Jewish Book Week: Recent Episodes
Jewish Book Week
In a history book that reads like a thriller,The Book Smugglers charts the incredible story of the ghetto inmates who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts — first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets — by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. In doing so, this daring group of poets turned partisans, and scholars turned smugglers, saved the treasures of Vilna, ‘the Jerusalem of Lithuania’.
Sponsored by the National Library of Israel
Judeophobia, the great hatred. Is it a psychic aberration, a 2,000 year-old disease? Loathing of Jews has been a feature of Christendom since the first accusation of deicide and this, combined with enforced employment patterns – usury and trade – made the Jews the pariahs of Europe, a situation the Enlightenment did nothing to change. Chameleon-like, the hatred became racial rather than religious. Today there is an addition to the old prejudices – aversion to Israel. As the world falls to extremism, Jew hatred is, again, a unifying force. Our panel, drawn from the worlds of history, politics, journalism and the law, scrutinised this longest hatred.
Sponsored by Jacqueline and Michael Gee
In January 2018, cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of Auschwitz, and then of Bergen-Belsen, addressed the Bundestag to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. In an extraordinary speech, she said, “Antisemitism is a virus which is two thousand years old and apparently incurable… No other genocide is as comprehensively documented as the Holocaust. And yet there are still the deniers … There are no excuses and no explanations for what happened all those years ago. All that remains is hope: the hope that ultimately, one day, reason will prevail.” Anita read extracts from that speech. Her grandson Simon, an acclaimed cellist and singer, played, accompanied by pianist Iain Farrington.
Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and Family
Join prize-winning tour guide, award-winning librarian and author Rachel Kolsky as she profiles her latest book, Women’s London. Inspired by walking tours she devised for The Women’s Library and responding to those who encouraged her to put her words on paper, she published a guide book to London featuring the impact women have had on its society, heritage and streetscape. From scientists to suffragettes, reformers and royals, authors and artists, sit back and discover some of Rachel’s favourite London ladies.
In Insomnia, Marina Benjamin has produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition, treating our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but as an existential experience that can electrify our understanding of ourselves, and of creativity and love. Lisa Appignanesi, inEveryday Madness, writes of the rage she experienced when her partner of 32 years died. In this brave examination of an ‘ordinary enough’ death and its aftermath, she scrutinises her own and our society’s experience of grieving, the effects of loss and the potent, mythical space it occupies in our lives.
In Association with the TLS
The Holocaust never happened. The planet isn’t warming. Vaccines cause autism. All of us deny inconvenient truths sometimes, but what happens when denial becomes ‘denialism’, a systematic attempt to overturn established scholarly findings? And how do we relate to this phenomenon in a ‘post-truth’ age? Our panellists, whose expertise covers history, contemporary culture, the law and psychotherapy, discuss the significance of phenomena such as Holocaust denial and climate change denial, and how they relate to ‘everyday’ denial.
Jewish Book Week hosts an edition of Literary Friction the monthly podcast about books and ideas, hosted by friends Carrie and Octavia. Listen-in for lively discussion, book recommendations and a little music too.
Carrie and Octavia will be interviewing Ukranian-born, American and French artist and author Yelena Moskovich, speaking about her incredible new book Virtuoso.
For a generation, public debate has been corroded by a narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood ‘science’. Bestselling author and eminent philosopher John Gray describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition. His book sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have battled to understand this issue. “There is no need to panic or despair”, says Gray. “A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think.”
Ferdinand Mount has long been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians of the past two millennia. In his riveting and provocative book, Prime Movers, Mount takes us on a colourful journey, examining the ideas of twelve key savants — from Pericles to Jesus Christ, and from Adam Smith to Karl Marx. These are the people who have shaped our world — and who have inspired and provoked the author, often in equal measure.
In Association with the TLS
This event took place on 6 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
We believe we are exceptional, but is there really anything special about humans that makes us different from other animals? In this entertaining tour of life on Earth, scientist and broadcaster Dr Adam Rutherford’s The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us examines what, if anything, sets us apart in the animal kingdom.
Sponsored by Robin and Hanna Klein
This event took place on 6 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Insiders / Outsiders examines the extraordinarily rich contribution of refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe to the visual culture, art education and art-world structures of the United Kingdom.
In every field, emigres arriving from Europe in the 1930s introduced a professionalism, internationalism and bold avant-gardism to a British art world not known for these attributes. At a time when the issue of immigration is much debated,Insiders / Outsiders serves as a reminder of the importance of cultural cross-fertilization and of the deep, long-lasting and wide-ranging contribution that refugees make to British life.
Insiders/Outsiders is published to accompany a UK-wide arts festival of the same name running from March 2019 until March 2020.
