George Steiner: A Celebration
Stephen Greenblatt described polymath and polyglot George Steiner as, ‘one of the great, restless wanderers of modern criticism… His astonishing intellectual career was a moving, emblematic refusal in the wake of Auschwitz to settle down to cultural business as usual’, while Lisa Jardine called him, ‘a rebel who made us aspire to being Europeans; he helped […]
Prince of the Press
Speakers: Joshua Teplitsky, Raquel Ukeles David Oppenheim, Prague’s chief rabbi from 1702 until his death in 1736, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, which survive to this day at the Bodleian Library. Containing works of law and literature, prayer and poetry, his library of over 7,000 printed works and 1,000 manuscripts testifies […]
The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination
Speakers: Richard J. Evans, Trudy Gold “Brilliant … Deploying him against conspiracy theorists is a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.” So says The Mail on Sunday of Richard J. Evans and the forensic scrutiny he subjects widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis to. In The Hitler Conspiracies the renowned historian analyses five long discredited but increasingly […]
The Ghetto
Speakers: Gary Younge, Edie Friedman, Bryan Cheyette Over the last 500 years the ghetto has accrued numerous contrasting and complex meanings; from the heart of Jewish culture in late medieval Western Europe and a more free-floating concept in the 19thcentury, to the Nazi definition and the ghettoization of African-Americans. Bryan Cheyette, author of The Ghetto: A […]
The Disunited States
Speakers: Angelia Wilson, Nick Cohen, Lionel Shriver After the tumultuous tenure of Trump, what is next for America? After a year marked by the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, the 2020 election saw the largest voter turnout since 1900 and resulted in the oldest president ever to take office, the first female, African-American and […]
Survivors
Speakers: Rebecca Clifford, Rob Rinder, Angela Cohen, James Libson How can we make sense of our lives if we do not know where we come from? A question at the heart of both Survivors: Children’s Lives After the Holocaust, a beautifully written account of 100 Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict by Rebecca […]
How To Stay Sane: Elif Shafak
Speakers: Elif Shafak,Mark Lawson Award-winning novelist, TED speaker and activist Elif Shafak returns to Jewish Book Week with her concise and urgent call for conscious optimism in the age of division. After 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World was shortlisted for both the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Booker Prize, she turns to non-fiction with this pocket-sized, […]
David Baddiel: Jews Don’t Count
Those who think themselves on the right side of history often ignore the history of antisemitism, argues David Baddiel in his highly anticipated unique combination of reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority – and why they […]
Journeys to Freedom
Speakers: Julia Neiberger, Joanne Newman, Rosie Whitehouse Two highly respected writers join Julia Neuberger to discuss the Jewish exodus from Europe before, during and after the war. In Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and The Flight from Nazism 1933-1945, Association of Commonwealth Universities secretary general Joanna Newman reveals the little-known story of […]
A Human History of the Oceans
Speakers: David Abulafia, Sam Leith For most of human history, the seas and oceans have been the main means of long-distance communication between peoples. To this day 90% of global trade is conducted this way and it has been pivotal to the spread of ideas and religion since the Polynesians in the first century. Historian David […]
Love in Wartime
Speakers: , Stuart E. Eizenstat The Holocaust remains a subject difficult to grasp and almost impossible to document. Award-winning photographer Max Hirshfeld searched for decades for the right way to share his Auschwitz survivor parents’ story of love and perseverance before, during and after. The result was Sweet Noise, combining transatlantic love letters with stunning […]
You Talkin’ to Me
Speakers: E.J. White, Harry Mount From ‘con man’ to ‘rush hour’, New York City has given us numerous popular words and phrases, along the way fashioning a recognisable dialect all its own. In You Talkin’ to Me? The Unruly History of New York English E. J. White explores a hidden history encompassing social class, immigration, real estate, and the original plan […]