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Search Results
For more information, click on the title of an event that interests you:
Forthcoming events|
| Urgent Words
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| Time: |
21 Feb 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Amos Oz, Chair: Jonathan Freedland |
| Notes: | Amos Oz has often said he writes with two pens: one for his novels, the other to expose injustices and promote peace.
Jonathan Freedland talks here to the peace activist, the man who believes it is a writer’s duty to confront iniquities no matter how uncomfortable they prove to be. |
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| Journalism Workshop
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22 Feb 2009 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Adel Darwish |
| Notes: | The Just Journalism workshop will be facilitated by Director, Adel Darwish, and a number of other JJ staff. Participants will learn about the notion of accountability as it relates to journalism and introduced to the key sources that form the bedrock for journalistic standards in the UK. They will have the opportunity to apply their newfound knowledge to sample articles, uncovering journalistic breaches. |
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| The Counterfeiter
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22 Feb 2009 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Adolf Burger, Chair: Joanna Newman |
| Notes: | Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, The Counterfeiters retraces the true story of Adolf Burger, recounted in his memoir The Devil’s Workshop. A typographer by trade, he became one of a group of deportees forced to produce impeccable imitation bank notes in Sachsenhausen concentration camp with the intention of flooding the economies of both the U.K and the U.S. To succeed, would have enabled the Nazis to win the war, to fail, meant certain death. Was his ultimate act of sabotage brave or foolhardy? |
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| Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands
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22 Feb 2009 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Rachel Shabi, Chair: Ian Black |
| Notes: | That tensions exist within Israeli society is not headline news.However, in her original book, Rachel Shabi steers away from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Instead, she turns her gaze on the complexities within Jewish society and the bitterness that many Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews, originally from Arab countries, experience towards Ashkenazi Jews of European origin, tracing it back to the early days of the newly created state. In this society – steadfast in its identification with Europe – immigrants who spoke Arabic and practised Middle Eastern customs were often regarded as inferior; and, sixty years on such attitudes still persist.
Shabi argues that discrimination within Israeli society has impaired many Mizrahi lives and dreams, and that it also reflects a pervasive prejudice within Israel against Middle Eastern cultures and societies. |
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| Sea of Asov
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22 Feb 2009 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Tania Hershman, Michelene Wandor, Tamar Yellin, Karen Maitland. Chair: Anne Sebba |
| Notes: | "The dark menace lurking in the best fairy tales is never far from the surface..."
Join us to help launch World Jewish Relief's first ever collection of short stories. Jewish and non-Jewish writers from Britain, Israel and North America have come together to support WJR and to tell their tales, trying to make fictional sense of the previous century and the century just beginning to evolve. This book has been given the title of The Sea of Azov, after both the birthplace of that consummate master of the short story – Chekhov – and the site of one of WJR's campaigns to support distressed Jewish communities.
Celebrated writers, such as Ali Smith, Nicole Krauss, Jon McGregor, as in all good fictions, create tales of fear and betrayal, unrequited desire and revenge, grief and longing, love and fulfilment.
Readings by Tanya Hershman, Karen Maitland, Michelene Wandor and Tamar Yellin will be followed by a discussion chaired by Anne Sebba |
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| A Life in Verse
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22 Feb 2009 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Dannie Abse, Chair: Ruth Padel |
| Notes: | In this very special session, half interview, half reading, one of Britain’s most distinguished poets reads from his works and talks to Ruth Padel about his writing, love, friendship, humour, loss, grief and the role of art.
This will be an unforgettable hour, providing us with the wit and wisdom of this most humane of writers. |
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| Mamma Mia!
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22 Feb 2009 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Cosmo Landesman, Olivia Lichtenstein, William Sutcliffe, Chair: Michele Hanson |
| Notes: | A hilarious session on parents and children, fiction that reads like real life and true stories so incredible they read like fictions. Be among the first to hear excerpts from Olivia Licthenstein’s soon to be published new novel, Naked Yoga. Find out what happens when William Sutcliffe’s three fictional mothers, all dreaming of becoming grandmothers, descend on their 30-something sons. And discover what it means to be brought up by parents obsessed with celebrity like Cosmo Landesman’s. |
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| Marranos: The Other Within
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22 Feb 2009 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Yirmihahu Yovel |
| Notes: | In his long awaited work, Marranos: The Other Within. Split Identity and Emerging modernity Yirmiyahu Yovel tells the fascinating story of people bothrejected by Jews as renegades and by Christians as Jews of impure blood. With its forced split identity, its tendency to religious dissent and secularity, the Marrano experience is also a profound meditation on dual identities and the birth of modernity. |
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| Boobela
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22 Feb 2009 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Joe Friedman |
| Notes: | What would it like to be bigger than your parents, and much bigger than your friends? Joe Friedman, author of the “warm, wise and wonderful” Boobela and Worm books, explores being very big and very small with you. He’ll also look at creating stories and what goes into making a book. Joe, an American, has performed as a comic so you’re guaranteed an interactive, entertaining session. |
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| Then
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22 Feb 2009 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Morris Gleitzman |
| Notes: | Then, the sequel to Once, follows Felix and Zelda after they have escaped from the Nazis, but how long can they now survive when there are so many people ready to hand them over for a reward? Thanks to the courage of a kind, brave woman they are able to hide for a time in the open, but Felix knows he has a distinguishing feature that identifies him as a Jew and that it is only a matter of time before he is discovered, which will mean death for them all. Even though he promised Zelda he would never leave her, he knows he has to, before it is too late... |
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| Sashenka: Fiction and History
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22 Feb 2009 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Simon Sebag Montefiore, Chair: Ariane Koek |
| Notes: | He had been commended for the lively pace of his biographies of Stalin and Catherine the Great. From megalomaniac leaders to ordinary people, who believed in the Revolution, but were crushed by its machinery, the move from History to story-making was only natural, or was it? Montefiore talks about his beloved Russia, fact vs fiction and his switch between genres. |
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| The Word Magician
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22 Feb 2009 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Moacyr Scliar, Chair: Rosine Perelberg |
| Notes: | Discover the wonderful world of Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar. Physician and lifelong resident of Porto Alegre, Scliar tackles contemporary Brazilian society and Jewish tradition in equal measures. He reconciles in his colourful stories the multifarious influences that constitute a Latin American Jewish identity. |
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| Writing Under Stalin
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22 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Elaine Feinstein, Joseph Sherman, Chair: David Mazower |
| Notes: | Elaine Feinstein and Joseph Sherman write about Jewish writers in Stalin’s Russia. In The Russian Jerusalem, her lyrical novel about history, memory and love, Feinstein concentrates on Marina Tsvetaeva and her contemporaries who had chosen to write in Russian. In From Pogrom to Purge, Sheman recounts the dramatic trial and murder in 1952 of 13 major Yiddish writers, putting an end to Yiddish culture in Russia. |
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| Paradise Lost
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22 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Lucette Lagnado, Mira and Tony Rocca, Chair: Jo Glanville |
| Notes: | A nostalgic session on a vanished multicultural Middle East, fragrant Cairo and vibrant Baghdad, where Jews lived in peace with their Muslim neighbours, in a Babel of languages. Stories of sudden hatred, bloody destruction and, ultimately, uprooting and exile: Lagnado remembers her Egyptian father and his American nightmare; Mira Rocca, her mother, Violette Shamash. |
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| Figuring the Human
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22 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Monica Bohm Duchen, Eliane Strosberg, Jackie Wullschlager, Chair: Andrew Renton |
| Notes: | Monica Bohm-Duchen, author of the first comprehensive monograph on Polish-born, British-domiciled artist Josef Herman and Marc Chagall’s biographer Jackie Wullschlager join Eliane Strosberg who, in Human Expressionism, explores the work of Jewish artists and their avoidance of nihilism in a century that saw the vanishing of humanity. Chaired by art critic and writer Andrew Renton in the chair, they debate the fascinating issue of how Jewishness might express itself in modern art, irrespective of whether or not the artist deals with overtly Jewish subject-matter. |
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| You Call That Suffering? A Short Story Workshop
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22 Feb 2009 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Shaun Levin |
| Notes: | This practical creative writing workshop will look at ways of turning your own experiences and memories into moving and amusing Yiddish short stories. |
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| Exile in Babylon
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22 Feb 2009 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Irving Finkel |
| Notes: | Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the remarkable exhibition at the British Museum, takes us back to the times of Jewish exile in Babylon and looks at the long lasting influence of this outstanding civilisation on Jewish culture. |
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| Rhyming Life and Death
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22 Feb 2009 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Amos Oz, Chair: Nicholas de Lange |
| Notes: | For Amos Oz, the wrong word in a sentence is as discordant as a false note in a piece of music. Nicholas de Lange has been translating his work since 1971. Here he interviews the novelist about his latest book, Rhyming Life and Death, their shared passion for language and literature, the pleasures and travail of writing and the very special relationship which develops between writer and translator. |
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| The Doctor in the House
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22 Feb 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Jonathan Miller, Chair: Mark Lawson |
| Notes: | Famously, Jonathan Miller can turn his hand and astonishing brain to anything. Always entertaining, and invariably instructive, the redoubtable raconteur will reveal his passions and betes noires to Mark Lawson |
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| They Haven't Even Begun...
