22 February 2008
Norwegian translation: ‘Hvordan Snakke Om Ting Man Ikke Har Greie På’ in Arkitekturn 6 2009
‘Intra-Faith to Faith’ in Guardian Comment is Free , January 15 2008
‘People, you really ought to talk to each other’ in The Jewish Chronicle, 11 January 2008, p31
‘How To Be Left’ in Guardian Comment is Free, November 2007
‘The Politics of Assimilation’ in Guardian Comment is Free, November 2007
‘Dialogue, Debate and Political Commitment’ in Liberal Conspiracy, November 2007
‘Dwellers and Seekers’ in The Jewish Quarterly, Autumn 2007, 60-1
‘The Seductions of Denial’ in Open Democracy, September 2007
‘A Response to Ruth Rosenfelder’ [part of the collection ‘The Problem With Dialogue’] in New Jewish Thought, September 2007
‘Boycotts and Ethics’ on the Jeneration website August 23 2007
‘The Hermeneutics of Anti-Anti-Semitism’ in New Jewish Thought , 2006
‘Preparing for the Pains of Peace’ in Sh’ma 36, November 2005
Book reviews:
‘Another Way, Another Time: Religious Inclusivism and the Sacks Rabbinate’ by Meir Persoff in the Jewish Quarterly 215 Summer 2010
‘Jewry between Tradition and Secularism: Europe and Israel Compared’ Edited by Eliezer Ben-Rafael et al. in International Sociology 25:2 302-305 2010
‘‘Perfidious Albion’: How Britain treats its Jews’ Review of ‘Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England‘ By Anthony Julius in The Forward 12 March 2010
‘Exploring the Networked Worlds of Popular Music: Milieu Cultures’ by Pete Webb in Popular Music and Society 331:1 136-138 2010
‘The Fascination of Israel: Three Left-of-Center Writers Offer Critiques of a Western Obsession’ in The Forward 16 December 2009
‘An Offensive Culture: Review of Brian Klug’s ‘Offense: The Jewish Case’ in Zeek 18 December 2009
‘Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World’ by Barbara Ehrenreich in New Humanist November/December 2009
‘Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War’ by Jonathan Pieslak in Times Higher Education, 19 November 2009.
‘Jews and Sex’ edited by Nathan Abrams in The Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2009, 80-1
‘The Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence’ by Bruce Johnson and Martin Cloon in Times Higher Education 29 January 2009
‘A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity’ edited by Anne Karpf et al in Zeek, November 24 2008
‘Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity’ by Jonathan Freedman in Jewish Quarterly 210, Summer 2008
‘Great Satan’s Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism’ by Scott Wilson in Times Higher Education 24 July 2008
‘True Norwegian Black Metal’ by Peter Beste in New Humanist 123/4 July/August 2008
‘Jews and Europe in the Twenty-First Century: Thinking Jewish’ by Nick Lambert in The Jewish Chronicle 7 December 2007 p46
‘A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward’ in New Humanist 122/5, Sept/Oct 2007
‘Music and Youth Culture’ by Dan Laughey, in Sociology 41/2, 2007
Essay review of ‘The Art of Listening’ by Les Back in New Jewish Thought August 2007
‘False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground’ by Steven Taylor, in www.iaspm.net, 2004
‘Popular Music and National Culture in Israel’ by Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi in the Jewish Chronicle, 4 June 2004
Essay Review of ‘Rock and Roll Jews’ by Michael Billig, in Manna 69, Autumn 2000
Music writing
Since 2005 I have written the blog Metal Jew that discusses metal and Jewish music.
Between 1997 and 2006 I wrote music reviews and interviews for the magazine Terrorizer
‘Heavy Shtetl’ in Guardian Comment Is Free , 6 April 2009.
‘The Aesthetics of Hate Music’ essay commissioned for the ‘Anti-semitism and xenophobia today’ website: http://www.axt.org.uk/hatemusic/hatemusic.htm , 2004
‘Jews and Black Music: A Difficult Relationship’ in Jewish Renaissance, 6/3, 29-30, 2004