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Orit Gat
Orit Gat is a writer living in London. She is a contributing editor of The White Review.


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On Marriage, Netflix, and Other Things I Hate

Book Review

June 2023

Orit Gat

Book Review

June 2023

1. ‘It’s kind of crazy to shop at Target, watch Netflix, drive a Honda, and still have a husband.’   Marriage falls into a...

Book Review

July 2022

It’s Personal: Writing and Reading Through Grief

Orit Gat

Book Review

July 2022

1. A spill  I’m drinking coffee in bed and reading The Reactor. I feel so close to everything Nick...

Jerusalem has a remarkably cohesive identity, in architectural terms Every building, from the Western Wall to the sleek hotels and high-rises in the newer parts of town, is constructed of the same sandy-coloured limestone, a measure put in place by British authorities who governed between 1917 and 1947 This surface uniformity connects Jerusalem with the wider Jewish landscape, across time and space: ‘Jerusalem stone’ has been a feature of the city’s architecture since ancient times, when residents collected blocks from the local quarry (now a bustling station) to build their homes, and it is used in buildings worldwide to symbolise connection with the holy city In 2010, a Brazilian Pentecostal church signed a reported £8 million contract with Israel, enabling them to import enough Jerusalem stone to build a $300 million, 55-metre-high replica of Solomon’s Temple – complete with olive groves, Ark of the Covenant and helicopter landing pad – in São Paulo   But the lights and sounds of Jerusalem’s streets tell a different story, one of conflict and contradictions At night, the tips of mosque minarets glow green against the neon lights of the city’s modern hubs, while muezzins compete not only with church bells but with busy traffic At the Western Wall, the plaza of prayer is split by a dividing wall which segregates the sexes, though tourists and worshippers are left to mingle On the women’s side, a bored sweeper patrols while tourists take selfies beside a woman in a headscarf, who mutters devoutly and touches the wall in reverence; nearby stands an incongruous lectern, hosting prayer books in all languages and a discarded plastic glass, half full of warm Coke Jerusalem’s Old City – just one square kilometre, with over 400 surveillance cameras crammed into crevices in the stone – is divided into Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters, pockets which define themselves both within and against the rest of the city   The differences between sectors are barely perceptible to outsiders: across the Old City, streets are flanked with marketstalls selling ubiquitous slogan T-shirts and babygros, where ‘Free Palestine’ hangs next to ‘SuperJew’, ‘Hello Jerusalem’ next to

Contributor

August 2014

Orit Gat

Contributor

August 2014

Orit Gat is a writer living in London. She is a contributing editor of The White Review.

Essay

September 2020

Three Finals

Orit Gat

Essay

September 2020

1998   In the summer of 2006, at a bar off Odéon, a girl I didn’t know drew a...

Anna Wiener’s ‘Uncanny Valley’

Book Review

February 2020

Orit Gat

Book Review

February 2020

1. SF vs NY   Anna Wiener found herself in the right place at the right time. That is, if that was what she...
James Bridle’s ‘New Dark Age’

Book Review

October 2018

Orit Gat

Book Review

October 2018

Halfway through James Bridle’s foreboding, at times terrifying, but ultimately motivating account of our technological present, he recounts a scene from a magazine article...
Women and Technology: History is a Cautionary Tale

Book Review

April 2018

Orit Gat

Book Review

April 2018

Few book reviews open with amateur rap, but: ‘back in the day when new media was new,’ goes the first line of a song...
Scroll, Skim, Stare

feature

Issue No. 16

Orit Gat

feature

Issue No. 16

1.   This is an essay about contemporary art that includes no examples. It includes no examples because its subject – artists’ websites, their...
What Can an Art Magazine Be?

feature

Issue No. 10

Orit Gat

feature

Issue No. 10

What can an art magazine be? Today, as the publishing industry reassesses its role in the age of the internet, the pioneering art magazine Metronome provides...

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Prize Entry

April 2017

Birch

Thomas Chadwick

Prize Entry

April 2017

1997   Business boomed. Optimism was shooting up everywhere and bursting into flower. Music was jocular. Sport was effusive....

poetry

Issue No. 8

The Cloud of Knowing

John Ashbery

poetry

Issue No. 8

There are those who would have paid that. The amount your eyes bonded with (O spangled home) will have...

Prize Entry

April 2017

Pylons

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2017

Once upon a time, Dad would begin, I think, focusing on the road, there was a man called Watt....

 

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