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| Time: |
23 Feb 2009 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Irma Kurtz, Maureen Lipman |
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| Jewish Mothers on Screen
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23 Feb 2009 - 3:00 pm | | Contributors: | Trudy Gold |
| Notes: | LJCC Senior Lecturer in Modern Jewish History Trudy Gold presents a delighful array of film extracts from The Jazz Singer and Golda to NY Stories... |
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| Meet the author:My Father’s Roses
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23 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Bridget McGing |
| Notes: | Nancy Kohner had been left with an amazing stash of letters and photos recording the life of her family in Bohemia up to WW2. She set on a long labour of love to get the documents translated and preserve those memories. She died having just completed the book. Her daughter, Bridget, recalls her mother’s passion and the life of an ordinary family made extraordinary by History |
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| A Passion for Politics
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23 Feb 2009 - 6:00 pm | | Contributors: | Greville Janner |
| Notes: | Lord Janner of Braunstone QC, Greville Janner, Labour Member of the House of Lords, has always been passionate about politics. At Cambridge, he was both President of the Union and Union Labour Club. While at the House of Commons, he campaigned for human rights and industrial relations and was a key player in the adoption of the 1991 War Crimes Act. Here he shares with us his passion and fascination for politics. |
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| Fame and Fortune
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23 Feb 2009 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Frederick Raphael, Tom Conti, Chair: Bryan Cheyette |
| Notes: | Born in Chicago, Frederic Raphael moved to England as a boy and his father advised him to grow up to be 'an English gentleman' rather than 'an American Jew'. His first glittering prize was winning a scholarship to Cambridge, followed by an Oscar and general recognition for his witty scripts for television and the silver screen. Writing was always his way to right the wrongs he had suffered. He is loved for his fast paced novels and sparkling humour. He talks to Bryan Cheyette about being Jewish, translating, writing to stories be read or turned into films and the hoped for sequel to Fame and Fortune. |
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| American Fervour
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23 Feb 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Simon Schama |
| Notes: | For most people outside the United States, America's religious fervour conjures up images of intolerance and ultra-conservatism. But Barack Obama captured a large chunk of the evangelical vote and slavery would never have been abolished without the hot gospellers of the nineteenth century. The story of the way religion plays out in American politics is richer and more complicated than is usually understood.
With his customary panache and incomparable knowledge of history strengthened by his relentless trips across America, Simon Schama throws light on this fascinating subject. |
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| Mystery of the Kaddish
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24 Feb 2009 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Leon Charney in conversation with Naftali Brawer |
| Notes: | Twice a day for 11 months, the bereaved will say the Kaddish, glorifying God and celebrating life, never once alluding to death. Leon Charney and Naftali Brawer discuss what this essential prayer tells us about life and death in Judaism. |
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| Shalom Bombay
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24 Feb 2009 - 3:00 pm | | Contributors: | Documentary Film |
| Notes: | A poignant and often amusing insight into one of the most exotic and controversial Jewish communities in the Diaspora, this documentary concentrates on the survival struggle of the Jews in India, home of the Bene Israel and Baghdadi communities. |
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| Meet the author:The Credit Draper
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24 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | David Simons |
| Notes: | In 1911, eleven-year-old Avram Escovitz is shipped off to Scotland by his mother to escape conscription into the Russian Army. He grows up in the tightly-knit Jewish community in the Glasgow Gorbals. But events lead him to the Highlands, where he is sent to work as a credit draper. The Credit Draper is not only an immigrant’s story about the search for identity in a strange land, it is also a tale about football, whisky and waterproof clothing. |
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| A Passion for Science
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24 Feb 2009 - 6:00 pm | | Contributors: | Rebecca Abrams |
| Notes: | The author of Touching Distance, a novel based on the true story of a brilliant doctor who discovered germ theory a century before Lister, but died with his reputation in tatters, shares with us her fascination for scientific discovery, the difference between truth and knowledge and the moral responsibilities that accompany discoveries. |
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| Jacob's Legacy
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24 Feb 2009 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | David Goldstein, Chair: Vivienne Parry |
| Notes: | Who are the Jews? Where did they come from? What is the connection between an ancient Jewish priest in Jerusalem and today’s Israeli sunbather on the beaches of Tel Aviv? The author of Jacob's Legacy, David Goldstein has been commended for his gift for translating complex scientific concepts into language understandable to all. He discusses with Vivienne Parry how the study of genetics has not only changed the study of Jewish history, it has altered notions of Jewish identity and even our understanding of what makes a people a people.
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| The Quest for Identity
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24 Feb 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Susan Greenfield, Chair: Lisa Jardine |
| Notes: | Two of the most outstanding British intellectuals, renowned for their ability to make complicated issues understandable to the general public and for the wide range of their interests, discuss human nature, our past, what makes us individual, the connection between the brain and the mind, and what a society of fulfilled individuals would actually mean some of the themes developed by Susan Greenfield in her latest book, ID: The Quest for Identity in the 20th Century. |
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| Time Capsules
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25 Feb 2009 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Miriam Bolle, Mariette Job, Jack Santcross, Chair: Stephen Smith |
| Notes: | No memoirs or history books have the impact of first person accounts written in the thick of the action. None is more powerful than Helene Berr’s tragic Journal. Her story is told by her niece, Mariette Job, who talks about the recently published diary of life under the Occupation, a major publishing sensation in France.
Mirjam Bolle, 93, gives the background to the invaluable letters she sent to her fiancée from Amsterdam, Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, now published as To Leo with Love.
