Jewish Book Week

In a history book that reads like a thriller, The Book Smugglers charts the incredible story of the ghetto inmates who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts — first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets — by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. In doing so, this daring group of poets turned partisans, and scholars turned smugglers, saved the treasures of Vilna, ‘the Jerusalem of Lithuania’. Sponsored by the National Library of Israel

Judeophobia, the great hatred. Is it a psychic aberration, a 2,000 year-old disease? Loathing of Jews has been a feature of Christendom since the first accusation of deicide and this, combined with enforced employment patterns – usury and trade – made the Jews the pariahs of Europe, a situation the Enlightenment did nothing to change. Chameleon-like, the hatred became racial rather than religious. Today there is an addition to the old prejudices – aversion to Israel. As the world falls to extremism, Jew hatred is, again, a unifying force. Our panel, drawn from the worlds of history, politics, journalism and the law, scrutinised this longest hatred. Sponsored by Jacqueline and Michael Gee

In January 2018, cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of Auschwitz, and then of Bergen-Belsen, addressed the Bundestag to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. In an extraordinary speech, she said, “Antisemitism is a virus which is two thousand years old and apparently incurable… No other genocide is as comprehensively documented as the Holocaust. And yet there are still the deniers … There are no excuses and no explanations for what happened all those years ago. All that remains is hope: the hope that ultimately, one day, reason will prevail.” Anita read extracts from that speech. Her grandson Simon, an acclaimed cellist and singer, played, accompanied by pianist Iain Farrington. Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and Family

Join prize-winning tour guide, award-winning librarian and author Rachel Kolsky as she profiles her latest book, Women’s London. Inspired by walking tours she devised for The Women’s Library and responding to those who encouraged her to put her words on paper, she published a guide book to London featuring the impact women have had on its society, heritage and streetscape. From scientists to suffragettes, reformers and royals, authors and artists, sit back and discover some of Rachel’s favourite London ladies.

In Insomnia, Marina Benjamin has produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition, treating our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but as an existential experience that can electrify our understanding of ourselves, and of creativity and love. Lisa Appignanesi, in Everyday Madness, writes of the rage she experienced when her partner of 32 years died. In this brave examination of an ‘ordinary enough’ death and its aftermath, she scrutinises her own and our society’s experience of grieving, the effects of loss and the potent, mythical space it occupies in our lives. In Association with the TLS

The Holocaust never happened. The planet isn’t warming. Vaccines cause autism. All of us deny inconvenient truths sometimes, but what happens when denial becomes ‘denialism’, a systematic attempt to overturn established scholarly findings?  And how do we relate to this phenomenon in a ‘post-truth’ age? Our panellists, whose expertise covers history, contemporary culture, the law and psychotherapy, discuss the significance of phenomena such as Holocaust denial and climate change denial, and how they relate to ‘everyday’ denial.

Jewish Book Week hosts an edition of Literary Friction the monthly podcast about books and ideas, hosted by friends Carrie and Octavia. Listen-in for lively discussion, book recommendations and a little music too. Carrie and Octavia will be interviewing Ukranian-born, American and French artist and author Yelena Moskovich, speaking about her incredible new book Virtuoso.

For a generation, public debate has been corroded by a narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood ‘science’. Bestselling author and eminent philosopher John Gray describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition. His book sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have battled to understand this issue. “There is no need to panic or despair”, says Gray. “A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think.”

