I’ve been called various things throughout my 39 years.
At school I was called ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Igor’ (the character in cartoon, ‘Count Duckula’) and ‘Gonzo’ and various other nicknames, owing to my prominent nose. I now plan to reclaim my family past, reclaim my name from its early 20th century past. I’m coming out as Andrew Kaufman.
In some cases, Jews don’t count as much as they should in contemporary identity politics. In an age of ‘what-about-ery’, those who think they’re on the ‘right side of history’ and ‘progressive’, seem less concerned about Jews than other minorities, largely believing Jews to be white, rich people and therefore not a typical ‘minority’.
Memoir can and must be written because each of us has our own created version of the past. We own it, no one else does, no matter how incoherent our history is.
it is very difficult to be open and to protest loudly when living under the most intolerable and oppressive forms of government. I can’t criticise those who remained silent. What I can criticise is those who remain silent now, who still repeat when it’s put to them, ‘why not remember the victims of the past?’ – “these things are better left in the past”.
There are times where it gets a little frantic. This past ten days, it’s felt as though half of Paris has descended on to the streets. The local economy might not just survive but even thrive in the coming months. Parisians see eating out as a holy rite.
Its merciless, this disease. Worse still, it’s discriminatory, exposing existing fault-lines across society.