Jack Santcross was on the same train to Bergen-Belsen as Abel J. Herzberg who, uniquely, managed to keep a diary of life in the camp. He presents Between Two Streams, his translation into English of this truly unique historical document. |
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| Alcazar - A Night Club at War
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25 Feb 2009 - 3:00 pm | | Contributors: | Documentary Film |
| Notes: | A rare documentary based on the unique home movie footage of a group of 14 Jews hiding from the Nazis above the Alcazar night-club in Amsterdam, at the time of the German occupation. With contributions from Harry Swaab, who shot the film, and other survivors. |
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| Meet the author:Corvus
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25 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Esther Woolfson |
| Notes: | Esther Woolfson loves birds. Her family share their home with a rook, a magpie, a starling, a parrot and the inhabitants of an outdoor dovehouse. Corvus is her account of her passion. She tells us about her unconventional life and share stories of superstitions, evolution, and the amazingly rich world of birds although she will not be able to bring any of her friends with her to the festival. |
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| Passion for Life
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25 Feb 2009 - 6:00 pm | | Contributors: | Michael Winner |
| Notes: | Recently affianced, filmmaker, journalist, friend of the stars, socialite and bon-viveur, the aptly named Michael Winner has measured out his life in champagne flutes. As he candidly declares: “My greatest passion, by a long way, is me. I shall talk about me.” A fabulous half hour of outrageous anecdotes from the man who mastered dieting. |
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| Art and Graft
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25 Feb 2009 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Eva Hoffman, Richard Sennett, Chair: Jonathan Heawood |
| Notes: | Eva Hoffman and Richard Sennett, both intellectuals and musicians of the highest standard, discuss what makes the difference between a good and a great performer and the very concept of genius. They argue whether the view of the artist as superior to the craftsman is romantic idealism or reality. They consider these themes in relation to their own intellectual pursuits and explore the role and responsibility of the writer. |
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| On the Contrary
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25 Feb 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Tony Leon, Chair: James Harding |
| Notes: | In his autobiography, On the Contrary: Leading the Opposition in the New South Africa, Tony Leon, leader of the opposition to the ANC for thirteen years, looks back on a half century of South African politics from the fight to end Apartheid to the birth and near death of the Democratic Alliance, his struggle with Thabo Mbeki over AIDS, Zimbabwe and race. In a no-holds-barred assessment he provides an insider’s account of the dramas and events which have helped shape and define modern South Africa. He also charts the future course of South Africa after the rise of Jacob Zuma and the struggle for power inside the ANC. A rare view from behind the scenes from one of its prominent actors. |
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| Reading group: Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller
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26 Feb 2009 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Nicola Beauman |
| Notes: | Betty Miller wrote Farewell Leicester Square, in 1935 but her publisher, Victor Gollancz, ‘turned the book down flat,’ wrote Neal Ascherson in The New York Review of Books. ‘It seems most likely that he saw it as terrifyingly provocative, not only an attack on the solid English assimilation of his own family but a tactless outburst against the English at precisely the moment, two years after Hitler's assumption of power, when their tolerance and hospitality were most needed.’
In the novel Alec Berman escapes from his restrictive Jewish family in Brighton, and although he has a successful career as a film-maker and marries the very English Catherine, he always feels a ‘Dago: Jew: Outsider.’ ‘Yet,' continued Neal Ascherson, ‘the rejection is not really the refusal of a snobbish Gentile world fully to accept him. The rejecting force comes from within himself.’
‘A thought-provoking insight into anti-semitism between the wars,' wrote the Guardian, 'not the violent prejudice of Mosley's fascists, but the discreet discrimination of the bourgeoisie.’ |
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| Jerusalem, City of Longing
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26 Feb 2009 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Simon Goldhill |
| Notes: | Simon Goldhill's new book, Jerusalem, City of Longing, has been published to great reviews: it takes the reader on a vivid, iconoclastic, and surprising tour of Jerusalem -- its history, archaeology and myths. It will change the way you look at the city that means so much to so many people.
In this talk, Simon Goldhill, takes some of the myths, tales and truths about the walls of the city, one of the most familiar yet insufficiently understood sites of Jerusalem. |
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| The Jazzman from the Gulag
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26 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Documentary Film |
| Notes: | The Jazzman from the Gulag (1999) directed by Pierre-Henry Salfati.
A superb documentary film, screened at Vancouver's 13th Annual Jewish Film Festival, on the life of Polish-Jewish trumpeter Eddie Rosner, nicknamed the “white Louis Armstrong”. |
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| Meet the author of The J- Word
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26 Feb 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Andrew Sanger |
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"A beautiful, thoughtful portrait of the anxieties and paradoxes of modern Jewish life." - Linda Grant on The J-Word
Yiddish-speaking octogenarian Jack Silver repudiates everything Jewish, while his brilliant 10-year-old grandson Danny knows nothing at all about his heritage. But when Jack is attacked by antisemitic thugs, grandfather and grandson set out to get justice in their own unorthodox way – and discover a shared identity spanning generations. |
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| A Passion for Jazz
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26 Feb 2009 - 6:00 pm | | Contributors: | Hannah Rothschild |
| Notes: | The film-maker Hannah Rothschild describes her great aunt Pannonica Rothschild as "the one who got away" from the weight of responsibility attached to the family name. She moved from war-torn France and set up home in New York in the early 1950s, where she soon became patron and friend to bebop greats like Charlie Parker (who died in her hotel room) and Thelonious Monk (whom she nursed until his death). |
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| The Thoughtful Dresser
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26 Feb 2009 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Linda Grant, Catherine Hill Chair: Linda Kelsey |
| Notes: | Clothes matter. How we choose to dress ourselves defines our identity. The former editor of Cosmopolitan talks to Linda Grant, who has shown us that clothes can be a serious intellectual topic, and to Catherine Hill, who has proved that elegance and femininity can be life and death issues. Beware, this talk may change your perspective on black, the small matter of accessories and other fundamental facets of femininity? |
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| Moveable Feasts
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26 Feb 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Maria Balinska, Jayne Cohen, Chair: Michele Roberts |
| Notes: | For many of us, nothing makes us feel more Jewish than some chopped liver or gefilte fish? Yet, Jamie Oliver would not approve of the shtetl’s diet. Jayne Cohen has confronted this dilemma and come up with interesting suggestions about how to adapt traditional recipes to suit modern notions of healthy eating, without betraying our forefathers – or mothers. In her memoir, The Settler’s Cookbook (Tales of Love, Migration and Food) Yasmin Alibhai Brown explores her East African Indian roots through the shared experience of cooking. Join them and Michele Roberts for a delicious and mouth-watering discussion on food and identity. Maria Balinska has written a history of the bagel investigating its disputed Jewish and Polish origins. |
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| Memoir Writing : Getting Started, Keeping Going
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27 Feb 2009 - 10:30 am | | Contributors: | Miriam Halahmy |
| Notes: | “I’ve started my memoirs three times but I always give up.”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
This workshop will provide a toolkit for writing your memoirs, whether for the grandchildren, or for publication. Using examples of printed texts and lots of juicy ideas, Miriam Halahmy will lead you into the art of getting started and keeping going. There will be writing exercises during the session and feedback for those bold enough to share their work aloud. Bring a pen and paper and all your memories, as far back as you can go! |
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| Yiddish Curses and Superstitions
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27 Feb 2009 - 10:30 am | | Contributors: | Michael Wex |
| Notes: | A look into the deeply superstitious nature of the Yiddish language and the ways in which such metaphysical tremulousness contributes to a verbal culture that is more comfortable with negative than positive statements.
From this basis, we will go on to examine the main types of Yiddish curse, in the hopes that students will then be able to apply the lessons learned in this class in their own daily interactions, should they choose to do so. |
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| Secret
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27 Feb 2009 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Phillipe Grimbert, Chair: Naomi Segal |
| Notes: | Set in the aftermath of the Nazi Occupation of France, when shame and fear polluted many a life, Secret tells the troubled story of a sickly boy who grows up with an imaginary brother, aware of what he has always somehow known and yet was never told. Psychoanalyst Philippe Grimbert talks about his autobiographical novel, the dark secret his parents kept from him throughout his childhood and the blurry line between truth and lies. |
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| Meet the Author of Songs for the Butcher's Daughter
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28 Feb 2009 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Peter Manseau |
| Notes: | Itsik Malpesh was born the son of a goose-plucking factory manager during the Russian pogroms - his life saved on the night it began by the young daughter of a kosher slaughterer. Or so he believes…
Exiled during the war, Itsik eventually finds himself in New York, working as a typesetter and writing poetry to his muse, the butcher's daughter, whom he is sure he will never see again. But it is here in New York that Itsik is unexpectedly reunited with his greatest love - and, later, his greatest enemy - with results both serendipitous and tragic. His story is recounted in his memoirs thanks to the most unlikely of translators - a twenty-one-year-old Boston Catholic college student who, in meeting Itsik, has embarked upon a great lie that will define his future and the most extraordinary friendship he'll ever know.