Ferdinand Mount has long been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians of the past two millennia. In his riveting and provocative book, Prime Movers, Mount takes us on a colourful journey, examining the ideas of twelve key savants — from Pericles to Jesus Christ, and from Adam Smith to Karl Marx. These are the people who have shaped our world — and who have inspired and provoked the author, often in equal measure. In Association with the TLS This event took place on 6 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

We believe we are exceptional, but is there really anything special about humans that makes us different from other animals? In this entertaining tour of life on Earth, scientist and broadcaster Dr Adam Rutherford’s The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us examines what, if anything, sets us apart in the animal kingdom. Sponsored by Robin and Hanna Klein This event took place on 6 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Insiders / Outsiders examines the extraordinarily rich contribution of refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe to the visual culture, art education and art-world structures of the United Kingdom. In every field, emigres arriving from Europe in the 1930s introduced a professionalism, internationalism and bold avant-gardism to a British art world not known for these attributes. At a time when the issue of immigration is much debated, Insiders / Outsiders serves as a reminder of the importance of cultural cross-fertilization and of the deep, long-lasting and wide-ranging contribution that refugees make to British life. Insiders/Outsiders is published to accompany a UK-wide arts festival of the same name running from March 2019 until March 2020.

“Strongman politics are ascendant”, Barack Obama wrote recently: “The politics of fear and resentment… is now on the move”.  From America to China, from Europe to Brazil, in India and across the Middle East, ‘macho’ leaders are very much in fashion. So why is the strongman proving so attractive to so many, and will the fashion be a passing one? Our panellists debated the character traits, neurology and behaviours of the political strongman – as well as examining what helps them into power and keeps them there. In Association with the New Israel Fund This event took place on 6 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Lipika Pelham tells the extraordinary story of the Sephardi Jews of 17th century Amsterdam. The community, part of a ‘carnival of nations’ formed of French Huguenots, North African merchants, Spanish Moriscos and Iberian New Christians, was integral to the success of the Dutch Golden Age. They traded, wrote, staged plays and were painted by Rembrandt. They achieved unparalleled freedoms. While Jews elsewhere were confined to the ghetto, this community dared to nurture the ‘Hope of Israel’, sowing the seeds of Zionism. Lipika also searches for what remains today of Jerusalem on the Amstel. In association with Jewish Renaissance This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Evolutions, ‘a breath-taking race through the immense scope of time and space that is our universe’, brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, our journey from a single cell to the intricate complexities of the human mind. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Tolerance, equality, democracy, free speech, a free press, separation of church and state, progress: these and other values of the Enlightenment have guided the West for over 300 years. But with trends such as the rise of populism and nationalism in the West, the ascent of China in the East, and the failure of the Arab Spring, many are asking: what if the Enlightenment was just a blip? What if we are simply reverting to ‘norm’ of human history and, if so, what can we do about it? Our expert panel discusses. This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Painting in London in the post-WWII years is a story of friendships and shared experiences. Drawing on first-hand interviews, acclaimed art historian Martin Gayford, in conversation with Hannah Rothschild, examined the interwoven lives of artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and David Hockney, and the teachers and contemporaries, including David Bomberg and Jackson Pollock, who influenced them in their quest to explore the boundaries of art, always posing the question, ‘what can painting do?’. In Association with STATE-F22 This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in 20th century British history. Award-winning historian Andrew Roberts draws on new sources to depict him intimately, laying bare Churchill’ s faults and virtues. Above all, this vivid new biography reveals the wellsprings of his personality: his aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history and its connection to the present. Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor In association with the Jewish Historical Society of England   This event took place on 5 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

When she was 27, Ilana Kurshan found herself alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce. She joined the world’s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for ‘daily page’ of the Talmud, taking her copy wherever she went. In If All the Seas Were Ink, Ilana took us on a guided tour of the Talmud, shedding new light on its stories and offering insights into its arguments, for those already familiar with the text and those who have never encountered it. Together with Yoel Finkelman, Judaica Curator of the National Library of Israel, she explored her memoir of love and learning as a celebration. Sponsored by the National Library of Israel This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely-wrought prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity, to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, this work resonates with a startling immediacy. The George Webber Memorial Event This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak is an awarded novelist, a public intellectual and an outspoken activist for women’s rights and LGBT rights. Alice Shalvi, scholar, educator, women’s rights activist, seeker of justice and proponent of peace, is one of Israel’s most admired figures. These two iconic women have much in common. Together, Elif and Alice discussed their lives, their work and their hopes with Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand. Sponsored by Abraham Initiatives This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

