Mark Solomon

You’re preparing to blame diaspora Jews for what Netanyahu might (might very well) do? That’s simply insane. You’re obsessed with blaming your own community for events that are utterly beyond their control.

Our response must be to demand that, alongside the protection for all women's rights & safety, there shall be better, stronger, clearer provision for the safety, rights and representation of trans people

My heart goes out with love & support for trans people - my friends, colleagues, congregants - whose identity, rights & daily lives have been thrown into worry & fear by the ruling of the UK Supreme Court, at a time when trans & LGBTQI+ rights are under intense attack around the world. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈❤💔❤️‍🩹

We were lucky enough to catch this unusual concert at the National Taichung Theatre. They played Robert Fuchs, a wonderful Austrian composer whom I’ve come to love, but whose music is hardly ever played in Britain. An evening of rarities, and we got to meet the artists.

Queer, the new Luca Guadagnino film starring Daniel Craig, is a visually gorgeous, richly symbolic film exploring the limitlesssness of yearning. I absolutely loved it. Leslie Manville is also extraordinary in it, as she is in everything.

I’m appalled by the government’s decision not to compensate the #Waspi Women, a dreadful betrayal after assuring them, when in opposition, that they would do something to address the injustice caused by Tory decisions.

I’m pleased that my MP has voted for the Assisted Dying Bill, so that this important, necessary and humane discussion can continue.

Thank you for sharing your decision, which (as a Liberal rabbi) I strongly support. This is an important and necessary discussion for us to have.

Great new production of Tales of Hoffmann at Covent Garden, with my darling Juan Diego Flórez and lots of ballet thrown in.

I was there tonight, loved it.

Though competition is tough, Netanyahu is Israel’s worst problem.
Dear friends of Israel, please consider switching your support from Israel’s current prime minister and his government to Israeli civil society. This is a heartbreaking choice, in a very bad moment, but it’s time you made it.

Thanks to Andrea & Rolando for organising a wonderful 20th anniversary celebration for Sukkat Shalom: Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Community. I am blessed as a rabbi to have such a fantastic, warm & intellectually stimulating congregation, & we are blessed to have committed people like Rolando & Andrea.

Mozart orchestra – Mahler orchestra! Spry Leonidas Kavakos conducting from the violin in Mozart, then 97-year-old Herbert Blomstedt sitting to conduct Mahler’s mighty 9th, moulding every transcendent phrase as he slowly turned the pages of the score, like an aged wizard conjuring the music from air

That expression is used regularly in classical Rabbinic literature, long predating Islam.

I’m so glad to find you on here! Yours is one of the few accounts keeping me on X, and I’m just waiting for the moment to leave, which is now a bit closer. Shabbat shalom.

Demolishing a Palestinian school is not Zionism.

Violence against Palestinians is not Zionism.

Oppression of Palestinians is not Zionism.

Zionism is believing in the right of the Jewish people to live in our indigenous homeland…doesn’t everyone deserve at least that much?

I’m so happy to find you on here! Yours is one of the few accounts keeping me on X, so that’s one step closer to leaving ❤️

The symphonies and string quartets of Giuseppe Cambini, who deserves to be much better known.

📢 Worry about #COVID19 in England rose with case rates but fell during lockdowns and after vaccine rollout. Those at higher risk or from minoritised ethnic groups were more worried. No evidence fear-based government impacted on levels of worry.

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Revealed: UK government keeping files on education critics’ social media activity An Observer investigation finds DfE tried to cancel conference with ‘unsuitable’ speakers – and experts who criticised state education policy had files kept on online posts

It’s not as though the Department for Education has anything else to occupy its time, like crumbling schools and plummeting numbers of underpaid teachers. This sounds like 1950s FBI stuff.

Yes, look like antirhinums, aka snapdragons.

Strictly Cum Dancing

When life gives you lemons — pretend they’re etrogs. The postal service deprived my Edinburgh congregation of our etrogim this Sukkot (boo!) but we made do. I decided that, since the blessing only mentions the lulav (palm branch) we could still make the blessing.

What do you do with a bar-mitzvah boy who can’t deliver his talk above a whisper? Get his mum to repeat each paragraph after him. Worked okay. We heard about why it isn’t polite to use an elephant as a wall of your sukkah.