A love-letter to Jewish history -- written by a lapsed Catholic, the son of an ex-nun and an ex-priest |
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| The Yiddish Cabaret
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28 Feb 2009 - 8:00 pm | | Contributors: | David Schneider, Michael Wex and others |
| Notes: | Opening with a melange of memoir, twisted folktale and a Yiddish lesson from one of the pioneering figures in the North American storytelling revival, Michael Wex – who believes he would have been the George Formby of Yiddish if he could only sing or play the ukulele... or if he ever made a living from it. It's like an hour of Hebrew school, with Sidney James as the teacher.
Then, after the interval, join some of the most exciting Jewish talent around as they capture the outrageous, iconoclastic spirit of the 1920s Yiddish cabaret and shlep it oying and kvetching into the 21st century. Curated and including performances by actor, comedian and all round Yiddish obsessive David Schneider with music, magic, sketches, even - keneynehora - sensuality. This is Yiddish Cabaret like you’ve never seen it before. No knowledge of Yiddish necessary. |
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| The Arvon Foundation for Creative Writing Writers Surgeries
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Tiffany Murray |
| Notes: | Six Exclusive one on one 50 minute sessions with Tiffany Murray, experienced Arvon tutor and well known writer. Bring a problem in your work to the Arvon Creative Writing Surgery, and you will be given on the spot expert advice on how to progress and improve – and even some exercises to help you after you have left the surgery. |
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| Get out of my Life…. But first take me and Alex into town
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01 Mar 2009 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Suzanne Franks in conversation with Rebecca Abrams |
| Notes: | Suzanne Franks and Rebecca Abrams explore the mysterious world of teenagers and give parents some tips on how to survive the period, remain sane and still love our kids. |
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| Major Farran’s Hat
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01 Mar 2009 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | David Cesarani, Chair: Joshua Rozenberg |
| Notes: | David Cesarani discusses his groundbreaking new book about the brutal murder of Jewish activist Alexander Rubowitz in Palestine in May 1947.
Reading like a heady mix of true crime and polemical narrative history, Major Farran's Hat investigates a shady murder mystery of violence, cover ups and expediency that throws light on Britain's legacy in the Middle East - a cautionary tale with remarkable and troubling resonance for us all.
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| Who Will Write Our History?
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01 Mar 2009 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Samuel Kassow, Chair: Ben Barkow |
| Notes: | Hailed by the New Republic as possibly “the most important book of history that anyone will ever read”, Who Will Write Our History? tells the astounding story of Emanuel Ringelblum, who set up a clandestine operation to collect and preserve 35,000 documents in tin boxes buried underground, to preserve the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto and its inhabitants. Samuel Kassow bears witness to this extraordinary act of defiance in the face of tyranny and to the triumph of history. |
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| Masters of Irony
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Robert Menasse, Alessandro Piperno, Chair: Hepzhibah Anderson |
| Notes: | Alessandro Piperno’s books have been described as post-Primo Levi literature. His novel, The Worst Intentions, is an irreverent description of 3 generations of a rich Jewish family from Turin.
With his Don Juan de la Mancha -a vivid portrait of the post-’68 generation -Robert Menasse, one of the leading voices in Austrian literature, is more entertaining and facetious than ever.
Both share the same ironic outlook on life, sex and families. |
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| Difficult Relationships
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Samir El-Youssef, Seth Freedman, Chair: Matthew Reisz |
| Notes: | Both Samir El-Youssef and Seth Freeman understand profoundly what it means to lack a sense of belonging – a sense that many of us can take for granted. Both have experienced at first-hand the complexities of the Middle East conflict and the suffering it engenders.
Samir El-Youssef’s new novel, A Treaty of Love, set in London, recounts the impossible and tragic love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man.
Seth Freeman was a staunch Zionist when he moved to Israel and joined the army, but his articles in Comment is Free reflect his evolution and doubts about his previously held views. |
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| Omega Minor
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Paul Verhaeghen, Chair: Boyd Tonkin |
| Notes: | Paul Verhaeghen received the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his truly amazing novel Omega Minor, an exploration of the world of Nazis and Neo-Nazis alike, the destructive logics of The Holocaust and the Bomb, truths that kill and lies that keep alive, passionate love and devouring lust and.
He discusses moral choices, writing History and translating his own work into English. |
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| A Disappearing Number
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Sophie Judah in conversation with Edna Fernandes |
| Notes: | There are many theories about the origins of the various Jewish communities in India but they almost never suffered from antisemitism. This, paradoxically, might explain their slow disappearance.
Sophie Judah was born in the Bene Israel community which she brings back to life in her delightful Dropped from Heaven, a collection of interconnected short stories.
In The Last Jews of Kerala, Edna Fernandes shows how internal racism between ‘white’ and ‘black' Jews and quarrels over who came first, spelt their demise. Together, they talk about this fascinating and unique world. |
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| Pursuing Justice
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Thomas Buergenthal, Chair: Philippe Sands |
| Notes: | Thomas Buergenthal is a truly remarkable man, now one of the 15 judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, responsible for trying war criminals. He talks here to Philippe Sands about his journey from Auschwitz to The Hague and his faith in justice. He believes that the recurrence of such atrocities will only be prevented by the international implementation of human rights. |
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| The Scribe who wouldn't scribble
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Jammy Doughnut Productions |
| Notes: | The townsfolk of Kfar Milim are soon to be opening a Grand Synagogue. They need a new Torah scroll and want no one other than local legend, scribe Rav Katav to write it. But an incident in his past led Rav Katav to swear he’d never write again. Can the townsfolk persuade him to forget about it and pick up a quill once more? Only the letters can help them all now…
A journey into the wonderful world of words with puppets, music and adventure.
Written and produced by children’s theatre company Jammy Doughnut Productions. |
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| Storyspinners
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Lynne Reid Banks, Adèle Geras |
| Notes: | Two grandes dames of children’s literature meet for the first time ever. Between them they have lived in ten countries , won countless awards and written over 130 books (and not just for children) including , Reid Banks’ The Indian in the Cupboard and The L-Shaped Room and Geras’ My Grandmother’s Stories and Voyage. Here they discuss the challenge of integrating history into their writing and reveal their inspirations and the secret to writing for different generations of children. |
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| Rising from the Ashes
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Avraham Burg Chair: Yossi Mekelberg |
| Notes: | Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset turned political dissenter, meditates on the current position of Israel and that of the Jewish people worldwide, putting forth the radical notion that Jewish society must stop living in the shadow of the Holocaust. The current political scene offers limited possibilities; The Israeli right has nothing to offer but sword and messiah until the day of peace comes, and once peace is achieved, the left will have nothing to offer in terms of new spiritual content. Burg presents an alternative thesis which will challenge and inspire generations to come. |
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| Hebrew language session
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | AB Yehoshua, Chair: Tsila Ratner |
| Notes: | |
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| In the Name of Love
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Aaron Ben Zeev, Chair: Anthony Julius |
| Notes: | Aaron Ben Zeev examines the dark side of romantic love. Disappointed ideals can mutate into frenzied violence and abandoned lovers resort to murder rather than accept that their ex partner has found happiness in someone else’s embrace. This distinguished moral philosopher looks at the worst evils committed in the name of love. |
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| The Myth of the Wandering Jew
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Alberto Manguel |
| Notes: | The legend of the Wandering Jew originated in the early Middle Ages, and told the story of Ahasverus, a Jewish cobbler who, when Christ stumbled at his doorstep under the weight of the Cross, pushed him away telling him "not to tarry." "I'll move on," Christ answers, "but you will tarry till I return." Ahasverus is thus condemned to wander the earth until Christ's Second Coming. No curse, however, is merely one-sided. The legend of the man condemned to wander because of an uncharitable act becomes in time an uncharitable act in which many men were condemned to wander. Pogroms, expulsions, ethnic cleansings, genocides, are the abominable extensions of this reading of the legend. And yet, there may be other, more generous readings to explore... |
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| Defining the Divine
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Jonathan Magonet, Sara Maitland, Jonathan Wittenberg |
| Notes: | Does the language we use when we address God matter? How have conceptions of the divine developed over time and in what way do these inform everyday life and our interactions with others? Our three panellists offer their own unique insights into the topic. |
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| Writing children’s books
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Adele Geras |
| Notes: | For anyone who would like to write for children, this workshop will outline ways of getting your story on to the page and also discuss how best to try for publication in what is a very difficult economic climate.
