Nobody ever asks me what it felt like. They never ask what it was like — Hadley Freeman

"Theres clearly some bias on my part. Im drawn to Jewish comedy because its part of my cultural shared language, which is a fancy way of saying that it feels familiar: the neuroticism, the self-deprecation, the self-aware hyper-verbosity. These are all family traits, because theyre Jewish traits. But why *are* so many Jews comedians, given how relatively few of us there are? I’ve collected theories over the years. The most common one, inevitably, is that comedy is the natural response to all those centuries of persecution, which I guess is possible, although I dont remember hearing about too many comedy clubs in Auschwitz. Another popular one is that because Jews study the Talmud for meaning, we are used to looking at things from a different perspective, which is the most important quality to a comedian. I personally suspect it has something to do with our natural lack of athleticism: if you cant be fast in the playground, youd better be funny. Hey, no one ever saw Mel Brooks jogging, right? And what has brought more joy to people’s lives, Blazing Saddles or running? We naturally brilliant Jews know the answer to that one."

"House of Glass begins in 1901 in a shtetl in Poland, and ends in 1999 in Paris, London and New York. It tells of Alex and his siblings, Jacques, Henri and Sala, Freemans adored grandmother, with whom she spent a lot of time in her native US. Jacques died in Auschwitz, but Freeman saw Alex a fair few times before his death in 1999, and met other members of the family at a one-off reunion in Deauville in 1983, when she was five. Her book, she insists, is a family story, just with a number of unusual real events, such as when, in the late 1970s, Henri and his wife, Sonia, were neighbours of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Château."

"I joined the JC a year and a half ago as a monthly columnist because I strongly want there to be a mainstream national Jewish newspaper in this country that represents the plurality of views of Jews in this country. Most British Jews believe in a Jewish home state, we believe in a two-state solution and we hope for peace in the Middle East. And what it felt like increasingly was the Jewish Chronicle was representing a more ideological rather than strictly journalistic point of view and was becoming far more right-wing and in-step with Netanyahu which I would think that most British Jews are not."

"An eating disorder is a mental illness. It is characterised by the sufferers belief that they are too fat, that to survive on 500 calories a day is the norm, that doctors are trying to make them fat, that weighing more than seven stone is obese and unacceptable. So far, so paranoid. Yet the current culture of skinniness legitimises the anorexics beliefs. That is where the danger lies. Once a person becomes severely anorexic, they are usually too locked into their own little world to care if Jennifer Aniston is now a size six, or to read about Jodie Kidds protruding hip bones. But when they try to recover, it is very difficult to shake off these old beliefs when every other magazine cover seems to validate them."

"And speaking of wealthy, scary people, who should arrive but [[w:Harvey Weinstein|[Harvey] Weinstein]] himself. "Mr Weinstein, Hadley Freeman from the Guardian. What would you say are the essential ingredients of a good party?" I cry out like a drowning woman. Weinstein walks over to me and – slightly menacingly, one might say – takes my elbow. "Hadley," he says, his voice heavy with condescension, "enjoy yourself." The two men next to him laugh obediently. I decide to follow big Harveys instructions. And so, with a final glimpse at the dancefloor, where Jessie J is dancing with one friend to Princes Kiss, I take my leave and go home."

"Arguments about gender are now so vicious that most high-profile people would rather eat their hair than speak out. But sport, it turns out, is a more clear-cut issue to some than, say, prisons – where various groups have argued over whether trans women should be housed with female inmates. The current ideology is that gender identity is at least as important, if not more so, than biological sex. That is why an LGBT sports group like Athlete Ally can dismiss Navratilovas arguments about male skeletal advantages with a simple "trans women are women". The International Olympic Committee allows trans women to compete if they have been reducing their testosterone for 12 months; but, increasingly, female athletes are saying that testosterone is not the only advantage. Boys start growing bigger bones, muscles and greater heart capacity from puberty, and no gender switch will undo that. One can firmly defend a persons right to live in the gender identity of their choosing yet also look at photos of trans women athletes such as Gabrielle Ludwig, Natalie van Gogh and [[w:Rachel McKinnon|[Rachel] McKinnon]] standing alongside their strikingly smaller female team-mates, and think Navratilova’s arguments are worth investigating instead of dismissing with cries of bigotry."