What comes after #MeToo? In this ‘chilling exposé’ of British justice, Helena Kennedy QC, one of our most eminent lawyers and human rights activists, confronts a system that is discriminating against – and failing – women. The law, she argues, holds up a mirror to society and it is not serving women well. The #MeToo movement has, in part, been a reaction to those failures. So what comes next? Helena Kennedy shows with force and fury that change for women must start at the heart of what makes society just. This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Heritage tourism has boomed in the last half century, especially in older industrial cities such as Kiev, Berlin, Bucharest, Krakow, London and New York. Jews, often rediscovering their family’s traumatic pasts marked by the Holocaust, have become a vital component of this burgeoning heritage industry. Daniel Walkowitz invites readers to join him on his travels. Part family saga and part tour guide, this is a deeply personal analysis of Jewish history as told in public history – museums, heritage sites, memorials – that illustrate what is being remembered, what memorialised, what forgotten, and what ignored. This event took place on Sunday 3 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas – especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism – have become even more prescient and vital today. But who was the man behind such influential views? Henry Hardy, Berlin’s decades-long editor and collaborator, offers an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher. This event took place on Sunday 3 March as part of Jewish Book Weke 2019

Brexit is the most divisive issue in a generation; it unleashed a rise in populism, and exposed the fault lines of a nation divided by wealth, geography and class. Will Brexit send us hurtling towards disaster or will it set the nation’s spirit free? Are Britain’s Jews likely to fare better or worse outside the EU? Our expert panel, drawn from the pro- and anti-Brexit camps, attempted to bring light to this most heated of subjects. In association with the Jewish Quarterly This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Harry Freedman, author of the acclaimed The Talmud: A Biography, and novelist Ariel Kahn discuss and explore the meaning and relevance of the Kabbalah today. In Scandal, Secrecy and the Soul: A History of Kabbalah, Harry tells the fascinating story of Kabbalah from its earliest origins, while Ariel, in his debut novel Raising Sparks, tells the story of Malka, a young girl from Jerusalem’s Hassidic community, who discovers she has an extraordinary gift. Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and family This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

June 1940: Britain is Hitler’ s next target. Some Britons are pro-Nazi, and they determine to do all they can to hasten Hitler’s arrival. Throughout WWII, Britain’s defence against the ‘enemy within’ was the unlikely figure of Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk turned MI5 agent. Codenamed Jack King, he single-handedly built a network of hundreds of British Nazi sympathisers, many of whom passed secrets to him in the mistaken belief that he was a Gestapo officer. Operation Fifth Column was so covert it was omitted from the reports MI5 sent to Churchill. Robert Hutton reveals this astonishing story, told for the first time. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

International bestselling author and historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore selects over 100 letters, from Rameses, Suleiman the Magnificent and Elizabeth I, to Stalin, Emmeline Pankhurst and Leonard Cohen, from ancient times to the present. He examines human strength and frailty, presenting the most intimate thoughts of visionaries, artists and great leaders. Montefiore, a master storyteller, discusses with Tanya Gold why these letters are essential reading: how they enlighten our past, enrich the way we live now, and illuminate tomorrow. Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor In Association with Jewish Renaissance This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

In a 2016 poll, one in ten Britons claimed to have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three remain convinced that they have a guardian angel. Angels takes a modern look at what was once referred to as ‘angelology’, but which has its real roots in Judaism and in the mighty, sometimes comforting, sometimes terrifying angels who inhabit the books of Daniel, Tobit and Enoch in post-Babylonian exile literature. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

Acclaimed writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg presents a moving and poignant tale of one of history’s greatest love stories. Paris, 1117: Heloise, a young and celebrated scholar, is stunned when the radical philosopher, Peter Abelard, agrees to be her tutor. They embark on a passionate, dangerous love affair with horrific consequences, sending shockwaves through 12th-century Paris. Nine centuries later, Arthur, an English academic, in Paris to recreate their story in a novel, finds his connection to the tragic lovers is more emotional than he cares to admit. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

