Diary

10 January 2009

Julia Hobsbawm opens her diary

If the recession is a mood dampener, the escalation in Gaza is a relentlessly bleak depression. Our eldest son is named after the Polish ghetto photographer Roman Vishniac. In my family we are all related to someone a generation away who came from a ghetto or a concentration camp. No one deserves to live in a ghetto like Gaza City, and no one should be surprised that there is an uprising if they are made to. Not even reading the glorious short story collection Fabulous Small Jews by Joseph Epstein to remind me why I come from a people who learn from history rather than repeat it, and who can do so with grace and kindness and wit, could lift my gloom. I agree with the fabulous Jew Daniel Barenboim, who wrote movingly that ‘Palestinian violence torments Israelis and does not serve the Palestinian cause; Israeli retaliation is inhuman, immoral, and does not guarantee security.’

For light relief I went to see Hairspray in the West End, and then my publishers threw a party at Martha Lane Fox’s wonderful karaoke bar Lucky Voice. Even most of those guests who had anxiously rung to forewarn me that they can’t sing could not help themselves. Bertold Brecht once wrote that ‘After the dark times, there will be singing. About the dark times.’ How about during them? If nothing else beats the recession, karaoke bars surely will.

Julia Hobsbawm runs the media company Editorial Intelligence and is the author of The See-Saw: 100 Ideas for Work-Life Balance, published by Atlantic Books.

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Donald Breyer

January 15th, 2009 9:50pm Report this comment

Ms. Hobsbawn re: "Israeli retaliation is inhuman, immoral and does not guarantee security." I think you are suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. I guess no one around you will disapprove if you kick Israel safely from the UK. But I think you are an odious coward and sanctimonious fraud. Other than that, I really enjoyed your Diary.

DH

January 20th, 2009 1:47pm Report this comment

You misquote Brecht. He actually wrote that IN dark times, too, there WILL be singing, just as in bright times: "In den finsteren Zeiten// Wird da auch gesungen werden?// Da wird auch gesungen werden.// Von den finsteren Zeiten." (1939)

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