The Middle East: A New Era
Speakers: Raphael Marcus, Miri Elsen, Anshel Pfeffer Everything we thought we knew about Israel is changing – politics, relationships with Arab neighbours, the secular-religious divide, demographics, the economy and perhaps most fundamental of all, the values. Dr Raphael Marcus is joined by Miri Elsen and Anshel Pfeffer to discuss: where will Israel be in 20 years’ […]
David Pryce Jones & Frederic Raphael
Speakers: David Pryce Jones, Frederic Raphael Two wonderful writers team up to take us through a lifetime of literary encounters. In Signatures novelist and commentator David Pryce-Jones offers a window into the extraordinary authors he has met over the last eight decades; from visiting Isaiah Berlin as a child and being sought out as a student by […]
German Jerusalem
Speakers: Thomas Sparr, Stefan Litt In the 1920s a group of German Jews settled in a garden city on the outskirts of Jerusalem. During World War II, their quiet community, nicknamed Grunewald on the Orient welcomed many notable residents including poet Else Lasker-Schüler and intellectual Gershom Scholem. It was an idyllic setting, if fraught with […]
Identity: An Alternative History
Speakers: Lipika Pelham, Matthew Stadlen A slave woman in 1840s America dresses as a white, disabled man to escape to freedom; 170 years later a black rights activist is ‘cancelled’ for denying her whiteness. From Pope Joan to Parasite, as long as we’ve drawn lines describing ourselves and each other, people have naturally fallen or […]
Jewish Pride
Speakers: Ben Freeman, Dave Rich “The Jewish journey is not just about fighting antisemitism. It is about rejecting the shame of antisemitism. Rejecting the non-Jewish world’s inaccurate definitions of what it means to be a Jew.” So writes Ben M. Freeman in his call-to-arms Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People. Inspired by his experiences with LGBTQ+ […]
Jews and Power
Speakers: Ruth Wisse, Anthony Julius Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Harvard professor Ruth R. Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power in her provocative book, part of the Jewish Encounters series. Although she sees hope in Israel, Wisse questions the way […]
Making Sense of Hatred
Speakers: Delphine Horvilleur, Philippe Sands. With no female word for rabbi existing in French, when Delphine Horvilleur, the third woman to take the role in France, is mentioned in the media – which is often due to her strong feminist stance on social justice issues – they simply call her Madame Le Rabbin. One of the leaders of […]
Rescuing Jewish Culture
Speakers: Elizabeth Gallas, George Prochnik In 1946 the American Military Government for Germany established the Offenbach Archival Depot to store, identify and restore the huge quantities of Nazi-looted books, archival material and ritual objects found hidden in German caches. The astonishing efforts of scholars and activists to rescue these cultural treasures – including over three […]
What Are Jews For?
Speakers: Adam Sutcliffe, Joseph Dweck The Bible singles out the Jews as God’s ‘chosen people’ but the significance of this special status has been understood in many different ways over the centuries. Adam Sutcliffe, professor of European history at King’s College and author of Judaism and Enlightenment, looks at Western thinking on the purpose of the Jewish people […]
Tom Stoppard: A Life
Speakers: Hermione Lee, Mark Damazer One of the most admired biographers in the English-speaking world takes on one of its greatest living playwrights. Tom Stoppard was once again the talk of theatreland last year with Leopolstadt adding to a catalogue that already included Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers and The Real Inspector Hound. Hermione Lee, the award-winning biographer of Penelope […]
Mahler and His Faith
Speakers: Norman Lebrecht Does it matter what a composer believes? Or how deep that faith was? In the case of Gustav Mahler the evidence has been muddied by interested parties. He was raised in a traditional Jewish family, before marrying outside the faith, converting to Christianity to become head of the Vienna Opera and ultimately […]
Fresse: Food stories with Jay Rayner & Pen Vogler
Speakers: Jay Rayner, Victoria Prever, Pan Vogler We have all the ingredients for an extremely entertaining hour with two of our best-loved food writers in the mix. Observer restaurant critic and The Kitchen Cabinet presenter Jay Rayner travelled from London to Louisiana to Tokyo and beyond in his search for My Last Supper. In Scoff Pen Vogler, Dinner with Mr Darcy author and […]