“Strongman politics are ascendant”, Barack Obama wrote recently: “The politics of fear and resentment… is now on the move”. From America to China, from Europe to Brazil, in India and across the Middle East, ‘macho’ leaders are very much in fashion. So why is the strongman proving so attractive to so many, and will the fashion be a passing one? Our panellists debated the character traits, neurology and behaviours of the political strongman – as well as examining what helps them into power and keeps them there.
In Association with the New Israel Fund
This event took place on 6 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Lipika Pelham tells the extraordinary story of the Sephardi Jews of 17th century Amsterdam. The community, part of a ‘carnival of nations’ formed of French Huguenots, North African merchants, Spanish Moriscos and Iberian New Christians, was integral to the success of the Dutch Golden Age. They traded, wrote, staged plays and were painted by Rembrandt. They achieved unparalleled freedoms. While Jews elsewhere were confined to the ghetto, this community dared to nurture the ‘Hope of Israel’, sowing the seeds of Zionism. Lipika also searches for what remains today of Jerusalem on the Amstel.
In association with Jewish Renaissance
This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Evolutions, ‘a breath-taking race through the immense scope of time and space that is our universe’, brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, our journey from a single cell to the intricate complexities of the human mind. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies.
This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Tolerance, equality, democracy, free speech, a free press, separation of church and state, progress: these and other values of the Enlightenment have guided the West for over 300 years. But with trends such as the rise of populism and nationalism in the West, the ascent of China in the East, and the failure of the Arab Spring, many are asking: what if the Enlightenment was just a blip? What if we are simply reverting to ‘norm’ of human history and, if so, what can we do about it? Our expert panel discusses.
This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Painting in London in the post-WWII years is a story of friendships and shared experiences. Drawing on first-hand interviews, acclaimed art historian Martin Gayford, in conversation with Hannah Rothschild, examined the interwoven lives of artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and David Hockney, and the teachers and contemporaries, including David Bomberg and Jackson Pollock, who influenced them in their quest to explore the boundaries of art, always posing the question, ‘what can painting do?’.
In Association with STATE-F22
This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in 20th century British history. Award-winning historian Andrew Roberts draws on new sources to depict him intimately, laying bare Churchill’ s faults and virtues. Above all, this vivid new biography reveals the wellsprings of his personality: his aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history and its connection to the present.
Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor
In association with the Jewish Historical Society of England
This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
When she was 27, Ilana Kurshan found herself alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce. She joined the world’s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for ‘daily page’ of the Talmud, taking her copy wherever she went. In If All the Seas Were Ink, Ilana took us on a guided tour of the Talmud, shedding new light on its stories and offering insights into its arguments, for those already familiar with the text and those who have never encountered it. Together with Yoel Finkelman, Judaica Curator of the National Library of Israel, she explored her memoir of love and learning as a celebration.
Sponsored by the National Library of Israel
This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely-wrought prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity, to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, this work resonates with a startling immediacy.
The George Webber Memorial Event
This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak is an awarded novelist, a public intellectual and an outspoken activist for women’s rights and LGBT rights. Alice Shalvi, scholar, educator, women’s rights activist, seeker of justice and proponent of peace, is one of Israel’s most admired figures. These two iconic women have much in common. Together, Elif and Alice discussed their lives, their work and their hopes with Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand.
Sponsored by Abraham Initiatives
This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
What comes after #MeToo? In this ‘chilling exposé’ of British justice, Helena Kennedy QC, one of our most eminent lawyers and human rights activists, confronts a system that is discriminating against – and failing – women. The law, she argues, holds up a mirror to society and it is not serving women well. The #MeToo movement has, in part, been a reaction to those failures. So what comes next? Helena Kennedy shows with force and fury that change for women must start at the heart of what makes society just.
This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Heritage tourism has boomed in the last half century, especially in older industrial cities such as Kiev, Berlin, Bucharest, Krakow, London and New York. Jews, often rediscovering their family’s traumatic pasts marked by the Holocaust, have become a vital component of this burgeoning heritage industry. Daniel Walkowitz invites readers to join him on his travels. Part family saga and part tour guide, this is a deeply personal analysis of Jewish history as told in public history – museums, heritage sites, memorials – that illustrate what is being remembered, what memorialised, what forgotten, and what ignored.
This event took place on Sunday 3 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas – especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism – have become even more prescient and vital today. But who was the man behind such influential views? Henry Hardy, Berlin’s decades-long editor and collaborator, offers an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher.
This event took place on Sunday 3 March as part of Jewish Book Weke 2019
Brexit is the most divisive issue in a generation; it unleashed a rise in populism, and exposed the fault lines of a nation divided by wealth, geography and class. Will Brexit send us hurtling towards disaster or will it set the nation’s spirit free? Are Britain’s Jews likely to fare better or worse outside the EU? Our expert panel, drawn from the pro- and anti-Brexit camps, attempted to bring light to this most heated of subjects.
