Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz
The extraordinary story of how two boys survived humanity’s darkest hour – and then found each other again half a century later. Kalman & Leopold is the harrowing firsthand account – narrated to the latter’s son Richard K. Lowy, who joins us here – of a pair of children spared from the Auschwitz gas chambers, […]
Mahler & Freud: A Viennese Encounter
Raffaello Morales, founder of London’s Fidelio Café and conductor of the Fidelio Orchestra, joins renowned critic and cultural historian Norman Lebrecht, whose works on Mahler explore Jewish creativity and fin-de-siècle Vienna. Together they discuss The Earth to the Skies, Morales’s atmospheric novel rooted in the worlds of Mahler and Freud at a moment when art, […]
Boy from the North Country
A son returns to his dying mother and uncovers the astonishing truths of her life, her wisdom, and her creatively intense, turbulent romance with Bob Dylan – an artist he reveres and whom strangers claim he resembles. Boy from The North Country, Sam Sussman’s acclaimed autofictional debut (“A remarkable novel” – Tony Kushner), draws on […]
Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: the Yiddish Sherlock Holmes
Meet Max Spitzkopf: legendary Viennese private eye, undefeated foe of villains, and passionate defender of the Jewish people. Isaac Bashevis Singer hailed Jonas Kreppel’s early 20th-century detective stories as “masterpieces.” Now Mikhl Yashinsky’s charming translations from the original Yiddish bring 15 of these mysteries, with their unique twist, to a new audience. The teacher, translator, […]
Hamas and its Two Million Hostages
To mark the publication his Jewish Quarterly essay, Hamas and its Two Million Hostages, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib will join us in conversation with journalist Ben Sharoni to discuss Hamas, Gaza, and the future of the Palestinian people. For almost two decades, Hamas ruled Gaza and prepared for a battle that it knew it could not win. But […]
Faith After 7 October
Rabbi Sacks wrote that prayer “gives us the words when there are no words” and “sacred space to the tears that otherwise would have nowhere to go”. Dr Erica Brown, founding director of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center, joins Sally Berkovic online from New York to discuss Morning Has Broken: Faith After October […]
Everything is Copy: Writing Family
The authors of two of last year’s most acclaimed novels join writer snad editor Natasha Lehrer to discuss memory, mothers, marriage, bookshops, betrayal and bagels. Esther Freud’s semi-autobiographical Hideous Kinky first earned her a place on Granta’s Best Young Novelists list; three decades on, she revisits those characters in My Sister and Other Lovers, described as “delicate and profound” […]
The Story of Norwood
Author Sandra Myers and historian Trudy Gold explore Sandra’s The History of Norwood – from its 1795 origins as an East End refuge for destitute Jews to Britain’s leading Jewish children’s charity supporting 6,000 people a year. Along the way, they spotlight remarkable alumni, including Sylvia Graham – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s on-off muse – and […]
The Genius Myth
“Male, of middle or upper-middle parentage, preferably Jewish” was Hans Eysenck’s notorious sketch of a ‘genius’. The world has largely agreed, from da Vinci and Tolstoy to the Beatles and Elon Musk. In The Genius Myth, a Guardian and FT Book of the Year, Helen Lewis unpicks the allure of the lone male prodigy and […]
Janet Suzman: A Life in Focus
Long recognised as one of the world’s leading Shakespearians, Dame Janet Suzman is the definitive Cleopatra and an RSC associate artist who staged a landmark Othello in her native South Africa. For six decades she has captivated audiences, earning Oscar, Olivier and BAFTA nominations for Nicholas and Alexandra and Hedda Gabler. The Pragnell Award winner […]
The West, the Jews & a Broken Promise
The global future looks darker than it has for generations. In Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, Jake Wallis Simons warns that rising nationalism and antisemitic violence – from Amsterdam and London to Melbourne and New York – signal a deeper threat to liberal democracy. Radicals across the spectrum, he argues, […]
A Poetry of Migration
Poets Annie Freud, Stephen Duncan, and Jennifer Langer, chaired by Monica Bohm-Duchen, explore German-Jewish heritage in the UK. Using poetry, they reflect on exile, Weimar culture, memory, and identity, considering what the Second Generation inherits from their parents’ emigration, the Holocaust, and the cultural richness of pre-war Germany, and how it shapes their sense of […]