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| The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Alain de Botton |
| Notes: | We spend much of our lives at work – but surprisingly little gets written about what makes work both one of the most exciting and most painful of all our activities. Alain de Botton comes to Jewish Book Week to present his new, ninth book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. This is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, evoking what other people get up to all day – and night – to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his characteristic combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art – in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.
Along the way de Botton skilfully raises the big questions we all tend to ask of our work: What is the right job for me? How can I make the most of my talents? What should I be aiming for in my career?
The book and de Botton's talk amounts to a celebration and investigation of an activity as central to a good life as love – but which we often find remarkably hard to reflect on properly. As de Botton points out, most of us are still working at jobs chosen for us by our sixteen-year-old selves. |
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| Friendly Fire
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2009 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | AB Yehoshua, chair: Lyse Doucet |
| Notes: | At the core of Yehoshua's new novel, Friendly Fire, is the pointless death of a young soldier, the actual meaning of military terminology and the devastating effect it has on his family. It is an insightful exploration of relationships and of Israeli society today.
Yehoshua discusses the roles of literature and the writer in Israel as well as his hopes and fears for the future. |
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Past events|
| The JC Evening: The Last Word: Reporting the Middle East
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 8:15 pm | | Contributors: | David Landau, Alan Rusbridger. Chair: Alex Brummer |
| Notes: |
The evening opens with the first award ceremony for the Chaim Bermant Prize
I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
Tom Stoppard |
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| Writing About War
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Ron Leshem. Chair: Ian Black |
| Notes: | Written as the diary of the head of a commando team stationed at Beaufort during the last winter of Israeli occupation, Beaufort is a revolutionary and potent look at the triviality of war and death, and the courage it takes to put an end to it. This is not a story of war, but of retreat. This is a story with no enemy, only an amorphous entity that drops bombs from the skies. And while thirteen young men propel the novel and give it life and colour, the real hero of Beaufort is fear: contagious, intoxicating, palpable fear, a word they forbid themselves from uttering.
This book is a devastating portrayal of a generation which discovers that the values bestowed on them by their parents have betrayed them.
With a critical eye and an empathetic heart, Ron Leshem dishes up a wholly human story that takes place in conditions that are anything but. Fast-paced and brutally honest, unflinching and uproariously funny, Beaufort has been hailed – not only by critics but by the generation of soldiers who served in Lebanon during Israeli occupation – as the true voice of that sobering period. |
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| A Glimpse of Malamud
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Philip Davis, Janet Suzman |
| Notes: | This is the classic story of a Brooklyn Jewish boy, the child of immigrants, who turned himself into one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Philip Davis has written the first-ever biography of Bernard Malamud who died in 1986 and has suffered a certain neglect since then. In this celebratory event, designed to mark Malamud’s revival, Davis tells the story of the life and work, with powerful readings given by the distinguished actress, Janet Suzman. |
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| Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | Lisa Appignanesi. Chair: Susie Orbach |
| Notes: | In Mad, Bad and Sad, cultural historian and novelist Lisa Appignanesi takes us on a journey through extreme states of mind and explores how a rising profession of mind doctors has diagnosed them over the last two hundred years. Using the cases of celebrated, infamous, and ordinary women, she charts the ways in which more and more of our inner life and emotions have become a matter for medics and therapists. With psychoanalyst Susie Orbach, she discusses how craziness takes on the expressive cloak of its epoch and interrogates a range of contemporary diagnoses such as anorexia and depression. |
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| Poles and Jews: Troubled Neighbours?
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Dorota Glowacka, Joanna Zylinska . Chair: Anne Karpf |
| Notes: | Is reconciliation between Poles and Jews possible? Revisiting both the brutal Jedwabne pogrom of 1941 and stories of peaceful neighbourly coexistence, this question will be addressed by Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska, editors of Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust. The discussion will be chaired by Anne Karpf. |
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| In Praise of Diasporas
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Zadie Smith, Adam Thirlwell |
| Notes: | The history of Jewish novelists has been a history of emigration: of exile and translation. From Kafka to Italo Svevo, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Saul Bellow, Jewish novelists have often been marked by a cultural and linguistic cosmopolitanism. But what is the value of displacement? Novelists Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell talk in praise of the half-Jewish, the language learners: in praise of diasporas. |
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| The Last Resistance
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Jacqueline Rose. Chair: Tony Lerman |
| Notes: | In her latest book, The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose explores the power of writing to create and transform our political lives. The role of literature in the Zionist imagination is presented as a unique form of dissidence, with the power to expose the unconscious of nations. Examining writers ranging from David Grossman, through W.G. Sebald, Freud, Nadine Gordimer,and topics including the concept of evil and suicide bombers, The Last Resistance offers a unique way of responding to the crises of the times.
In conversation with her is Antony Lerman, who has spoken of the Jewish community’s ‘increasingly bitter polarisation over fundamental issues affects affecting Jewish existence’, with Israel as ‘the first faultline’. |
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| A Brief History of Children's Diaries
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Jacqueline Wilson |
| Notes: | Jacqueline Wilson peoples her stories with teens and pre-teens who struggle with hopelessly imperfect lives; beloved and believable characters.
Today Jacqueline gives us a brief history of children’s diaries and asks why we keep them and what we fill them with. She talks about lots of diaries including her own, your own, those of some of her characters and of course the most famous children’s diary in history -Anne Frank’s.
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| The Shel Silverstein Session of Silliness
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Ilana Bendel, Jonny Berliner, Jen Charlton, Daniel Hart |
| Notes: |
The all-singing, dancing and storytelling JCC Tribute Troupe bring to life the work of Shel Silverstein. Join Ilana Bendel, Jonny Berliner, Jen Charlton and Daniel Hart in a celebration of the late, great poet, songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of some of the greatest stories and poems for children, including The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic and The Unicorn.
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| In Search of Happiness
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Amy Bloom, Chair: Sarah Dunant |
| Notes: | Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent and an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia.