In association with the Jewish Quarterly
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Harry Freedman, author of the acclaimed The Talmud: A Biography, and novelist Ariel Kahn discuss and explore the meaning and relevance of the Kabbalah today. In Scandal, Secrecy and the Soul: A History of Kabbalah, Harry tells the fascinating story of Kabbalah from its earliest origins, while Ariel, in his debut novel Raising Sparks, tells the story of Malka, a young girl from Jerusalem’s Hassidic community, who discovers she has an extraordinary gift.
Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and family
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
June 1940: Britain is Hitler’ s next target. Some Britons are pro-Nazi, and they determine to do all they can to hasten Hitler’s arrival. Throughout WWII, Britain’s defence against the ‘enemy within’ was the unlikely figure of Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk turned MI5 agent. Codenamed Jack King, he single-handedly built a network of hundreds of British Nazi sympathisers, many of whom passed secrets to him in the mistaken belief that he was a Gestapo officer. Operation Fifth Column was so covert it was omitted from the reports MI5 sent to Churchill. Robert Hutton reveals this astonishing story, told for the first time.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
International bestselling author and historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore selects over 100 letters, from Rameses, Suleiman the Magnificent and Elizabeth I, to Stalin, Emmeline Pankhurst and Leonard Cohen, from ancient times to the present. He examines human strength and frailty, presenting the most intimate thoughts of visionaries, artists and great leaders. Montefiore, a master storyteller, discusses with Tanya Gold why these letters are essential reading: how they enlighten our past, enrich the way we live now, and illuminate tomorrow.
Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor
In Association with Jewish Renaissance
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
In a 2016 poll, one in ten Britons claimed to have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three remain convinced that they have a guardian angel. Angels takes a modern look at what was once referred to as ‘angelology’, but which has its real roots in Judaism and in the mighty, sometimes comforting, sometimes terrifying angels who inhabit the books of Daniel, Tobit and Enoch in post-Babylonian exile literature.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
Acclaimed writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg presents a moving and poignant tale of one of history’s greatest love stories. Paris, 1117: Heloise, a young and celebrated scholar, is stunned when the radical philosopher, Peter Abelard, agrees to be her tutor. They embark on a passionate, dangerous love affair with horrific consequences, sending shockwaves through 12th-century Paris. Nine centuries later, Arthur, an English academic, in Paris to recreate their story in a novel, finds his connection to the tragic lovers is more emotional than he cares to admit.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
1930s Shanghai: in the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world; a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made – and lost. Award-winning author Paul French offers a spellbinding account of Shanghai’s lawless 1930s, and two of its most notorious criminals who bestrode the city like kings: ‘Lucky’ Jack Riley, an ex-Navy boxing champion; and ‘Dapper’ Joe Farren, a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto to establish a chorus line that rivalled Ziegfeld’s.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
International human rights lawyer Philippe Sands discusses the intriguing tale of Otto von Wächter, governor of Nazi occupied Krakow and Galicia, indicted for murder, but who escaped justice. Philippe is joined by Eli Rosenbaum, who leads the US government unit responsible for deporting Nazi war criminals, and Hugh Levinson, head of BBC Radio Current Affairs.
Sponsored by Joanna Millan, in memory of Jerry Gotel.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
Emigré sculptor Oscar Nemon, whose subjects included Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Sigmund Freud, was one of the 20th century’s greatest and most flamboyant artists. Born into a Jewish Croatian Family, he sought refuge from the Nazis in England. His daughter Aurelia Young, in conversation with cultural historian Patrick Bade, told his rip-roaring story.
In association with Insiders/Outsiders and State-F22
This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Acclaimed poet and publisher to the great and good, Jeremy Robson talks about his five decades in publishing, working with such intriguing and diverse figures as Marc Chagall, Ted Hughes (with whom he took a poetry tour of Israel), Joan Collins, Michael Winner, Muhammad Ali, Spike Milligan and Dannie Abse. Jeremy was in lively conversation and readings with his friend and author, the award winning actress Maureen Lipman.
This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
In a world riven with bitter divisions, perverting every opportunity for dialogue, Simon Schama examins the peculiar force of contradictory argument in Jewish tradition. From its distinctive place in the Bible, to the struggle to reconcile revelation with reason in the works of Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn, at stake is not just the character and future of Israel, but the unity or division of Jews and Judaism world-wide.
Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor
This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Oscar Wilde said that doing nothing is, ‘the most difficult thing in the world’. Today we live in a culture that demonises idleness, and the glorious art of doing nothing is disappearing. We are subject to a constant flow of information, and a permanent busyness pervades even our quietest moments. But although inactivity can induce lethargy, it can also foster imaginative freedom and creativity. Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen explores the paradoxical pleasures of inactivity, and asks how we might live a different and more fulfilled existence.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Explore a collection of political tales selected and introduced by the brilliant critic and author Michael Rosen. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political tales appeared frequently in British workers’ magazines, delighting readers of all ages, In Workers’ Tales, described by Philip Pullman as ‘a wonder-filled collection, which testifies to… the breadth of the human imagination but also to the enduring importance of my favourite virtue, hope’, Michael Rosen brings together more than forty of the best.
