Jewish Renaissance is a quarterly cultural magazine, founded in 2001, covering Jewish culture, arts and communities in Britain and beyond. It is published and edited by Janet Levin.

Description

The magazine focuses on the arts

The arts

The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...

 – visual arts

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

 and architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 – as well as on Jewish identity

Jewish identity

Jewish identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a Jew and as relating to being Jewish. Under the broader definition, the Jewish identity does not depend on whether or not a person is regarded as a Jew by others, or by an external set of religious, or legal, or...

 and relations with other cultures and religions. In each issue there is a 10-16 page illustrated feature on a different Jewish community around the world, drawing on historical material, contemporary interviews, and a cultural events listing, among other content. It also contains in-depth interviews of people of interest from a Jewish historical or cultural viewpoint. For example, it interviewed Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh

Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s...

 prior to his Royal National Theatre

Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

 production of his 2005 play Two Thousand Years. The magazine published an interview with Helga Bejach, a Jewish child rescued on the kindertransport

Kindertransport

Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig...

 and subsequently adopted by the family of Richard

Richard Attenborough

Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...

 and David Attenborough

David Attenborough

Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...

. It also contains articles on such contemporary subjects as how the Jewish community is responding to climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

.

The magazine is independent and financed by subscriptions and advertising. It won the awards for the Best Non-Synagogue Magazine and for the Best Professional Article in the Board of Deputies of British Jews

Board of Deputies of British Jews

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 as a joint committee of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities in London, it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the UK Jewish...

 Awards in 2002, among others. Jewish Renaissance is published and edited by Janet Levin and chaired by Lionel Gordon, a former Chairman of The Jewish Chronicle

The Jewish Chronicle

The Jewish Chronicle is a London-based Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.-Publication data and readership figures:...

. Notable individuals from the British Jewish arts world who sit on its editorial advisory board include the actress Maureen Lipman

Maureen Lipman

Maureen Diane Lipman CBE is a British film, theatre and television actress, columnist and comedienne.-Early life:Lipman was born in Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Maurice Julius Lipman and Zelma Pearlman. Her father was a tailor; he used to have a shop between the...

; Director of the Wiener Library

Wiener Library

The Wiener Library is the world's oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust, its causes and legacies. Founded in 1933 as an information bureau that informed Jewish communities and governments worldwide about the persecution of the Jews under the Nazis, it was transformed into a...

, Ben Barkow

Ben Barkow

Ben Barkow is the director of the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History and writer.Barkow was born in Berlin but lived in London from the age of four. He studied at the Middlesex Polytechnic and at University College London...

; City Editor of London's Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

, Alex Brummer

Alex Brummer

Alex Brummer is a veteran economic commentator, working as a British journalist, editor, and author. He has been the City Editor of the Daily Mail since May 2000, where he writes a daily column on economics and finance.He is a regular contributor to the Jewish Chronicle , writing the weekly...

; and playwright Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker

Sir Arnold Wesker is a prolific British dramatist known for his contributions to kitchen sink drama. He is the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings...

.