Yos Tarshish Consulting

10/13/2026

A Jewish immigrant from London’s East End became a general in the Chinese military.

And somehow, that’s only part of the story. 😂

For episode 14 of History Makers, we’re meeting Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen.

And here’s a detail that I suspect some of my London Jewish friends will particularly appreciate...

He went to JFS. Yes, *that* .

Although his school career didn’t exactly go to plan. He was eventually sent off to a reform school for wayward Jewish boys after getting into trouble with the law.

From there, his life took him to Canada, where he became involved with Chinese immigrant communities, and eventually to China itself.

He worked with Sun Yat-sen, survived Japanese imprisonment during the Second World War, and later became involved in diplomatic efforts surrounding the establishment of Israel.

He also had a habit of carrying two pistols, which is certainly one way of developing a memorable personal brand.

And he was quite an enthusiastic contributor to his own legend.

History Makers #14: Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen.

Any JFS alumni here who knew about this rather unconventional former pupil?

10/12/2026

📚 Jewish education takes place in all sorts of settings: classrooms, summer camps, synagogues, university campuses, family homes and around Shabbat tables.

Each offers something different. And each shapes how people understand what Jewish life can be.

One of the challenges facing Jewish educational organisations is recognising how their work fits into that larger picture.

A successful programme should help people develop the knowledge, capabilities and confidence to continue their Jewish journeys beyond the institution itself.

That might mean helping students lead Jewish experiences independently, encouraging them to explore unfamiliar traditions, or giving them meaningful opportunities to contribute to communal life.

Our latest essay considers how Jewish educators and institutions might think more expansively about their purpose.

Does Jewish Education Have a Meaning Problem?
The case for a more expansive vision of Jewish education.

🔗 Find the full essay in the first comment.

10/06/2026

Jewish students are returning to campuses across North America.

So are many of the anxieties that parents, grandparents and Jewish communities have carried about campus antisemitism over the past several years.

Those concerns are real. But good intentions alone do not guarantee good interventions.

After more than a decade working in Jewish student life, Yos argues that one principle deserves far more attention:

Support student leadership without replacing it.

Students and campus professionals possess something those watching from outside cannot easily replicate: proximity. They understand their institution’s relationships, culture, personalities and pressure points.

External influence can be enormously valuable. The question is whether it is being used with students or over them.

In The Quiet Work of Standing Behind Jewish Students, Yos explores what parents, grandparents, alumni and communal leaders can do to support Jewish students confronting antisemitism while preserving their agency.

With the new academic year underway, it is worth revisiting.

🔗 Link to read in the first comment

10/06/2026

A woman leading a yeshiva in seventeenth-century Kurdistan.

I knew about Asenath Barzani before deciding to make her episode 13 of History Makers. But I realised pretty quickly once I started researching her that I knew little more than the headline version of her story.

And the details are remarkable.

Asenath was raised as a Torah scholar, taught men preparing for rabbinic leadership, eventually led the yeshiva herself and became known by the unusual title Tanna’it.

We even have manuscript copies preserving texts scholars believe Asenath herself composed - including her own description of her education and teaching.

You’ll sometimes see her called the first female rabbi. As you’ll see in the video, I think the historical reality is both more complicated and more interesting.

And researching her took me much deeper into another story I knew far too little about: the Jewish communities and centres of learning of Kurdistan.

Meet History Maker #13: Asenath Barzani.

And a recommendation for parents: several of the beautiful illustrations in the video come from Sigal Samuel’s Osnat and Her Dove. It’s well worth finding.

10/05/2026

Schools and educational organisations rarely lack good intentions. The harder question is whether their different priorities add up to a coherent idea of what education is actually for.

Sanje Ratnavale calls one consequence of losing that coherence “meaning loss.”

In Yos’s latest essay, he explores Ratnavale’s framework alongside Dara Horn’s recent writing about his work, including what the experiences of Jewish students after October 7 might reveal about wider tensions within contemporary education.

It also raises a question closer to home for Jewish communities: what happens if we apply the same analysis to Jewish education itself?

Read “What Is School For?” on Substack. Link in the comments.

09/21/2026

A slightly earlier History Makers this week!

I’m in Cape Town for the chaggim, and it seemed ridiculous not to use the opportunity to tell a story from South African Jewish history while I’m actually here.

And since this coming week is going to be a very busy one with a family wedding, I wanted to make sure I got this episode out tonight.

So: Is Yiddish a European language?

Just over 120 years ago, that wasn’t an academic question here. The answer could determine whether Eastern European Jews were allowed to make South Africa their home.

At the centre of the fight was Morris Alexander: lawyer, parliamentarian and communal organiser.

His story takes us through Lithuanian Jewish immigration, colonial racial politics, the beginnings of organised Jewish representation in South Africa, Gandhi, the Greyshirts and a Jewish community being transformed by the people arriving on its shores.

This is exactly the sort of person I started History Makers to introduce people to.

So, from Cape Town, meet Morris Alexander.

09/16/2026

A Jewish physician.

A Muslim caliph.

A deposed Christian king.

A Byzantine emperor.

And, somewhere beyond the Caucasus, a Jewish king Hasdai ibn Shaprut wasn’t entirely sure existed.

Welcome to tenth-century Córdoba.

Hasdai’s life sits at an extraordinary intersection of medicine, diplomacy, Hebrew scholarship and Jewish politics. But what fascinates me most is the world taking shape around him.

The centre of Jewish intellectual gravity was beginning to shift, and Hasdai helped Córdoba become one of the places where something new could be built.

09/08/2026

You know the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

But have you heard of another remarkable person whose name became attached to the same German town?

Meet Glückel of Hameln.

Merchant. Mother of fourteen. Twice widowed. Businesswoman. And author of memoirs that give us something exceptionally rare: an early-modern Jewish woman describing her world in her own voice.

And what a voice.

Business disasters. Dangerous journeys. Family arguments. A forgotten Ketubah. A son-in-law she eventually had to admit she’d completely misjudged. And two barrels packed because the Messiah was coming.

For episode TEN of History Makers, we’re heading to seventeenth-century Germany.

09/03/2026

Part II of Yos's three-part series on the future of Zionism is now published.

The first essay asked Zionism to recover its capacity to imagine beyond the immediate present.

The second asks the harder question that follows:
What is Jewish sovereignty actually for?

Beyond Survival explores what changes when Jewish ideas move from texts, memory and communal life into the exercise of political power - and why survival and legitimacy, however necessary, cannot provide a complete account of sovereignty's purpose.

Read Part II:
https://ytarshish.substack.com/p/beyond-survival-the-mission-of-jewish

Part I will be linked in the comments for anyone beginning the series.

What changes when the Jewish people move from living under power to exercising it

07/06/2026

Part III of my Jewish Priorities series is now live.

This essay explores Jewish power, sovereignty, democracy, diaspora, Zionism, and history through five essays by Einat Wilf, Shaul Magid, Dahlia Scheindlin, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, and Laura Shaw Frank.

The central question:
What responsibilities accompany Jewish power?

For Jewish educators, communal leaders, and institutions, this is not only an Israel question.

It is a leadership question.

Read here:

Israel, democracy, diaspora, Zionism, and the responsibilities of sovereignty.