1930s Shanghai: in the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world; a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made – and lost. Award-winning author Paul French offers a spellbinding account of Shanghai’s lawless 1930s, and two of its most notorious criminals who bestrode the city like kings: ‘Lucky’ Jack Riley, an ex-Navy boxing champion; and ‘Dapper’ Joe Farren, a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto to establish a chorus line that rivalled Ziegfeld’s. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

International human rights lawyer Philippe Sands discusses the intriguing tale of Otto von Wächter, governor of Nazi occupied Krakow and Galicia, indicted for murder, but who escaped justice. Philippe is joined by Eli Rosenbaum, who leads the US government unit responsible for deporting Nazi war criminals, and Hugh Levinson, head of BBC Radio Current Affairs. Sponsored by Joanna Millan, in memory of Jerry Gotel. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

Emigré sculptor Oscar Nemon, whose subjects included Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Sigmund Freud, was one of the 20th century’s greatest and most flamboyant artists. Born into a Jewish Croatian Family, he sought refuge from the Nazis in England. His daughter Aurelia Young, in conversation with cultural historian Patrick Bade, told his rip-roaring story. In association with Insiders/Outsiders and State-F22 This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Acclaimed poet and publisher to the great and good, Jeremy Robson talks about his five decades in publishing, working with such intriguing and diverse figures as Marc Chagall, Ted Hughes (with whom he took a poetry tour of Israel), Joan Collins, Michael Winner, Muhammad Ali, Spike Milligan and Dannie Abse. Jeremy was in lively conversation and readings with his friend and author, the award winning actress Maureen Lipman. This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

In a world riven with bitter divisions, perverting every opportunity for dialogue, Simon Schama examins the peculiar force of contradictory argument in Jewish tradition. From its distinctive place in the Bible, to the struggle to reconcile revelation with reason in the works of Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn, at stake is not just the character and future of Israel, but the unity or division of Jews and Judaism world-wide. Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Oscar Wilde said that doing nothing is, ‘the most difficult thing in the world’. Today we live in a culture that demonises idleness, and the glorious art of doing nothing is disappearing. We are subject to a constant flow of information, and a permanent busyness pervades even our quietest moments. But although inactivity can induce lethargy, it can also foster imaginative freedom and creativity. Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen explores the paradoxical pleasures of inactivity, and asks how we might live a different and more fulfilled existence. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Explore a collection of political tales selected and introduced by the brilliant critic and author Michael Rosen. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political tales appeared frequently in British workers’ magazines, delighting readers of all ages, In Workers’ Tales, described by Philip Pullman as ‘a wonder-filled collection, which testifies to… the breadth of the human imagination but also to the enduring importance of my favourite virtue, hope’, Michael Rosen brings together more than forty of the best. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

In apartheid South Africa, many desperate parents fought to rescue their children, arrested for so-called ‘anti-apartheid’ activities, from the state’s clutches. Many of these children were tortured, some were murdered; some were as young as nine years old. The Knock on the Door tells the story of the parents who fought back, and of how the anti-detention movement became part of the mass uprising that brought down apartheid. John Simpson chairs a panel with author Terry Shakinovsky, journalist Jonathan Rosenthal, and mother and son Audrey Coleman and Keith Coleman, who experienced these dreadful crimes. In association with JCORE This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

