Kosher Poker
Speakers: Patrick Marber, Shelley Rubenstein, Peter Alson Poker has long been linked with both writers and the Jewish community. Journalist and poker player Shelley Rubenstein has been dealt a strong hand with her guests for this discussion. Then primarily known as a comedy performer, Patrick Marber chose the game as a setting for his debut […]
Modern Jewish Literature
From mass emigration out of Eastern Europe to the creation of Israel, the last century transformed Jewish life. The same was true of Jewish writers: their novels, plays, poems and memoirs provided intimate access to new worlds of experience. In The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century, […]
Taking Liberties: Jewish Women Poets
Speakers: Aviva Dautch, Jacqueline Saphra From Bible stories to re-envisioning the work of great artists, Aviva Dautch and Jacqueline Saphra explore, with conversation and readings, what it means to be a Jewish woman poet. Previously poet-in-residence at the Jewish Museum and commissioned by Bradford Literature Festival and the British Museum, Dautch has read her work on […]
The House of Fragile Things
Speakers: James McAuley, Patrick Bade Between 1870 and 1945 several prominent French Jews, pillars of an embattled community, invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army – and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. James McAuley, Paris correspondent for […]
Yeshiva Days
Speakers: Jonathan Boyarin, Eliot Jager New York’s Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city’s oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway. Jonathan Boyarin, Cornell professor of […]
Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World
Speakers: Ian Goldin Ian Goldin draws on his recent book Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years and his forthcoming Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World to show why globalisation creates catastrophic risks and how the pandemic could provide the catalyst to stop future health, climate and other crises, prompting […]
Jacob’s Advice
Speakers: Jude Cook, Marina Benjamin Described by the Daily Mail as “a thoughtful paean to Paris”, Jacob’s Advice – the second novel from Byron Easy author Jude Cook – is set against a backdrop of nationalism, the Charlie Hebdo attack and the resurgence of antisemitism, as protagonist Larry Frost searches for proof of his hoped-for […]
The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies and Exile
Speakers: Simon Kuper, Helen Fry The death in the final days of 2020 of George Blake, aged 98 in Moscow, lifted the embargo on Simon Kuper revealing for the first time the results of his unparalleled access and years of research on the most notorious double agent in British history. 65 years after he escaped […]
Antisemitism & the Russian Revolution
Speakers: Brendam McGeever,Trudy Gold When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they announced the overthrow of a world scarred by exploitation and domination, but these sentiments were put to the test as antisemitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement. Brendan McGeever offers the first book-length analysis in The Bolsheviks and Antisemitism in the […]
Kings of Shanghai
Speakers: Jonathan Kaufman, Rebecca Taylor Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Kaufman reveals the epic, multigenerational story of two rival Jewish dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as 20th-century China surged into the modern era. The Bloomberg executive editor is our guide, from beginnings in Baghdad to surviving Japanese occupation, entertaining Wallis Simpson and Charlie […]
Oliver Kamm: Mending the Mind
Speakers: Oliver Kamm, Isabel Hardman More than a fifth of the UK population report symptoms of depression or anxiety. Yet how much do we really know of the condition and of ways to treat it? In his candid but hopeful Mending the Mind, Times leader writer and columnist Oliver Kamm recounts what it’s like to be mentally ill with severe […]
The Lives of Lucian Freud
Speakers: William Feaver, Marina Vaizey Few knew Lucian Freud better than his collaborator and close friend William Feaver. Now the former Observer chief art critic and Pitmen Painters author comes to Jewish Book Week in conversation with Marina Vaizey to discuss his second and final volume of the biography, described by Craig Brown as “explosively enjoyable”. From being commissioned […]