Abstract
In this Afterword, David Cesarani’s son Daniel, widow Dawn and friend and colleague Bryan Cheyette explore David’s life and work since his days as a doctoral student at Oxford. Charting the progress of his academic career from Queen Mary and Westfield College to Royal Holloway, University of London, via the Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Southampton, they reflect on David’s wide range of interests, focusing particularly on his work as a Jewish historian before he became a historian of the Holocaust. They show that it was his books on Anglo-Jewish history that provoked most controversy—from his first collection The Making of Anglo-Jewry (1990) to the last on Benjamin Disraeli published posthumously. Frequently invited to draw on history in order to reflect on the day’s events by TV, radio and the press, David’s analysis was articulate, erudite and often unexpected. David’s was a trusted voice both within and without the Jewish community and within both the academy and the wider public. We miss it dearly.
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Notes
- 1.
For a published version of this eulogy see Bryan Cheyette, “Following David Cesarani (1956–2015): A Personal Reflection,” Jewish Historical Studies 47, 1 (December 2015): 1–3.
- 2.
Other books by David’s students on his bookshelves include: Sarah Kavanaugh, ORT, The Second World War and the Rehabilitation of Holocaust Survivors (London; Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2008). Vivi Lachs, Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1884–1914 (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2018). Russell Wallis, Britain, Germany and the Road to the Holocaust: British Attitudes towards Nazi Atrocities (London; New York: I. B. Taurus, 2014) and Daniel Tilles, British Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish Responses 1932–1940 (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
- 3.
“Disraeli—Time to let go?,” Jewish Chronicle, November 29, 2013.
- 4.
David Cesarani, “Disraeli the Cad, Disraeli the Bounder,” Jewish Chronicle, November 17, 2013.
- 5.
See, for instance, “Religion in Public Space—‘the eruv’ controversy in North West London 1986-1996.” This was a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship awarded to David in 1996.
- 6.
Our account of the historiography of Disraeli has been helped enormously by Todd Endelman (personal communication). Professor Endelman is the foremost American scholar on Anglo-Jewish history. Other American influences on David’s early work include Professor David Sorkin, Professor Arthur Herzberg, Professor Paula Hyman and Professor Steven Zipperstein.
- 7.
Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred: or, The New Crusade (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 106.
- 8.
David Cesarani, Disraeli: The Novel Politician (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), 209.
- 9.
David Cesarani, ed., The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 1990), 140.
- 10.
Ibid., 10. For a view of The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry after more than two decades see the “Introduction” to Hannah Ewence and Tony Kushner, eds., Whatever Happened to British Jewish Studies? (London; Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012), 1–28.
- 11.
Phil Baty, “The Deadly Silence of Britain’s Jews,” Times Higher Education, January 7, 2000.
- 12.
Cheyette, “Following David Cesarani,” 2.
- 13.
David Cesarani, “Autobiographical Reflections on Writing History, the Holocaust and Hairdressing,” in Holocaust Scholarship: Personal Trajectories and Professional Interpretations, ed. Christopher R. Browning, Susannah Heschel, Michael R. Marrus, Michael Shain (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 67–68.
- 14.
Ibid., 72.
- 15.
Personal communication with Bryan Cheyette.
- 16.
One example out of very many includes a six page 1984 letter to Bryan Cheyette on John Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl (1983) which dismantles its various orientalist assumptions and stereotypes. Such a critique is most relevant today given the lack of any critical engagement with the six-part adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl by the BBC in October 2018.
- 17.
Cesarani, “Autobiographical Reflections,” 72.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
See Larissa Allwork and Rachel Pistol’s “Introduction” to this volume for a different account of this sea-change.
- 20.
Cesarani, “Autobiographical Reflections,” 83. See also Larissa Allwork’s interview with David in this volume.
- 21.
“Autobiographical Reflections,” 80. Justice Delayed is dedicated to the ‘memory of my mother neé Sylvia Packman, born London 1921, died London 1977, her uncle Jankiel Packman, born Biała Podlaska, Poland, 1903, died Auschwitz, 1944 and his wife Lisa, born Leczika, Poland, 1904, died Auschwitz, 1942…The fate of their teenage daughter is not recorded.’
- 22.
David Cesarani, “Looking for the Maggot in the Apple: An Interview with Willy Goldman,” Jewish Quarterly 35, 4 (Winter 1988): 23–25; Cesarani, “The East London of Simon Blumenfeld’s Jew Boy,” The London Journal 13, 1 (Winter 1987): 46–53. Cesarani “Forward”, in The 43 Group: Battling with Mosley’s Blackshirts, by Morris Beckman (London: Centerprise, 2006) and Cesarani, “Introduction,” in Volla Volla, Jew Boy, by Cyril Spector (London: Centerprise, 1988).
- 23.
Cesarani, “Autobiographical Reflections,” 83.
- 24.
David Cesarani, ed., Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550–1950 (London: Frank Cass, 2002) and Cesarani and Gemma Romain, eds., Jews and Port Cities, 1590–1990: Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism (London: Frank Cass, 2006). These volumes broadened out the pioneering work of David Sorkin and Lois Dubin.
- 25.
Cheyette, “Following David Cesarani,” 1.
- 26.
Dan Stone, “British Jewry, Antisemitism and the Holocaust: the Work and Legacy of David Cesarani: An Introduction,” Patterns of Prejudice 53:1 (2019): 2–8.
- 27.
David Cesarani, The Jews and the Left (London: Labour Friends of Israel, 2004), 81. Dawn Waterman recalls that this short book was commissioned largely because Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown wanted to be educated on the rich history of Jewish involvement with socialism in Britain. Needless to say, such education is much needed in the present-day Labour Party.
- 28.
David Cesarani, “A Way out of this Dead End,” The Guardian, September 16, 2005. See also Humayun Ansari and David Cesarani, eds., Muslim-Jewish Dialogue in a 21st Century World (Egham: Centre for Minority Studies, Royal Holloway University of London, 2007) which was based on a two-year seminar series.
- 29.
David was awarded an OBE in 2005 for ‘advising on Holocaust Memorial Day and for services to Holocaust education.’ The following prizes for David’s books have been either awarded or shortlisted as follows: Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–1949 (won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize 2017 and was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Prize 2017); Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism 1945–1948 (shortlisted for the Golden Dagger Award for non-fiction and was a History finalist for a US National Jewish Book Award, 2009); Eichmann: his Life and Crimes (won the 2006 US National Jewish Book Award for History and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 2006); The ‘Jewish Chronicle’ and Anglo-Jewry 1841–1991 (shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Prize, 1995).
- 30.
Cesarani, Final Solution, xxix.
References
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Cesarani, D., Cheyette, B., Waterman, D. (2019). Afterword. In: Allwork, L., Pistol, R. (eds) The Jews, the Holocaust, and the Public. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28675-0_17
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