The 11th and 12th centuries, from William the Bastard’s conquest in 1066 to the death of Henry II in 1189, have been described as a golden age for Anglo-Jewry. For over a century they were protected as ‘the King’s Jews’, flourishing both intellectually and economically. Their international connections and intellectual tradition placed them at the centre of an explosion of learning in Europe. But was it really so good for the Jews? This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Our world is undergoing a seismic transformation. Digital technologies – from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality – are transforming the way we live together, and the future of politics. Artificial intelligence alone raises tremendous legal and ethical issues. In a world transformed by technology, where does humanity figure? Our expert panel discuss. Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and family This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Eli Rosenbaum of the US Justice Department has been described as ‘the world’s most successful Nazi hunter’. However, Professor Mary Fulbrook, in her new book, Reckonings, argues that the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators have evaded responsibility for their crimes. Seventy years after the Nuremberg Trials, Joshua Rozenberg chairs a panel discussion to explore whether justice has, or ever could have, been done. Sponsored by Ali and Avi Goldberg This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Ever since the movement’ s inception, Zionists have advocated very different ideas of Israel: would the dream of Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Weizmann, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion or Begin triumph? Would Israel be a ‘normal’ state, or a ‘light unto the nations’? The state that emerged, partially out of the ashes of the Shoah, became a refuge for those escaping the horrors of WWII and its aftermath, and to many a utopian ideal. Seventy years on, at the heart of one of the world’s most volatile regions, in a country that still struggles to define itself, was it ever possible for Israel to become the moral super state? In Association with The New Israel Fund This event took place on 2nd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Love rules our lives. Philosopher Simon May, in a radically new theory of love, examines its real aim. For all its wild unpredictability, why is love so pertinacious? Indeed why do we love at all? Clinical psychologist Frank Tallis takes a look at the darker side of love – obsession – demonstrating that ultimately love dissolves the divide between what we judge to be normal and abnormal. Simon and Frank, in conversation with cultural commentator Lisa Appignanesi, discuss both the ugly and sublime aspects of love. This event took place on 2nd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

In this talk, Griselda Pollock discusses her major re-evaluation of Berlin born artist, Charlotte Salomon, which sheds new light on her remarkable combination of image, text, and music.

Download In his collection of essays Colin Shindler presents his very personal take on Israel, based on over 50 years of writing on the subject for The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post and the Guardian. This vivid and engaging ‘history’ speaks of Shindler’s deep understanding of the problems of the region.

In this exquisite volume Professor Mohammad Gharipour charts the development of synagogues in lands under Muslim rule, from North Africa and Spain to Central Asia and the Middle East. He shines a spotlight on the extraordinary architectural and artistic collaboration between Muslims and Jews in creating spaces for Jewish worship.

Jonathan Dean writes of the trials, tribulations, tragedies and successes of his grandfather and great grandfather as they fled persecution, comparing their struggles to those that beset today’s refugees. Tony Kushner explores Jewish refugee movements before, during and after the Holocaust, to place them in a longer history of forced migration from the 1880s to the present.

Why do smart people make stupid mistakes? Why do tall, slim people earn more? Does society determine who we are? What really makes us tick? Internationally acclaimed businessman, innovator and writer, Jacob Burak, embarks on a quest to answer these and other burning questions, examining whether it is destiny or personality that controls our lives.

These three towering Shakespeareans who have taught, written about, directed and performed the greatest dramatist of all times, engage in a witty and illuminating exchange about why the pre-eminent playwright and poet is studied, interpreted and translated the world over, providing inspiration for new operas, films, plays, novels, and other works of art.

Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, prize-winning author Eshkol Nevo’s brilliant recent novel, translated by Sondra Silverstein, presents a complex and emotionally wrought society, through revealing the turmoil, secrets, unreliable confessions and problematic decisions of the building's interconnected residents.

Jeremy Dauber delivers a breath-taking and enthralling illustrated history of Jewish humour ‘in all its vast and variegated forms from antiquity to yesterday’, from the Book of Esther to Seinfeld, by way of Mel Brooks and Philip Roth, offering an erudite yet entertaining history of Jewish comedy, not evading the question: what is Jewish humour and what makes a joke a Jewish joke?

Award-winning writer Caroline Moorehead, in the concluding volume of her remarkable WW2 Resistance trilogy, draws on the unseen letters and diaries of an extraordinary family in Mussolini’s Italy. The Rosellis, mother and two sons, were in many ways a family like any other, but in their bold and uncompromising resistance to the brutal rule of Fascism, they lived at the limits of love, loyalty and sacrifice.