Tanya Gold Interviews Jan Grabowski on His New Book “Whitewash Poland and the Jews”
On the day his groundbreaking essay Whitewash hits the press, world-renowned historian Jan Grabowski sits down with journalist Tanya Gold. They delve into how the Polish government, museums, schools, and state institutions promote a narrative of national innocence regarding the Holocaust. Grabowski also shares his personal experiences facing smears and a notorious lawsuit for challenging […]
Maestros & Monsters: Sontag & Steiner
Susan Sontag and George Steiner were two of the most notable secular Jewish intellectuals of the last century; the former an influential writer, activist and filmmaker, the latter a media commentator and New Yorker literary critic. They disliked and mistrusted one another, meeting only on the few occasions where their mutual friend Robert Boyers brought […]
Why Schoenberg Matters
Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg was an international icon in his own time, with his 12-tone system considered the future of music itself. Today, leading orchestras rarely play his works and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. A New Yorker Book of the Year, Harvey Sachs’ lyrical Schoenberg: Why He Matters rescues […]
Breaking Through Depression
We are often told that depression is ‘all in the mind’. So why are so many of its symptoms felt in our bodies? One of the world’s leading researchers on depressive illness shares his expertise. As he marks 50 years at the US National Institute of Health, Philip Gold shows how this devastating disease can […]
Jewish Priorities
With the unprecedented Jewish Priorities: Sixty-five proposals for the future of our people, writer and author David Hazony brings together voices from across the Jewish world for a no-holds-barred debate on the future. With essays from thought leaders including Natan Sharansky, Dara Horn and Fania Oz–Salzberger and featuring rabbis, scholars, activists and novelists, the collection […]
Yascha Mounk – The Identity Trap
Barack Obama’s ‘favourite political thinker’ joins us to discuss the origins, consequences and limitations of what he terms ‘identity synthesis’. In The Identity Trap, Yascha Mounk argues that what started as an appreciation of the culture and heritage of minorities marginalised by society, has transformed into an obsession with group identity in all its forms, […]
Ian Goldin: Age of the City
From centres of antiquity such as Athens or Rome, to modern metropolises such as New York or Shanghai, cities throughout history have been the epicentres of our greatest achievements. Now, for the first time, more than half of humanity lives in cities, which are growing at an unprecedented rate. The visionary Oxford professor Ian Goldin […]
Jewish Women: Literacy & Liberty
Through much of history the Jewish Hebrew library of the ‘People of the Book’ excluded half of humanity; across all traditional Jewish communities compulsory communal education was only for boys until the turn of the last century. In her comprehensive study The Unknown History of Jewish Women Through The Ages Rachel Elior examines the social, […]
Bogie & Bacall
She was the 19-year-old daughter of Jewish immigrants, making her film debut. He was 45, a Mayflower descendent, about to become America’s highest-paid actor – and married. Yet the meeting of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart on To Have and Have Not sparked an iconic, enduring romance, still discussed 80 years on. New York Times […]
Robert Alter on Amos Oz
Critic, translator and biblical scholar Robert Alter brings the first published biography of Amos Oz to Book Week. Oz was one of Israel’s most prominent writers, a regular contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the author of dozens of novels, essay collections, and novellas in a career spanning over half a century. This […]
Kabbalah in Modern Literature
Kabbalah began modestly as an esoteric lore among a Jewish elite in 12th century Provence. By the end of the 15th century, with the emergence of the Christian Kabbalah in Italy, it had acquired an audience in European intellectual circles. Gershom Scholem, widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, influenced […]
Sheila Heti in Conversation with Mia Levitin
A thrilling non-fiction confessional from the multi-award-winning, Motherhood and Pure Colour novelist, playwright, short story writer and children’s author Sheila Heti. She kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, her Alphabetical Diaries is one of 2024’s most-anticipated books. […]