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
In apartheid South Africa, many desperate parents fought to rescue their children, arrested for so-called ‘anti-apartheid’ activities, from the state’s clutches. Many of these children were tortured, some were murdered; some were as young as nine years old. The Knock on the Door tells the story of the parents who fought back, and of how the anti-detention movement became part of the mass uprising that brought down apartheid. John Simpson chairs a panel with author Terry Shakinovsky, journalist Jonathan Rosenthal, and mother and son Audrey Coleman and Keith Coleman, who experienced these dreadful crimes.
In association with JCORE
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
The 11th and 12th centuries, from William the Bastard’s conquest in 1066 to the death of Henry II in 1189, have been described as a golden age for Anglo-Jewry. For over a century they were protected as ‘the King’s Jews’, flourishing both intellectually and economically. Their international connections and intellectual tradition placed them at the centre of an explosion of learning in Europe. But was it really so good for the Jews?
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Our world is undergoing a seismic transformation. Digital technologies – from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality – are transforming the way we live together, and the future of politics. Artificial intelligence alone raises tremendous legal and ethical issues. In a world transformed by technology, where does humanity figure? Our expert panel discuss.
Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and family
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Eli Rosenbaum of the US Justice Department has been described as ‘the world’s most successful Nazi hunter’. However, Professor Mary Fulbrook, in her new book, Reckonings, argues that the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators have evaded responsibility for their crimes. Seventy years after the Nuremberg Trials, Joshua Rozenberg chairs a panel discussion to explore whether justice has, or ever could have, been done.
Sponsored by Ali and Avi Goldberg
This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Ever since the movement’ s inception, Zionists have advocated very different ideas of Israel: would the dream of Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Weizmann, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion or Begin triumph? Would Israel be a ‘normal’ state, or a ‘light unto the nations’? The state that emerged, partially out of the ashes of the Shoah, became a refuge for those escaping the horrors of WWII and its aftermath, and to many a utopian ideal. Seventy years on, at the heart of one of the world’s most volatile regions, in a country that still struggles to define itself, was it ever possible for Israel to become the moral super state?
In Association with The New Israel Fund
This event took place on 2nd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019
Love rules our lives. Philosopher Simon May, in a radically new theory of love, examines its real aim. For all its wild unpredictability, why is love so pertinacious? Indeed why do we love at all? Clinical psychologist Frank Tallis takes a look at the darker side of love – obsession – demonstrating that ultimately love dissolves the divide between what we judge to be normal and abnormal. Simon and Frank, in conversation with cultural commentator Lisa Appignanesi, discuss both the ugly and sublime aspects of love.
This event took place on 2nd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.
In this talk, Griselda Pollock discusses her major re-evaluation of Berlin born artist, Charlotte Salomon, which sheds new light on her remarkable combination of image, text, and music.
Download
In his collection of essays Colin Shindler presents his very personal take on Israel, based on over 50 years of writing on the subject for The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post and the Guardian. This vivid and engaging ‘history’ speaks of Shindler’s deep understanding of the problems of the region.
In this exquisite volume Professor Mohammad Gharipour charts the development of synagogues in lands under Muslim rule, from North Africa and Spain to Central Asia and the Middle East. He shines a spotlight on the extraordinary architectural and artistic collaboration between Muslims and Jews in creating spaces for Jewish worship.
Jonathan Dean writes of the trials, tribulations, tragedies and successes of his grandfather and great grandfather as they fled persecution, comparing their struggles to those that beset today’s refugees. Tony Kushner explores Jewish refugee movements before, during and after the Holocaust, to place them in a longer history of forced migration from the 1880s to the present.
Why do smart people make stupid mistakes? Why do tall, slim people earn more? Does society determine who we are? What really makes us tick? Internationally acclaimed businessman, innovator and writer, Jacob Burak, embarks on a quest to answer these and other burning questions, examining whether it is destiny or personality that controls our lives.
These three towering Shakespeareans who have taught, written about, directed and performed the greatest dramatist of all times, engage in a witty and illuminating exchange about why the pre-eminent playwright and poet is studied, interpreted and translated the world over, providing inspiration for new operas, films, plays, novels, and other works of art.
Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, prize-winning author Eshkol Nevo’s brilliant recent novel, translated by Sondra Silverstein, presents a complex and emotionally wrought society, through revealing the turmoil, secrets, unreliable confessions and problematic decisions of the building's interconnected residents.
Jeremy Dauber delivers a breath-taking and enthralling illustrated history of Jewish humour ‘in all its vast and variegated forms from antiquity to yesterday’, from the Book of Esther to Seinfeld, by way of Mel Brooks and Philip Roth, offering an erudite yet entertaining history of Jewish comedy, not evading the question: what is Jewish humour and what makes a joke a Jewish joke?
