Jewish Book Week

Ever since the movement’ s inception, Zionists have advocated very different ideas of Israel: would the dream of Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Weizmann, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion or Begin triumph? Would Israel be a ‘normal’ state, or a ‘light unto the nations’? The state that emerged, partially out of the ashes of the Shoah, became a refuge for those escaping the horrors of WWII and its aftermath, and to many a utopian ideal. Seventy years on, at the heart of one of the world’s most volatile regions, in a country that still struggles to define itself, was it ever possible for Israel to become the moral super state? In Association with The New Israel Fund This event took place on 2nd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Love rules our lives. Philosopher Simon May, in a radically new theory of love, examines its real aim. For all its wild unpredictability, why is love so pertinacious? Indeed why do we love at all? Clinical psychologist Frank Tallis takes a look at the darker side of love – obsession – demonstrating that ultimately love dissolves the divide between what we judge to be normal and abnormal. Simon and Frank, in conversation with cultural commentator Lisa Appignanesi, discuss both the ugly and sublime aspects of love. This event took place on 2nd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

In this talk, Griselda Pollock discusses her major re-evaluation of Berlin born artist, Charlotte Salomon, which sheds new light on her remarkable combination of image, text, and music.

Download In his collection of essays Colin Shindler presents his very personal take on Israel, based on over 50 years of writing on the subject for The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post and the Guardian. This vivid and engaging ‘history’ speaks of Shindler’s deep understanding of the problems of the region.

In this exquisite volume Professor Mohammad Gharipour charts the development of synagogues in lands under Muslim rule, from North Africa and Spain to Central Asia and the Middle East. He shines a spotlight on the extraordinary architectural and artistic collaboration between Muslims and Jews in creating spaces for Jewish worship.

Jonathan Dean writes of the trials, tribulations, tragedies and successes of his grandfather and great grandfather as they fled persecution, comparing their struggles to those that beset today’s refugees. Tony Kushner explores Jewish refugee movements before, during and after the Holocaust, to place them in a longer history of forced migration from the 1880s to the present.

Why do smart people make stupid mistakes? Why do tall, slim people earn more? Does society determine who we are? What really makes us tick? Internationally acclaimed businessman, innovator and writer, Jacob Burak, embarks on a quest to answer these and other burning questions, examining whether it is destiny or personality that controls our lives.

These three towering Shakespeareans who have taught, written about, directed and performed the greatest dramatist of all times, engage in a witty and illuminating exchange about why the pre-eminent playwright and poet is studied, interpreted and translated the world over, providing inspiration for new operas, films, plays, novels, and other works of art.

Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, prize-winning author Eshkol Nevo’s brilliant recent novel, translated by Sondra Silverstein, presents a complex and emotionally wrought society, through revealing the turmoil, secrets, unreliable confessions and problematic decisions of the building's interconnected residents.

Jeremy Dauber delivers a breath-taking and enthralling illustrated history of Jewish humour ‘in all its vast and variegated forms from antiquity to yesterday’, from the Book of Esther to Seinfeld, by way of Mel Brooks and Philip Roth, offering an erudite yet entertaining history of Jewish comedy, not evading the question: what is Jewish humour and what makes a joke a Jewish joke?

Award-winning writer Caroline Moorehead, in the concluding volume of her remarkable WW2 Resistance trilogy, draws on the unseen letters and diaries of an extraordinary family in Mussolini’s Italy. The Rosellis, mother and two sons, were in many ways a family like any other, but in their bold and uncompromising resistance to the brutal rule of Fascism, they lived at the limits of love, loyalty and sacrifice.

Helen Fry’s riveting book finally uncovers the fiercely-guarded and controversial military secrets regarding London’s Kensington-based interrogation centre during WWII. She provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of ‘truth drugs’ and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, bringing dark secrets to light.

In 1947, Elisabeth Åsbrink, previous winner of the August Prize, intertwines global events with key moments from her personal history as the daughter of a Hungarian survivor. This was the year when Orwell commenced 1984, Israel was about to be born and Dior created the New Look. Writer and global analyst Jonathan Fenby’s forthcoming bookCrucible turns the spotlight on 1948, from the beginnings of the Cold War and China’s civil war to the fall out of the creation of India and Pakistan.

Gardens have been a source of enchantment since the dawn of time. Today’s speakers illuminate why gardening can be as vital an expression of the creative impulse as reading, writing or praying, and why designing, planting, tending, sharing produce, or simply looking, are so rewarding. In literature gardens can be oases or jungles, magical places where supernatural events happen and passions are aroused.

In this unique narrative of the Hebrew language from biblical to modern times, Professor Lewis Glinert explores the extraordinary hold that Hebrew has had on Jews and Christians, who have invested it with a symbolic power far beyond that of any other language in history. Preserved by the Jews for millennia, Hebrew was a bridge to Greek and Arab science; Kabbalists and humanists sought philosophical truth in it; and Colonial Americans used it to shape their own Israelite political identity. In the past 70 years, modern spoken and written Hebrew has evolved into a richly resonant and fully metaphoric language, now able to express the most subtle and nuanced contemporary thoughts and feelings.   Lewis Glinert's The Story of Hebrew has been named a finalist in the National Jewish Book Awards 2017 (History) and selected by CHOICE (the magazine of the Association of College & Research Libraries) as one of its 'Outstanding Academic Titles for 2017’.

Poet Joanne Limburg has produced an exquisite and heart-breaking memoir of her childhood, her Jewishness, her mother’s death, and how she came to terms with her brother’s suicide: ‘I explained to the rabbi that his death was the point of fracture in my world.’ Hilary Mantel has written of Small Pieces, ‘Can a writer be too honest? At times you want to close this book to protect its subject.’

Legendary ex-Artistic Director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, equally known as an opera director, takes us behind the scenes of Britain’s greatest theatre to talk about his multifarious experiences, working with many of the UK’s leading actors, musicians and designers. He discloses the back stories behind some of his spectacular successes such as The History Boys, Stuff Happens and One Man, Two Guvnors, stage gossip, and reveals his vision for his latest ambitious project, the new Bridge Theatre.

Art and cultural historian Patrick Bade was a lecturer for the MA programme at Christie’s Education in London until 2015. A prolific author, his publications include Femme Fatale: Images of Evil and Fascinating Women, and a number of monographs on artists such as Degas, Renoir, Burne-Jones, Beardsley and Tamara de Lempicka. He has also taught at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Opera House.

Consummate story-teller, Rebecca Abrams, offers tantalising glimpses into Jewish history through the prism of her personal selection from Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. Many of the objects are little-known treasures and all 22 have remarkable stories spanning 4,000 years of history and covering 14 countries, they trace the evolution of Jewish life and culture from its earliest beginnings in Ancient Mesopotamia through time and space to the modern day. From objects such as a magic amulet used by Christian Kabbalists, a viola da gamba with links to crypto-Jews, and a forged Nazi banknote, Abrams extrapolates the lives of ordinary citizens, merchants, scholars, courtiers and kings.

To world-renowned literary critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Stephen Greenblatt, the story of Adam and Eve is a prism refracting our most primitive fears and the inspiration for our most glorious works of art. In a richly illustrated talk, he shows how this myth has shaped understanding of our origins and destiny since time immemorial. This most iconic of stories stems from a few verses in an ancient book, yet continues to hold artists, philosophers and theologians in thrall and is the source of perennial contention.