All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable. |
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| Homefront
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Sayed Kashua. Chair: Matt Rees |
| Notes: | Dancing Arabs, Sayed Kashua’s first novel, has been praised around the world for its uniquely human portrayal of a bright young Arab educated in an Israeli school who, trying to fit in two societies, ends up becoming a stranger in both. In Let It Be Morning, a journalist brings his family back to his native Arab village. Life is difficult, but it becomes impossible when Israeli tanks cut them off from the rest of the country. Both gripping novels address the political and human issues faced by this disempowered part of the population. Sayed Kashua talks to the author of The Bethlehem Murders Matt Rees about identity, belonging, writing in Hebrew and being both Arab and Israeli today. |
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| The Interpretation of History
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Jonathan Rab, Jed Rubenfeld. Chair: Marcel Berlins |
| Notes: | n 1909, Freud visited America for the first and only time. In spite of a very successful reception, he seemed to have developed a severe antipathy for the USA. This is the starting point for Jed Rubenfeld’s highly acclaimed novel, The Interpretation of Murder, in which he imagines Freud involved in a case which is both a murder and psychoanalytic case. The result is a psychological thriller with a cast that includes Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and several important American politicians.
In Rosa, Jonathan Rabb similarly starts from a factual truth: in the last days of the First World War, socialist revolution swept across Germany, transforming Berlin into a battleground. Order returned only when the two leaders of the movement—Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg—were assassinated on the fifteenth of January, 1919. Liebknecht’s body was discovered the next morning; Luxemburg’s body remained missing until the end of May. Rosa’s death is a real historical mystery, that has never been solved. In his remarkable new thriller, Jonathan Rabb presents one strikingly real solution, all the while painting a vivid picture of a dark city in chaos at a time of great political uncertainty. Both writers discuss writing thrillers and reinterpreting history. |
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| The Joe Craig Show
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 2:00 pm | | Contributors: | Joe Craig |
| Notes: | Packed houses at festivals, bookshops and schools across the world have experienced ‘The Joe Craig Show’. His tall tales, improvised stories, and surprising theories about writing have enthralled and entertained audiences every bit as much as his Jimmy Coates books.
Every ‘Joe Craig Show’ is different. The only guarantee is that this one will include the World Premiere of his 5th thriller, Jimmy Coates: Survival. |
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| Transformations
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Ricki Rosen |
| Notes: | What does it mean to travel from a rural Ethiopian village to the heart of urban Israel?; To leap between two worlds so far apart that one would expect it would take several generations to bridge?
Renowned photojournalist Ricki Rosen documented Israel’s rescue of 15,000 Jews from Ethiopia during the historic Operation Solomon airlift. Thirteen years later, she went on a quest to find the same Ethiopian Jews now settled all over Israel. The result is Transformations.
Her compelling photos portray dramatic scenes of the mass exodus of the Ethiopian Jews. Thousands of people wrapped in white robes heading towards the Promised Land, like the biblical Exodus from Egypt. Her contemporary photos are poignant portraits of these Ethiopians radically transformed by their Israeli experience. Children in rags have grown up to be proud Israeli soldiers, malnourished babies have developed into fashionable teenagers, and mothers who lost children to starvation and disease have given birth to new families.
In an illustrated talk, Ricki Rosen takes us on a journey from the mud huts of Africa to the skyscrapers of Israel, from the exotic and traditional to the ultra-modern. She tells the story of her quest and of an ancient lost tribe's transformation into the newest Israelis. |
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| On Turning Risk Into Opportunity
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Ronald Cohen. Chair: John Kampfner |
| Notes: | In his fascinating book, The Second Bounce of the Ball, Ronald Cohen argues that the entrepreneur’s challenge is to take advantage of situations of uncertainty and that this is where substantial gain can be made. He discusses with John Kampfner his book, what makes a successful entrepreneur, his career building Apax Partners into the largest global private-equity firm based in Europe and the future of private equity. |
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| Josh and Judy's Speed Read
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 12:30 pm | | Contributors: | Judy Batalion, Josh Cohen |
| Notes: | Looking for adventure, romance, political satire? Worried about what’s left on the shelf? Let us help you find a book you will treasure for years to come. Bring along your favourite underrated book and enthuse about it for 1 minute – speed reading rather than speed dating. Guided by your hosts Josh Cohen and Judy Batalion, you’ll discover a whole world of literature in the space of an hour, and be in with a chance of winning a mystery literary prize. |
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| Writing Workshop
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Amy Bloom |
| Notes: | This workshop is about getting it right: the word, the phrase and the sentence. It is about the art and craft involved in each word and image chosen and the relentless care and occasional leap that getting it right requires. Come with paper and pen. |
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| Coexistence and Cooperation Between Israelis and Palestinians: The Untold Story
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Daniel Gavron. Chair: Arnold Wesker |
| Notes: | Holy Land Mosaic tells of Daniel Gavron's personal journey through the relatively unknown territory of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, cooperation, partnership, and friendship that exists despite the reality of enmity and daily violence.
It penetrates behind the cliches to meet the individual human beings: Jews and Muslims, Israelis, Palestinians, Druze, and others. Encompassing projects involving both Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens in Israel, and cross-border programmes involving West Bank Arabs and Israelis, it ranges from the olive groves of Samaria to the caves of the Hebron hills, and from Galilee to the Negev. We visit Haifa and Hebron, Jerusalem and Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Tulkarm.
We witness joint efforts to preserve civil rights, an Israeli group that rebuilds demolished Arab homes, bilingual Hebrew-Arabic schools, a village where Jews, Christians, and Muslims live together in continuous dialogue, and a college in the Arava, where Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians study the environment. Sports, music, theater, journalism, medicine, research, interfaith encounters, and projects for youth are only some of the topics covered.
While not evading the bitter reality of the Jewish-Arab conflict, the author discloses that there are still points of light and a few remaining islands of sanity.
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| Cecil B DeMille and the Golden Calf
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| Time: |
02 Mar 2008 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Simon Louvish |
| Notes: | In an illustrated talk, Simon Louvish re-examines Hollywood's most enduring legend who directed lavish recreations of The King of Kings, The Sign of the Cross, Samson and Delilah and two versions of The Ten Commandments. In his day he provoked at least as much of an uproar as Mel Gibson. Was Cecil B DeMille a savant or sinner, artist or hack, defender of freedom or a hypocritical opportunist who embraced the golden calf of sheer commercialism? The iconic director is a pervasive puzzle - a mirror of the larger puzzle and contradictions of America itself.
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| Klez Café
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2008 - 10:15 pm | | Contributors: | Mekella Broomberg, Laoise Davidson, Daniel Hart, Oliver Meek, James Silverly |
| Notes: | Go back to your roots (or someone else’s) and celebrate the folktales and folk tunes of Yiddish yore with the Jewish Community Centre’s tribute troupe. Storyteller Mekella Broomberg and actors Daniel Hart and Oliver Meek weave Yiddish yarns while musicians Laoise Davidson and James Siverly play live Klezmer in this reworked version of the show, a sell out of last season’s programme at the JCC. |
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| The East End Now and Then
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2008 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Monica Ali, Oona King, Bernard Kops, Chair: Claire Armitstead |
| Notes: | Bernard Kops remembers the East End of his childhood, desperately poor and teeming with Jewish immigrants, full of hopes and ambition. His Hamlet of Stepney Green brought the vernacular East End voice to the stage and made him famous overnight. Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane, explores the difficulties its Bengali residents experience today, receiving huge acclaim and success but a mixed reception within the community itself. In Oona King's new memoir, House Music, she admits she loved representing the East End in Parliament because, like her, “it’s multi-ethnic”. All three tell stories of their experience, discuss how immigrants’ lives have changed and whether the East End is a successful microcosm of multicultural Britain.
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| All Things Tire of Themselves
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| Time: |
01 Mar 2008 - 7:15 pm | | Contributors: | Arnold Wesker |
| Notes: | A poem was the first thing Arnold Wesker wrote aged 14. All Things Tire of Themselves is his first collection of poetry, a publication which fulfils his ambition to have covered all the literary genres. Tonight he now fearfully shares these poems with the public. |
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| Fault Lines
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| Time: |
29 Feb 2008 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Nancy Huston. Chair: Jonathan Garfinkel |
| Notes: | In her award winning novel, Nancy Huston explores the past through four consecutive generations, taking the reader backwards in time from California to New York, Haifa to Munich, from 9/11 to Nazi Germany, through the terrible fault lines that scarred our recent history. |
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| Storytelling Masterclass
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| Time: |
29 Feb 2008 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Howard Schwartz |
| Notes: | This session springs from Howard Schwartz’s book Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Few have recognized the essential role of mythology in Jewish folklore. In this workshop the storyteller will tell and then deconstruct a single folktale about Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed in the 16th century to demonstrate how it is built on more than a dozen primary Jewish mythological themes. |
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| The Art of Blogging
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| Time: |
29 Feb 2008 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Lisa Goldman |
| Notes: | Lisa Goldman will talk about her blog ‘On the Face’ which continued throughout the 2006 war in Lebanon, a conflict she says is the most blogged war in history. She writes ‘This is possibly the first time in history that citizens of two countries at war are able to maintain direct communication and express their feelings to one another in real time.’ In this how-to session the journalist will explain the art of blogging, giving tips on how to keep it going, and maintain a readership that can often transcend the boundaries of print media. |
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| Bookniks Cabaret
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 9:30 pm | | Contributors: | Lana Citron, Rudolph Delson, Ellaya Ayal Mor, Rachel Rose Reid, Eva Salzman, Adam Taylor. Host: Laoise Davidson |
| Notes: | An eclectic fusion of music and spoken word with a dose of Yiddish swing, the
popular Bookniks Cabaret returns: hosted by Laoise, with writer and stand-up comic Lana Citron, poets Adam Taylor and Eva Salzman, novelist Rudolph Delson and storytellers Rachel Rose Reid and Ellaya Ayal Mor.
Book Week with a twist. |
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| Bookniks: God Wrestling
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 8:00 pm | | Contributors: | Shalom Auslander. Chair: A.L. Kennedy |
| Notes: | Shalom Auslander is angry and scared. Angry at God, at his family, his orthodox upbringing, at the world we live in. Scared, because as hard as he may try, he is still a believer and convinced that a vengeful and cruel God will punish him for his irreverence. The result is as profoundly dark as it is hilariously funny. Prepare to be taken out of your comfort zone and shaken.... with laughter.
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| Bookniks: The Year of Living Biblically
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 6:30 pm | | Contributors: | A.J. Jacobs |
| Notes: | The Year of Living Biblically answers the question: What if a modern-day American followed every single rule in the Bible as literally as possible. Not just the famous rules, the Ten Commandments, but the hundreds of oft-ignored ones: don’t wear clothes of mixed fibers. Grow your beard. Stone adulterers. A.J. Jacobs’ experiment is surprising, informative, timely and funny. It is both irreverent and reverent. |
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| Meet the Author: Marie Phillips
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Marie Phillips |
| Notes: | Marie Phillips tells us what led her to imagine Greek Gods living a pretty miserable life in Hampstead today in Gods Behaving Badly. Artemis is a dog-walker on the Heath, Apollo a cheesy TV host and Aphrodite a telephone sex operator. A hilarious novel about myths, faith and love. |
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| Fiftysomethings
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Linda Kelsey, Judith Summers. Chair: Kerry Fowler |
| Notes: | Turning 50 is not easy. It actually turns into a nightmare for Hope in Linda Kelsey’s novel Fifty is not a Four Letter Word. She loses her job, her husband and her mother in the space of a few months but bounces back with gusto. Judith Summers writes about her own experience of middle age and widowhood and a feisty little dog who helped her and her son to smile again. The two writers talk about age, canine friends, teenagers and putting it all on paper as an autobiographical fiction or fictionalised autobiography.
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| Agnon: Father and Daughter
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Documentary Films |
| Notes: | Agnon (Ram Loevy and Micha Shagrir, 1978)
Two very rare short films from 1966, one showing Agnon going about his everyday life, and the other the Nobel Prize reception and international tour.
Emuna Yaron (Ruth Walk, 2007)
In 1970, after the death of her father,S.Y. Agnon, Emuna Yaron realized that she had been entrusted with a mission: to publish all of her father's handwritten manuscripts, which had been hidden away. She devoted her life to his oeuvre, publishing 15 volumes, which have since been translated to 38 languages. Only when this work was completed, at the age of 81, did she find the time for her own writing. In the film, where she is seen proofing her book "Chapters of My Life", Emuna reveals previously unknown details about her father. |
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| Reading Group: Everyman
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| Time: |
28 Feb 2008 - 11:00 am | | Contributors: | Naomi Lightman |
| Notes: | Roth’s short novel, Everyman, explores sex, relationships, remorse and dying. The protagonist, an "everyman" figure (reminiscent of the medieval drama), is profoundly aware of the fate that awaits us all. |
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| Murder They Write
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| Time: |
27 Feb 2008 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Jonathan Freedland, Matt Rees |
| Notes: | Jonathan Freedland, alias Sam Bourne, tackles the Middle East conflict in his second gripping thriller, The Last Testament. With the Bethlehem Murders, Matt Rees has set off on a series of mysteries set in the West Bank with school teacher turned detective Omar Yussef as their central character.
The two journalists explain what prompted them to start writing thrillers and discuss the Middle East, politics and fiction. |
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| Rethinking the Media
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27 Feb 2008 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Lisa Goldman, Judah Passow. Chair: Robin Lustig |
| Notes: | There is no such thing as unbiased information but how does the system work? What is omitted and why? During the Lebanon war of 2006, Lisa Goldman managed to keep communication going with Lebanese bloggers, a fact which attracted the attention of the international media. In fact, this was the first live-blogged war. It was also the first war during which citizens of enemy states could engage in direct, real-time communication. And, of course, it was the first occasion on which bloggers exposed the errors made by mainstream media outlets. Award-winning photographer Judah Passow, whose pictures of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are to be published as a book, Shattered Dreams, knows how images are chosen and made to speak volumes. They discuss with Robin Lustig how information is processed and presented to us. |
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| Passion: Jon Ronson On His Domestic and Geopolitical Neuroses
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| Time: |
27 Feb 2008 - 6:00 pm | | Contributors: | Jon Ronson |
| Notes: | Our everyday lives are determined by the craziest thought and we inevitably spend too much time getting worked up by complete nonsense. There are clever people worldwide who are employed to spot, nurture and exploit the irrationalities of those among us who can barely cope as it is. Nobody more than Jon Ronson is aware and capable of making us laugh about our obsessions and neuroses.
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| Meet the Author: Random Acts of Heroic Love
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| Time: |
27 Feb 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Danny Scheinmann |
| Notes: | Random Acts of Heroic Love is a novel with two intertwining threads. The first, set in 1992, is the story of a man coming to terms with the loss of his girlfriend in a road accident in Latin America. The second is based on the true story of Danny Scheinmann’s grandfather who fought for the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI, captured by the Russians in 1915 and sent to Siberia. Kept alive by his love for a girl he hardly knew, he escaped in 1917 and spent three years walking back home across Russia through deathly winters, war and revolution. |
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| Cafe Philo: Crossing the Divide
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| Time: |
27 Feb 2008 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Jonathan Garfinkel. Chair: Emma Klein |
| Notes: | Jonathan Garfinkel journeys from a Zionist education in Canada to a quest for a true perspective on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio. He witnesses the reality of life on both sides of the divide and also explores Jewish identity. He will be talking to Emma Klein and reading from his evocative memoir, Ambivalence: Crossing the Israel Palestine Divide. There will then be an open discussion in which the audience is invited to take part. |
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| Rehabilitating Rezso Kasztner
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27 Feb 2008 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Zsuzi Kasztner, Ladislaus Lob, Chair: David Ceserani |
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Dealing with Satan, Rezso’s Kasztner’s Daring Rescue Mission is the story of Reszo Kasztner, the man responsible for saving Ladislaus Lob and 1670 Jewish men, women and children from Bergen-Belsen. Combining history with memoir and a remarkably honest analysis of morality and survival, Ladislaus Lob examines the life and actions of a man of extraordinary contradictions. A highly controversial figure, regarded by some as a traitor and by many others as a hero, Kasztner was eventually murdered by an extremist Jewish gang in Israel.