Award-winning writer Caroline Moorehead, in the concluding volume of her remarkable WW2 Resistance trilogy, draws on the unseen letters and diaries of an extraordinary family in Mussolini’s Italy. The Rosellis, mother and two sons, were in many ways a family like any other, but in their bold and uncompromising resistance to the brutal rule of Fascism, they lived at the limits of love, loyalty and sacrifice.
Helen Fry’s riveting book finally uncovers the fiercely-guarded and controversial military secrets regarding London’s Kensington-based interrogation centre during WWII. She provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of ‘truth drugs’ and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, bringing dark secrets to light.
In 1947, Elisabeth Åsbrink, previous winner of the August Prize, intertwines global events with key moments from her personal history as the daughter of a Hungarian survivor. This was the year when Orwell commenced 1984, Israel was about to be born and Dior created the New Look. Writer and global analyst Jonathan Fenby’s forthcoming bookCrucible turns the spotlight on 1948, from the beginnings of the Cold War and China’s civil war to the fall out of the creation of India and Pakistan.
Gardens have been a source of enchantment since the dawn of time. Today’s speakers illuminate why gardening can be as vital an expression of the creative impulse as reading, writing or praying, and why designing, planting, tending, sharing produce, or simply looking, are so rewarding. In literature gardens can be oases or jungles, magical places where supernatural events happen and passions are aroused.
In this unique narrative of the Hebrew language from biblical to modern times, Professor Lewis Glinert explores the extraordinary hold that Hebrew has had on Jews and Christians, who have invested it with a symbolic power far beyond that of any other language in history. Preserved by the Jews for millennia, Hebrew was a bridge to Greek and Arab science; Kabbalists and humanists sought philosophical truth in it; and Colonial Americans used it to shape their own Israelite political identity. In the past 70 years, modern spoken and written Hebrew has evolved into a richly resonant and fully metaphoric language, now able to express the most subtle and nuanced contemporary thoughts and feelings.
Lewis Glinert's The Story of Hebrew has been named a finalist in the National Jewish Book Awards 2017 (History) and selected by CHOICE (the magazine of the Association of College & Research Libraries) as one of its 'Outstanding Academic Titles for 2017’.
Poet Joanne Limburg has produced an exquisite and heart-breaking memoir of her childhood, her Jewishness, her mother’s death, and how she came to terms with her brother’s suicide: ‘I explained to the rabbi that his death was the point of fracture in my world.’ Hilary Mantel has written of Small Pieces, ‘Can a writer be too honest? At times you want to close this book to protect its subject.’
Legendary ex-Artistic Director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, equally known as an opera director, takes us behind the scenes of Britain’s greatest theatre to talk about his multifarious experiences, working with many of the UK’s leading actors, musicians and designers. He discloses the back stories behind some of his spectacular successes such as The History Boys, Stuff Happens and One Man, Two Guvnors, stage gossip, and reveals his vision for his latest ambitious project, the new Bridge Theatre.
Art and cultural historian Patrick Bade was a lecturer for the MA programme at Christie’s Education in London until 2015. A prolific author, his publications include Femme Fatale: Images of Evil and Fascinating Women, and a number of monographs on artists such as Degas, Renoir, Burne-Jones, Beardsley and Tamara de Lempicka. He has also taught at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Opera House.
Consummate story-teller, Rebecca Abrams, offers tantalising glimpses into Jewish history through the prism of her personal selection from Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. Many of the objects are little-known treasures and all 22 have remarkable stories spanning 4,000 years of history and covering 14 countries, they trace the evolution of Jewish life and culture from its earliest beginnings in Ancient Mesopotamia through time and space to the modern day. From objects such as a magic amulet used by Christian Kabbalists, a viola da gamba with links to crypto-Jews, and a forged Nazi banknote, Abrams extrapolates the lives of ordinary citizens, merchants, scholars, courtiers and kings.
To world-renowned literary critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Stephen Greenblatt, the story of Adam and Eve is a prism refracting our most primitive fears and the inspiration for our most glorious works of art. In a richly illustrated talk, he shows how this myth has shaped understanding of our origins and destiny since time immemorial. This most iconic of stories stems from a few verses in an ancient book, yet continues to hold artists, philosophers and theologians in thrall and is the source of perennial contention.
In Association with the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL.
In this authoritative and fascinating study, Professor Martin Goodman outlines a global history of Judaism, from its inception amongst the polytheistic societies of the second millennium, through exile to Babylon in the 5th century BCE, to Jewish communities as far afield as China, India, America, the Middle East and Europe. Goodman’s is a magisterial account of the Jewish religion.
