News, Events & Sneak Previews

In this section we'll keep you up to date with the latest events.

Do also look out for events information and keep us posted if you are an organiser.

And remember, feedback is always welcome.

EVENTS

Do let us know of your literary events at Geraldine@jewishbookweek.com and we’ll post them on our website.

CONNECTING CONVERSATIONS
Sunday 9 November, 7.00 pm

Hampstead Theatre

Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3

Steven Berkoff in conversation with Estela Welldon

Playwright, director, actor and author Steven Berkoff talks to Estela Welldon about his challenging productions and cutting-edge approach to theatre. They also discuss his fascination with humanity's darker side, including the villainy of Shakespeare.

Steven Berkoff is a renowned theatre practitioner and writer. His stage plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and many languages. He has performed his trilogy of solo shows, One Man, Shakespeare's Villains and Requiem for Ground Zero, in venues all over the world. He is also a film actor and director, and has published a variety of books on the theatre such I am Hamlet, Meditations on Metamorphosis and Richard II in New York.

Estela Welldon worked for many years as Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy at the Portman Clinic. She is also the Founder and Elected Honorary President for Life of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. Her publications include Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood and Sadomasochism, part of the Ideas in Psychoanalysis series.

Book tickets online via Hampstead Theatre's website

£15/£8 concessions

CONNECTING CONVERSATIONS is a series of events at which psychoanalysts talk to leading writers and practitioners from other disciplines such as literature, visual art, history, sociology and social policy. With a level of debate and dialogue easily accessible to a wider audience, the series aims to create an ongoing series of 'events' where ideas can be explored and new connections developed, both between ideas and disciplines, as well as between people. Connecting conversations is produced by The Rowan Arts Project. For more information see www.connectingconversations.org

The series is produced by The Rowan Arts Project and other partners including The Institute of Psychoanalysis, The Freud Museum and The Women’s Therapy Centre.

UK Jewish Film Festival

Everyman Hampstead

Monday 10 November, 7.00 pm

5 Holly Bush Vale, NW3 6TX

Sacred Language, Spoken Language

Nurit Aviv

Talking Hebrew in the street, writing fiction and poetry in Hebrew, even gossiping in
Hebrew were all unimaginable before the grand project of Zionism set out to revive the sacred language and turn it into Israel’s everyday language.

What has happened to Hebrew in the process and what happens to the people for whom it became a mother tongue? What traces has the language of the sacred text left and how do they resonate in everyday life? In Nurit Aviv’s poetic documentary, Israeli writers and artists attempt to describe their relationship to the religious dimension of the Hebrew language. Poetry, politics, religion and secular life are all explored in the most intriguing way through well-crafted interviews that narrate one of Israel’s most fascinating and least explored undercurrents.

Film Director, Nurit Aviv will attend the screening, which will be followed by a Q&A.

Israel/France 2008 73 mins
Language: Hebrew with English subtitles

Box Office: 0870 066 4777 or book online

Nehru Centre

12 November 2008, 7.00 pm

8 South Audley Street, W1K 1HF

Edna Fernandes discusses The Last Jews of Kerala.

Separated by a narrow stretch of swamp-like waters, and

distinguished by the colour of their skin, the Black Jews and the

White Jews have been locked in a rancorous feud for centuries.

Only now, when their combined number has diminished to less

than 50 and they are on the threshold of extinction, have the two remaining Jewish communities in south India begun to realise that their destiny, and their undoing, is the same. Living in Cochin alongside this last generation, Edna Fernandes tells their story from the illustrious arrival of their ancestors from the court of King Solomon, through their long heyday of wealth, tolerance and privilege to their present twilit existence, as synagogues crumble into disuse and weddings disappear, leaving only funerals.

Joseph Bookstore

Wednesday 12th November, 8.00pm                                                                          

1255-57 Finchley Road, Temple Fortune, London NW11 OAD

BERNARD KOPS & TOM FRY - PLAYREADINGS

‘First Hearing: ‘Violence Must Come’ a parable by Stephen Heath

Bernard Kops and Tom Fry introduce a series of monthly rehearsed readings of works by new playwrights from their drama workshop, performed by a cast of professional actors.

The first reading will feature ‘Violence Must Come’ a parable by Stephen Heath.

A frightened young man finds a job in a factory dedicated to the manufacture of violence. There he is confronted by people who believe that only more violence can delay the end of the world. And then..?

Tickets: £10-00, includes the reading in the bookstore, followed by meze refreshments and a glass of wine in Café Also. All tickets must be purchased in advance. Please note: Tickets will be sold on a first come first served basis – we will not be holding any reservations. For tickets contact us on 020 8731 7575 or at info@josephsbookstore.com. Booking is essential. Further readings are planned for Wednesday 12th November and Wednesday 3rd December.

13 November, 7.00 pm

The Wiener Library, 4 Devonshire Street, London W1W 5BH

Susannah Heschel

The Aryan Jesus: Christians, Nazis and the Bible

Susannah Heschel holds the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. 

Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, and her numerous publications include a prize-winning  monograph, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus , which won a National Jewish Book Award, and a forthcoming book, The Aryan Jesus:  Christians, Nazis and the Bible .  She  has also edited several volumes, most recently, Betrayal:  German Churches and the Holocaust,  with Robert P. Ericksen, and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism,  with David Biale and Michael Galchinsky, and has written extensively on feminism and Judaism.  Several years ago she published a volume of her father's writings, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity:  Essays of Abraham Joshua Heschel, with a biographical introduction.  Prof. Heschel has also written extensively on feminist  issues related to Jewish Studies and edited a classic collection, On Being a Jewish Feminist, first published in 1983.

She took part in JBW 2007 and you can listen to her talk.

Admission is free but places are limited and must be reserved in advance by contacting the Leo Baeck Institute: email info@leobaeck.co.uk, or phone 020 7580 3493. Lectures begin promptly. Latecomers may not be admitted.

Organised by the LBI London and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt/Main in cooperation with the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at Sussex University.

Refreshments will be served after the lecture.

Underground: Regents Park, Great Portland Street. Bus: C2, 18, 27, 30, 88, 135.

Joseph Bookstore

Wednesday 23 November, 8.00pm                                                                          

1255-57 Finchley Road, Temple Fortune, London NW11 OAD

TAMAR YELLIN & GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI

‘Tales of the Lost Ten Tribes’

An evening with Tamar Yellin and Gabriel Josipovici to celebrate the publication of  prize-winning author and biblical scholar Yellin’s ‘Tales of the Lost Ten Tribes’ (Toby Press, Hb £12-99), a beautifully wrought tale that explores the heart of human longing, and asks: where do we belong ?

“Yellin combines formidable Jewish scholarship with soaring lyricism, she also displays a wonderfully quirky sense of humour. This is a writer who can do it all.”     Rohr Prize

Gabriel Josipovici is the quintessential European homme de lettres - poet, playwright, scholar, critic and author of over a dozen novels including the acclaimed Everything Passes.

There is no charge for this event. Booking is essential. Contact us on 020 8731 7575 or at info@josephsbookstore.com.

CENTRE FOR JEWISH STUDIES AT SOAS
Monday 24 November, 5.30 pm
Room G50, Main Building, SOAS, University of London


One Hundred Years of Tel Aviv 1909-2009

Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? From the Pen of a Diaspora Writer

Linda Grant

For further information, please contact Professor Colin Shindler
email: cs52@soas.ac.uk
telephone: 020 7898 4358

SOAS is five minutes from Russell Square underground station.
All events are open to the public.

JCC

Thursday 27 November 2008, 8.00 pm

Upstairs at The Magdala, 2a South Hill Park, London NW3 2SB

Spoken Word Cabaret
With Adam Taylor, Toby Litt, Gideon Conn, Judy Batalion,

Rachel Mars & nat tarrab

An evening of music, literature and performance from a stellar line-up of artists: Adam Taylor delivers deadpan humour in poems which uncover the fine detail of life and poke things which take themselves a bit too seriously; Toby Litt, named by Granta magazine as one of the 20 ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, will read from his new collection of short stories, I Play the Drums in a Band Called Okay; Rachel Mars and nat tarrab perform Trauma Top Trumps, an Ashkenazi versus Sephardi spoken-word punch up; singer/songwriter Gideon Conn will provide his unique acoustic folk, funk, jazz, hip-hop fusion, and all will be held seamlessly together by our compère, comedian Judy Batalion.

JBW iIn partnership with the JCC.

Buy these related books:
Toby Litt, I Play the Drums in a Band called OK
Adam Taylor, God’s Face in Your Gazpacho

Tickets £5  CLICK HERE TO BOOK NOW

CENTRE FOR JEWISH STUDIES AT SOAS
Monday 1 December, 5.30 pm
Room G50, Main Building, SOAS, University of London


One Hundred Years of Tel Aviv 1909-2009

Tel Aviv and Ramallah: The Next Hundred Years

Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian Ambassador

For further information, please contact Professor Colin Shindler
email: cs52@soas.ac.uk
telephone: 020 7898 4358

SOAS is five minutes from Russell Square underground station.
All events are open to the public.

Joseph Bookstore

Saturday 6th December, 6.00pm                                                                         

1255-57 Finchley Road, Temple Fortune, London NW11 OAD

BOOK LAUNCH:

‘THE SILENCE OF DARK WATER: An Inner Journey’

JONATHAN WITTENBERG

Readings and discussion. Refreshments will be served. There is no charge for this event. Booking is essential. Contact us on 020 8731 7575 or at info@josephsbookstore.com.

CENTRE FOR JEWISH STUDIES AT SOAS
Monday 8 December, 5.30 pm
Room G50, Main Building, SOAS, University of London

One Hundred Years of Tel Aviv 1909-2009

The Tel Aviv Jew in Modern Arabic Literature

Reuven Snir, University of Haifa

For further information, please contact Professor Colin Shindler
email: cs52@soas.ac.uk
telephone: 020 7898 4358

SOAS is five minutes from Russell Square underground station.
All events are open to the public.

For more information on events in London and around the UK, visit the On tour pages of the programme.