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Haute Kosher

“I am a proud convert”: My conversion to Judaism

   I am a proud convert. My interest in Judaism began with my family background, and I cannot explain my conversion without first explaining that.    My mother’s side of the family,...

A retrospective on Pesach 2022: Leah

"Perhaps the question of how we can connect to traditions authentically, without doing things we don't believe in for the sake of it or giving up on truly living our Jewishness, is a universal diasporic and/or secular conundrum."

A retrospective on Pesach 2022: Naomi

"I definitely felt a greater level of spiritual connection to the holiday of Passover than I ever have before."

Jewish reading recommendations

It is these expressions of Jewish life before the war - beset with jokes, neuroses, and anguish - which stay alive long after reading the texts. I would highly recommend.

Haute Kosher: The lady doth kvetch too much (or does she?)

kvetch  Etymology: Yiddish kvetshen to talk about something at great length and (often) in an...

“I am a proud convert”: My conversion to Judaism

   I am a proud convert. My interest in Judaism began with my family background, and I cannot explain my conversion without first explaining that.    My...

A retrospective on Pesach 2022: Leah

"Perhaps the question of how we can connect to traditions authentically, without doing things we don't believe in for the sake of it or giving up on truly living our Jewishness, is a universal diasporic and/or secular conundrum."

A retrospective on Pesach 2022: Naomi

"I definitely felt a greater level of spiritual connection to the holiday of Passover than I ever have before."

Jewish reading recommendations

It is these expressions of Jewish life before the war - beset with jokes, neuroses, and anguish - which stay alive long after reading the texts. I would highly recommend.

Haute Kosher: The lady doth kvetch too much (or does she?)

kvetch  Etymology: Yiddish kvetshen to talk about something at great length and (often) in an annoying manner, semantic development (perhaps reflecting an extended use along...

Haute Kosher: Rediscovering a family

I never really thought to ask about my family. I knew that some of us came over from Russia, Ukraine, Poland – but I...

Haute Kosher: On the politicisation of Jewish identity: or, why sometimes I wish I could care less

CW: Antisemitism Being Jewish isn’t an easy gig. Or at least, it doesn’t always feel like it. That doesn’t mean I don’t also love being...

Haute Kosher: To life, l’chaim

"We must not live in fear; we must live so vibrantly that if we are taken again, we will have left our mark, so that even after our death, we will live."

Code Name Mary: Jewish Heroes

It is rare to hear about a life as extraordinary as that of Muriel Gardiner. A student who left Oxford for an underground socialist...

Haute Kosher: On being half and feeling whole

In Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, a novel in verse based on fragments by Stesichorus about the myth of Geryon, shame is being a...

They Always Knew (after Daddy)

I weep like a child, despised, licking my wounds, the very dog you slew, forever, forever, the wandering Jew.

Haute Kosher: when they come, they come for all of us

This is a phrase I often repeat to myself when I find myself falling into the trap the far left often encourages: stop focusing...

Haute Kosher: Love (of Jewish holidays) in the time of Covid

Holidays are the punctuation of our lives; they come around every year with comforting regularity, providing an opportunity for rest, reflection, and celebration. Our experience of Jewish holidays since the pandemic arrived may not have been quite the same as usual, but nonetheless amid the grinding monotony of Covid-era life they have functioned as small pockets of joy.

Haute Kosher: No one is coming to save you and other Jewish parenting lessons

I sat in my A-level History lessons, staring at images of prisoners in Nazi extermination camps, alongside the same boys who had grown up in that school and probably participated in its “humorous” and “edgy” Nazi fetishism, trying to make it all fit together. I was very quiet, focusing. Still I couldn’t.

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