Pascale Hugues embarks on a quest to learn more about the city she lives in, producing a stunning history in the process. Looking at one rather ordinary street — her own — and the people who lived there, she charts its history from 1904, through the dark days under Hitler and the humiliating aftermath of the war, to the arrival of David Bowie and Tangerine Dream, right up to the present day.
Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Fat is a Feminist Issue, pioneering therapist Susie Orbach presents the extended new edition of the case histories that inspired her recent Radio 4 series In Therapy. She reveals as much about what is going on in the mind of the person behind the couch as she does the emotional dilemmas of the patient.
Viv Groskop in her luminous The Anna Karenina Fix, finds the answers to life’s burning questions in the great Russian novels. Not sure what to do with your love life? Turn to Tolstoy. Suffering from unrequited love? Turgenev can help. Are you socially awkward? Chekhov has the answers. Laura Freeman reveals how reading saved her life as she battled with anorexia, learning to embrace life once more through literature. Book by book and meal by meal, Laura acquired an entire library of reasons to live.
Ian Black draws on four decades of experience as a Middle East correspondent steeped in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to present a gripping narrative of 100 years of the history of the region, originating in Lord Balfour’s oblique 67-word promise of a homeland for the Jewish people, through to the challenges of today.
During the 1920s and 1930s, German tourism was booming, particularly among Americans and the British. Attracted by the scenery, the food, the culture, and the favourable exchange rates, they also came to witness the rise of Hitler. Julia Boyd’s book, including extracts from her mother’s 1938 diary, offers an exceptional insight into the period. Based on first-hand accounts by foreigners, Julia Boyd gives voice to a wide range of people, from students, politicians, facists and communists, to scholars, musicians, artists and poets. Scores of previously unpublished diaries and letters have been sourced to present a vivid new picture of the rise of Nazi Germany.
Lawrence Freedman who is an authority on war and warfare, past and present, and consultant to governments on conflict, is joined by the BBC World Affairs editor and foreign correspondent, John Simpson, to investigate how past conflicts inform the present and future of war, weapons, security and strategy. In conversation with former Guardian security and defence editor, Richard Norton-Taylor.
In City on a Hilltop, Sara Hirschhorn tackles the much-contested American settler movement. Over 60,000 Jewish-Americans have settled in the territories since 1967. Who are they, and why did they chose to leave America to live at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? In Dov Waxman examines the seismic shift in American-Jewry’s attitude towards Israel, which is more conflicted than ever before.
‘Grade B Reporter’, Martin Bell, has covered major international conflicts, from Vietnam to Bosnia, from Northern Ireland to the Six-Day War and Iraq. One of the outstanding journalists of our times, he provides a moving, personal account of the travesties of war and issues an impassioned call to put the substance back into our news.
Scottish Book of the Year author, Kapka Kassabova, presents in Bordera sharply-observed portrait of a little-known corner of Europe, the enigmatic zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. She offers a fascinating meditation on the borderlines that exist between countries, between cultures, between people, and within each of us. In Divided, best-selling author of Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall, offers an unflinching scrutiny of the world’s fault-lines, to show how isolationism and fear of ‘the other’ look set to shape our world for years to come.
In partnership with World Jewish Relief
You’re British. Your parents are British. You were raised in Britain. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British. So why do people keep asking where you are from? In this personal and provocative investigation, Afua Hirschexplores a very British crisis of identity. We are convinced that fairness is one of our values, but that immigration is one of our problems. Brit(ish) is the story of how and why this came to be, and an urgent call for change.
On 14 September 2015, gravitational waves were first detected on Earth. The source – two merging black holes – briefly pumped out 50 times more power than all the stars in the Universe together. Gravitational waves are the ‘voice of space’. Join science writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown, author of The Ascent of Gravity, to discover how, after centuries of ‘seeing’ the Universe, we are now ‘hearing’ it.
Why are 27% of drinks bought on aeroplanes tomato juice? Why do we consume 35% more food when eating with one more person, and 75% more when with three? This is just a small taste of gastrophysics, the new field of knowledge pioneered by Oxford professor, Charles Spence, combining science, neuroscience, psychology and design. Gastrophysics, written by the world-leading expert in sensory science, argues that the pleasures of what we eat lie mostly in the mind. Anthony Warner, alias blogger turned the Angry Chef, interrogates a crack team of psychiatrists, behavioural economists, food scientists and dieticians to unravel why sensible, intelligent people are so easily taken in by food fads. Mealtimes will never be the same again.
Three of today's finest writers and commentators on Russian history and politics explore the parallels between then and now – Stalin’s era and Putin’s – drawing on the paradox that, as revelations about Stalin’s atrocities continue to shock, his reputation is gaining strength in Russia. Is Putin, one of the most powerful and feared men in the world, Stalin’s heir? Do the ghosts of Russia’s autocratic past retain their stranglehold on the present?