Here, Ladislaus Lob discusses his book with Katszner’s daughter Zsuzi and the historian David Ceserani. |
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| Amos Oz: The Conscience of Israel
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27 Feb 2008 - 12:00 am | | Contributors: | Documentary Films |
| Notes: | Alan Yentob profiles the writer Amos Oz, in the wake of the publication of his childhood memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness taking Oz back to the settings of his childhood in Israel. Oz, a passionate advocate of the two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, grew up during the formation of Israel and his lyrical memoir describes family trauma against the backdrop of the country’s difficult early years, and the story of its founders.
Amos Oz speaks movingly of his parents' difficulties in adjusting to Israel after a lifetime in Europe, his mother's depression and suicide, and his own bereaved rage that lasted well into adulthood. He also talks about the Israel-Palestine conflict . "A place cannot be holy," he said, commenting on the land-grabs of recent times. "Human life alone can be sacred." |
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| The 1948 War
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26 Feb 2008 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Benny Morris. Chair: Colin Shindler |
| Notes: | Zionist historiography, written in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, was essentially mobilized, official historiography, which typically portrayed the war as a straight conflict between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, in which the Jews were always blameless and wise and the Arabs, evil and mindless.
The opening of major Israeli archives in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the opening of vast amounts of state papers in the US and UK, and the UN archives, made possible a more objective and "scientific" look at what had happened and why. So did the maturing of a new generation of Israelis, whose life experiences did not revolve around 1948 but around 1973, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the First Intifada.
The New Historiography produced at the end of the 1980s, focusing in 1948 (after all, that was the revolutionary year), in fact served as the first generation of real, well-documented historiography of Israel's birth (all previous "history" had really been prehistory. Among the topics dealt with were Britain's role in 1947-1948, the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, the agreement (or lack of it) between the Yishuv/Israel and Transjordan, how the war ended without Israeli-Arab peace, and why.
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| The $3 Trillion War
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| Time: |
26 Feb 2008 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Joseph Stiglitz |
| Notes: | The $3 Trillion War is a devastating reckoning of the true cost of the Iraq war - quite apart from its tragic human toll - which the Bush administration has estimated at $50 billion, but which Stiglitz and his co-author Bilmes show underestimates the real figure by approximately six times.
Here he exposes the gigantic expenses which have so far not been officially accounted for, including replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) and also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global perspective, Stiglitz investigates the cost in lives and damage within Iraq and the Middle East generally. With chilling precision, he calculates what the money spent on the war would have produced had it been further invested in the growth of the economy, in the US and around the world, and in infrastructure building.
Prepare to change forever the way you think about the Iraq war - and about the cost of all wars. |
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| The Shining City on the Hill
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| Time: |
26 Feb 2008 - 6:00 pm | | Contributors: | Melanie Phillips |
| Notes: | Jerusalem is surely the most extraordinary city on earth. Fought over for centuries and now the iconic symbol of the terrible dispute between Arabs and Jews, it is the place where civilisations are layered on top of each other in ancient stones. For some, it represents danger and claustrophobic intolerance. For Melanie Phillips, however, it is a place of unparalleled beauty and tranquillity, the eternal centre of the spiritual world. |
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| The Camel Trail
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| Time: |
26 Feb 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Judy Jackson |
| Notes: | David Levy, orphaned in Safed in 1837, retrieves a family treasure from the disaster. His grand-daughter finds notebooks that trace his rise in English society but behind the apparent calm lies a story of deception and betrayal. Set in Lisbon, Gibraltar and London, this startling novel explores the legacies we leave our children - silver and sadness; recipes and resentments. |
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| Eyewitness: David Rubinger
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26 Feb 2008 - 3:30 pm | | Contributors: | Documentary Films |
| Notes: | Micha Shagrir, 2007
Israel as seen through the eyes of David Rubinger, the laureate of the Israeli Prize for Photography, eyewitness to the dramatic events that took place in Israel throughout its existence. |
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| Growing Tales
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26 Feb 2008 - 1:00 pm | | Contributors: | Esther Freud, Anne Landsman and Sidura Ludwig, Chair: Francesca Segal |
| Notes: | Three acclaimed authors tackle the the pain, awkwardness and strange joy of growing up. Esther Freud has frequently returned to this theme in her novels. Sidura Ludwig’s debut novel, Holding My Breath depicts a young woman’s struggle to find her way in the world. The Rowing Lesson, set in South Africa, is a moving story of a daughter’s wish to keep her father alive by retelling his life story. |
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| School Day
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26 Feb 2008 - 10:30 am | | Contributors: | Daniel Hahn and Leonie Flynn, Caroline Lawrence, Howard Schwartz |
| Notes: | This year’s School Day at Jewish Book Week will be looking at ‘Storytelling Histories ’. We are inviting year 6 classes to sample some of the most exciting parts of the festival in a series of three specially designed sessions with some multi-talented and award-winning writers. Caroline Lawrence, author of The Roman Mysteries will talk about the way she uncovers and brings to life stories from history, focusing on The Slave Girl Form Jerusalem; Storyteller and Folklorist Howard Schwartz will tell the story of The Bird of Happiness and other stories of Jerusalem; and Daniel Hahn and Leonie Flynn, editors of The Ultimate Book Guide tell us the secret of what makes a good story.
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| Israel Through My Lens: Sixty Years as a Photojournalist
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25 Feb 2008 - 8:30 pm | | Contributors: | Ruth Corman, David Rubinger. Chair: Ned Temko |
| Notes: | David Rubinger has captured some of the most powerful images of his time. No one has done a better job of showing the history of Israel in all its glory and pain. The stories behind those photographs and the people he has met are utterly captivating, but one of the most fascinating and poignant is that of his own life. Tonight he is joined by Ruth Corman who co-wrote Rubinger's memoir, Israel Through My Lens. The conversation will be accompanied by some of his iconic photographs. |
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| Great Writers of the 20th Century: Isaiah Berlin
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25 Feb 2008 - 7:00 pm | | Contributors: | Shlomo Avineri. Chair: Alan Ryan |
| Notes: | A careful analysis of Sir Isaiah Berlin's writings and lectures suggests a multi-layered Jewish identity. On the one hand, a deep commitment to Zionism and Israel, growing out of a merciless analysis of the failures of emancipation and assimilation. Yet it is this same insight into the conflicted identities of many Jewish intellectuals which suggest to Berlin the richness and universal significance of the contribution of such people like Karl Marx, Benjamin Disraeli and Moses Hess to the spiritual and political life of European society in the 19th century. |
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| Frank's Way: Frank Cass and Fifty Years of Publishing
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25 Feb 2008 - 5:00 pm | | Contributors: | Gerry Black. Chair: Michael Freedland |
| Notes: | Michael Freedland chairs a discussion with Gerry Black, author of Frank's Way: Frank Cass and Fifty Years of Publishing, and other friends and colleagues from Frank Cass's long and successful business and communal career. Contributions and reminiscences from the floor will be welcome in this tribute to one of the UK's most prolific and diverse publishers. |
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| Discover the Author: Ruth Borchard
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25 Feb 2008 - 4:30 pm | | Contributors: |
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