I think it's fair to say that this newsletter has not been missed since my last post in February 2024. While I am sure that some readers do enjoy my writing, it's not as though there is a shortage of other stuff to read.
I missed this newsletter though.
Some of that is to do with the simple pleasure of playing with those ideas that don't fit anywhere else, as I am wont to do here. But there's a darker, narcissistic side too: As I wrote a while back, following the October 7th attacks in Israel and during the Gaza war that followed, I've been feeling an endless sense of panic that I must contribute to the Discourse or risk being left behind and forgotten.
Well, now I'm back. And I haven't been idle in the interim. I signed a contract with Icon Books (who published my 2021 book The Babel Message) for my next book back in January 2024 and, since then, I've been trying to make the deadline for the manuscript and there was no time for writing anything else. Last week, I delivered the full draft to my publisher, a few weeks early. There will be edits but it looks like my next work will be published in March 2025.
The title of the book is likely to be Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are. Here's the draft blurb:
Can Jews be allowed to become boring?
With Israel and antisemitism constantly in the news, it seems as though the Jewish people - a fraction of a percentage of the world's population - have become synonymous with controversy, drama and anxiety. But what if there was another side to this persistently interesting people; one that non-Jews often don't know about and Jews rarely talk about? This is the stuff of 'everyday' Jewishness; the capacity to be ordinary, mundane and sometimes just plain dull.
Keith Kahn-Harris lifts the lid on this surprising world in a book for Jews and non-Jews alike. Arguing that his people's extraordinary public visibility today is harming their ability to live everyday Jewish lives, he celebrates the mundanity and mediocrity of a people before it vanishes completely.
(The blurb will likely change. Enjoy it while it lasts.)
I started planning this book in the first few months of 2023, but it was the aftermath of the events of October 7th 2023 that galvanised my efforts. Since the Gaza war began I have found the prominence of Jews in existentially important debates to be excruciating. It isn't just that the eyes of the world are on the Jewish state, or that antisemitism is now an issue of national political importance in many countries (including the UK and the US); it's that these issues have become intertwined with all kinds of other issues. Consequently, Jews are as visible and public as they have ever been.
One example of this has been the linkage between climate change and Gaza. It was really striking to see Greta Thunberg marching for Palestine. When activists who are otherwise so focused on an issue that impacts on everyone and everything, make an exception for Gaza, it is as though Palestine is on the same level of significance. Whether you are the kind of Jew who marches alongside or marches against such campaigns, our association with significance is reinforced.
What has motivated me to write Everyday Jews has been my concern that Jewish existence risks becoming 'hollowed out'. Regardless of where Jews are on the political spectrum, the relentless 'outward' focus on issues of global significance is common to all other than some factions within strictly orthodox Judaism. What will be left for us when the dusk settles (if it ever does)?
The Gaza war has supercharged tendencies that have been building in importance over decades. Jewishness has become a public matter. There is a widespread assumption that 'insular' and 'parochial' are adjectives to be avoided. My book will challenge such assumptions and will celebrate the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary, the normal, the mediocre, the trivial and the boring. And while the book makes an intervention in a high-profile debate, I've also approached it with a sense of playfulness that may delight readers or infuriate them.
The book is for Jews and non-Jews. My aim is to try and convince Jews to treasure their suppressed everydayness and to try and show non-Jews that there is a whole other side of us.
I will be sharing more about Everyday Jews in the coming months. For now, I'm going to tease you with the contents. The chapter titles may or may not survive my editors comments - and their contents too - so this may well be the first and last time anyone sees them:
A note on language.
Introduction.
Chapter One: Baseball in the bloodlands.
Chapter Two: The secrets of the Jews.
Chapter Three: The Jewification game.
Chapter Four: Sorry, I’m not going to refer to David Baddiel's 'Jews Don't Count' in the chapter title.
Chapter Five: Punching below our weight
Chapter Six: Living and dying to organise.
Chapter Seven: What’s the point of it all?.
Chapter Eight: The great Chanukah swindle.
Chapter Nine: The Israel chapter
Chapter Ten: Sacred smallness.
Chapter Eleven: A small-minded people.
Conclusion.
Great stuff! Enough about Jews already. Except for this book!
Sounds really interesting- looking forward to reading more!