We are all playing the Reputation Game, whether or not we know it. In the prevailing climate of social media, acquiring the reputation you desire, and avoiding the one you don’t, could be a matter of life or death. Global consultants David Waller and Rupert Younger reveal the key mechanisms that make and break our reputations. They illustrate with case studies of international figures such as Putin and Pope Frances, and interviews with the famous and the infamous alike, from Hilary Mantel to Jay Z to Bernie Madoff.
Is Europe a continent with its finger on the self-destruct button? Douglas Murray reflects on Europe’s pervasive and seemingly unfathomable inertia in the face of an immigration crisis, the potential failure of multiculturalism, and the Western fixation on guilt. He travels from Paris to Berlin, from Scandinavia to Greece, in his quest to uncover the malaise at the very heart of European culture. But is the future really so bleak?
The George Webber Memorial Event
Trust in the media is at an all-time low. How does the media exert its power, and are the stories that are told in repressive regimes so different from those conveyed in the West’s liberal democracies? James Harding, John Lloyd and Matthew d’Ancona, in conversation with professor and broadcaster, Rana Mitter, investigate exactly how truth can be mediated and distorted.
Have you ever wanted to know more about the classical canon but had no idea where to begin? Are you an aficionado who would like to widen your acquaintance with sublime music? Clemency Burton-Hill selects one piece of music for each day of the year in an interactive guide that allows you to listen as you learn, discussing her musical choices with internationally acclaimed singer, conductor and cellist Simon Wallfisch.
Sponsored by Dangoor Education
Journalist, broadcaster, and commanding figure in the arts, John Tusa has had a career fighting for – and winning victories – for the UK’s cultural and critical output. From the battle to create Newsnight in 1979, to standing up publicly for the independence of the BBC, to spearheading the recovery of the Barbican Centre. This is a fascinating romp through 60 years of making friends and, sometimes, enemies at the heart of British arts and media.
Antony Sher played the title role in Gregory Doran’s critically acclaimed RSC production of King Lear and his stupendous performance was designated ‘a crowning achievement in a major career’. Sher describes his year researching, rehearsing and performing one of the greatest roles in English theatre, in conversation with Doran.
Michael Baum and Paul Boorstin discuss why biblical stories remain a rich source of inspiration. Michael Baum’s novel Aaron’s Rodis a murder mystery, taking the reader on a gripping quest for an ancient artefact from the Assyrian conquest, via 20th century Hampstead, to modern day Israel. Paul Boorstin’s fiction David and the Philistine Womantells the story of David and Goliath through the perspective of Nara, Goliath’s betrothed, in a witty and richly- embroidered narrative.
George Prochnik, in a vivid and compelling mix of biography and personal memoir, traces the life and thought of the visionary founder of the modern study of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, from his alienated childhood in Berlin, to his emigration to the land of his dreams, where he finds himself once more a ‘stranger in a strange land’.
Freedland, Jacobson and Schama take on Donald Trump, at least figuratively, as they compete for bandwidth to expose the latest exploits of the Western World’s most powerful and contentious leader. The inspiration for a satire by Jacobson, a thriller by Freedland and steaming articles by Schama et al, Trump is the object of obsessive interest to everyone.
Steven Morris has always cooked; his photographer son Rick Pushinsky has always eaten. Just Not Kosher is a stunning collection of recipe cards that began as a family archive of Steven’s 60 years of ‘making a mess in the kitchen’. For Rick, this repository was not just a set of instructions for his father’s favourite dishes; it represented the entire story of his family, told one tablespoon at a time.
Why are ‘negative’ feelings such as self-hatred, guilt, resentment, paranoia, hysteria, and overbearing mother-love characterised as ‘Jewish’? In her sparkling debut, Devorah Baum delves into film, fiction and psychoanalysis. In so doing, she explores what it’s like to be a Jewish woman, shining a light on cultural icons from Groucho Marx to Freud, to examine what it’s like to feel Jewish, even when you’re not.
Sponsored by Dangoor Education
We are a people with the baggage of millennia. The practice and tradition contained in our book of books concerning fundamental life lessons are often forgotten or misunderstood. Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum interviews Rabbi Joseph Dweck, a leading religious voice in Anglo-Jewry today, on his interpretations of the biblical prophets.
Junior doctors turned best-selling authors, Rachel Clarke and Adam Kay, offer poignant, honest – at times hilarious – accounts of their experiences as NHS medics.
Rachel Clarke, who now works in end-of-life care, tells of her ongoing passion for a health service imperilled by bureaucratic cock-ups, while award-winning writer and performer Adam Kay, who has had a career change, hurtles from comedy to tragedy in his stunning exposé of the topsy-turvy world of the junior doctor.
The West has seen a rising tide of populist and anti-political feeling, resulting in Brexit and Trump. Eliane Glaser scrutinises this new wave of populism, looking at how we got here and where we're going, advocating the need to return to three pillars of political philosophy that have become dirty words: ideology, authority, and the state.
