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Why Disraeli is the mensch England could use right now

JL;DR SUMMARY Reflecting on the legacy of Benjamin Disraeli, the Jewish-born British Prime Minister, Robert Zaretsky compares him to contemporary leader Boris Johnson, noting striking similarities and differences. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish HeritageVictorian EnglandPolitical LegacyBritish PoliticsBoris JohnsonSocial ReformConservative PartyBenjamin DisraeliOne Nation ConservatismVictorian Social Norms

Places mentioned

United Kingdom
"The same prime minister who had first made his reputation as a writer before becoming a politician, spices his parliamentary parlays with Latin phrases, and whose reputation as a chancer a charlatan, even clashes with the staid Conservative Party he leads and whose political fortunes rests entirely on his shoulders."
Israel
"In Tancred, whose protagonist is a young English aristocrat who flees that sceptered isle to discover his lifes purpose in Palestine, Disraeli delights in dissing gentiles."
India
"As the impresario of the British Raj, it was Disraeli, after all, who anointed Queen Victoria as the Empress of India."
Houston, Texas, United States
"Robert Zaretsky teaches at the University of Houston."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 76075
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-02-24 05:31:23 UTC
Curated 2026-02-24 08:31:33 UTC