BLAME THE JEWS
When Tuvia Tenenbom, author of three Spiegel best-selling books, went to the United Kingdom during the long drawn-out Brexit drama and asked people to define themselves they told him that they were kind, friendly, polite and blessed with a great sense of humor. Hearing this, he was delighted to hang out with them, frequently presenting himself as a journalist from Germany, Jordan, Palestine, and even Ethiopia. They liked that, and gradually they opened up to him and told him what's on their mind. For example, they said to him that, Brexit or not, the world would have been a much more beautiful place if not for the Jews, and some even added that Hitler should have finished the job.
During his stay in the United Kingdom Tuvia, who is the artistic director of the Jewish Theater of New York and a veteran European journalist, encountered more anti-Semitism in Her Majesty's land than in any other western country that he has ever been to.
Historically, British Jews told him, the first blood libel against Jews took place in England, resulting in centuries of expulsions and slaughter of innocent Jews across Europe. Will the present anti-Semitism in the UK, he asked himself, have the same effect?
To find out why people were more worried about Jews than about Brexit, Tuvia stayed in the UK for over six months, talking to as many people as possible.
BLAME THE JEWS incorporates interviews with people young and old, rich and poor, pub patrons and spiritual leaders, Lords and mayors, Dames and MPs, students and cabbies, a philanthropist and a mercenary, a TV beauty and a gangster, the most admired football club manager and the biggest fan of the Egyptian king, to name but a few.
BLAME THE JEWS is scheduled to come out in 2020, to be followed by stage presentations in New York and elsewhere.
BLAME THE JEWS was commissioned by Suhrkamp Verlag in Berlin, under the title ALLEIN UNTER BRITEN.