As Leonard Cohen has written, ‘there’s a blaze of light in every word’. Words shape our personal identities, our relationships and our societies. They are the crux of all human interactions. The relationship between writer, translator and reader is explicated by award-winning poet Sophie Herxheimer, translator Ros Schwartz and publisher Cécile Menon.
David Thomson is arguably the world’s greatest living film critic and writer on the movies. His New Biographical Dictionary of Film was voted by Sight and Sound the best book on film ever written. His latest book, Warner Bros, charts the history of the ultimate family business, taking us behind the scenes of the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack, unschooled immigrants, turned themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasy. Out of their studio came some of the most iconic films of all times, from black and white musicals, through the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer to Casablanca, East of Eden and Bonnie and Clyde.
New Statesman wine critic, Nina Caplan, explores the history of the grape, depicting delightful portraits of the eccentric characters she meets – from Catalonia to the Sussex Downs – all sharing her passion for wine. Award-winning food writer and illustrator, Elisabeth Luard, offers an enchanting food memoir, as she tells the tales of dishes gathered from her wanderings across the globe, from Crete to Ethiopia to Tasmania.
In Rick Gekoski’s Darke, the protagonist eschews the outside world, turning to philosophers and poets to make sense of humanity’s tragic essence. But just as he prepares to abjure life entirely, he is offered a chance of salvation. Jeremy Gavron’s Felix Culpa, is a stylistically experimental noir fiction, posing the question: whose stories deserve to be told? And whose words should do the telling?
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the iconic landmarks of the New York skyline; it has stood for more than 130 years, taking fourteen dramatic years to complete. In Chief Engineer, Erica Wagner tells the riveting story of the bridge’s construction and of Washington Roebling, the man who built it, one of the America’s most distinguished engineers – from military hero to pioneering civil engineer.
Irène Némirovsky was a literary superstar of the 1920s and 1930s but a controversial figure in her lifetime, seen by some as a self-hating Jew. Born in Tsarist Russia, she fled to France, becoming an overnight sensation with the publication of David Golder. Her novel Suite Françaisewas published in 2004 to posthumous fame. Harvard Professor Susan Suleiman elucidates Némirovsky’s genius in the context of her life and death.
Racial and religious prejudice, persecution and the complexities of assimilation, forced 19th and 20th century writers and thinkers such as Kafka, Proust, Zweig, Némirovsky and Roth, to confront their Jewish identities in profound and often controversial ways. Our panel, writer George Prochnik, Professor Susan Suleiman, and curator of European collections at the NLI, Stefan Litt, elucidate.
Sponsored by the National Library of Israel
Fractured and fractious families are at the heart of two witty contemporary morality tales. Amanda Craig’s The Lie of the Land traces the trajectory of the sexually unquenchable Quentin and his unhappy partner, Lottie, whose problems only escalate when they decamp to Devon’s remote arcadia. Francesca Segal’s razor-sharp, The Awkward Age, tells of the fallout when two families merge in North London and civil war ensues.
Gabrielle Rifkind offers a unique insight into the psychology of political extremism. When we talk about IS and similar groups, we approach them as political organisations. What, however, would Sigmund Freud have made of these deadly entities? We need to ask the question: Do the inner disquiets of Islam make more sense to psychologists than to Imams? In her new book,The Psychology of Political Extremism: what Sigmund Freud would have thought about Islamic State, Rifkind argues that Islamic State is primarily seen through a political lens; the psychological motivation of such groups is poorly understood.
Seventeen years ago a suicide bomber murdered 22 people in Tel Aviv. In his meticulously researched work of non-fiction, Beat, Rowan Somerville tells the story of how the heart of a Palestinian pharmacist, killed in an act of retribution in the midst of the Second Intifada, came to save the life of a dying Israeli.
Sponsored by the UK Friends of The Abraham Fund Initiatives.
Simon Schama’s Belonging is alive with energy, character and colour. Written in his inimitable style, this is a magnificent cultural history. It spans centuries and continents, from the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492 to the brink of the 20th century, telling the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers, but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice, a boxer in Georgian England, a general in Ming China and an opera composer in 19th Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California.
Doyennes of the media and stage, Melanie Phillips and Maureen Lipman, explore their politics, passions, writing, journalism and broadcasting, coinciding with the print publication of Melanie Phillips’ memoir, Guardian Angel, and her first novel, The Legacy. Interviewed by Tanya Gold.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk explores the strange and sometimes monstrous nature of womanhood through the opposing figures of mother and daughter. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, this is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.
In Three Daughters of Eve, celebrated author Elif Shafaktakes us from Istanbul to Oxford University and home again, tracing the relationship between childhood friends Peri, Shirin and Mona, re-visiting their divergent visions of Islam, femininity and God to confront the scandal that tore them apart. Gaby Wood is Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation.