Jewish Book Week

What comes after #MeToo? In this ‘chilling exposé’ of British justice, Helena Kennedy QC, one of our most eminent lawyers and human rights activists, confronts a system that is discriminating against – and failing – women. The law, she argues, holds up a mirror to society and it is not serving women well. The #MeToo movement has, in part, been a reaction to those failures. So what comes next? Helena Kennedy shows with force and fury that change for women must start at the heart of what makes society just. This event took place on Monday 4 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Heritage tourism has boomed in the last half century, especially in older industrial cities such as Kiev, Berlin, Bucharest, Krakow, London and New York. Jews, often rediscovering their family’s traumatic pasts marked by the Holocaust, have become a vital component of this burgeoning heritage industry. Daniel Walkowitz invites readers to join him on his travels. Part family saga and part tour guide, this is a deeply personal analysis of Jewish history as told in public history – museums, heritage sites, memorials – that illustrate what is being remembered, what memorialised, what forgotten, and what ignored. This event took place on Sunday 3 March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas – especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism – have become even more prescient and vital today. But who was the man behind such influential views? Henry Hardy, Berlin’s decades-long editor and collaborator, offers an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher. This event took place on Sunday 3 March as part of Jewish Book Weke 2019

Brexit is the most divisive issue in a generation; it unleashed a rise in populism, and exposed the fault lines of a nation divided by wealth, geography and class. Will Brexit send us hurtling towards disaster or will it set the nation’s spirit free? Are Britain’s Jews likely to fare better or worse outside the EU? Our expert panel, drawn from the pro- and anti-Brexit camps, attempted to bring light to this most heated of subjects. In association with the Jewish Quarterly This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Harry Freedman, author of the acclaimed The Talmud: A Biography, and novelist Ariel Kahn discuss and explore the meaning and relevance of the Kabbalah today. In Scandal, Secrecy and the Soul: A History of Kabbalah, Harry tells the fascinating story of Kabbalah from its earliest origins, while Ariel, in his debut novel Raising Sparks, tells the story of Malka, a young girl from Jerusalem’s Hassidic community, who discovers she has an extraordinary gift. Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and family This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

June 1940: Britain is Hitler’ s next target. Some Britons are pro-Nazi, and they determine to do all they can to hasten Hitler’s arrival. Throughout WWII, Britain’s defence against the ‘enemy within’ was the unlikely figure of Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk turned MI5 agent. Codenamed Jack King, he single-handedly built a network of hundreds of British Nazi sympathisers, many of whom passed secrets to him in the mistaken belief that he was a Gestapo officer. Operation Fifth Column was so covert it was omitted from the reports MI5 sent to Churchill. Robert Hutton reveals this astonishing story, told for the first time. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

International bestselling author and historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore selects over 100 letters, from Rameses, Suleiman the Magnificent and Elizabeth I, to Stalin, Emmeline Pankhurst and Leonard Cohen, from ancient times to the present. He examines human strength and frailty, presenting the most intimate thoughts of visionaries, artists and great leaders. Montefiore, a master storyteller, discusses with Tanya Gold why these letters are essential reading: how they enlighten our past, enrich the way we live now, and illuminate tomorrow. Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor In Association with Jewish Renaissance This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

In a 2016 poll, one in ten Britons claimed to have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three remain convinced that they have a guardian angel. Angels takes a modern look at what was once referred to as ‘angelology’, but which has its real roots in Judaism and in the mighty, sometimes comforting, sometimes terrifying angels who inhabit the books of Daniel, Tobit and Enoch in post-Babylonian exile literature. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

Acclaimed writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg presents a moving and poignant tale of one of history’s greatest love stories. Paris, 1117: Heloise, a young and celebrated scholar, is stunned when the radical philosopher, Peter Abelard, agrees to be her tutor. They embark on a passionate, dangerous love affair with horrific consequences, sending shockwaves through 12th-century Paris. Nine centuries later, Arthur, an English academic, in Paris to recreate their story in a novel, finds his connection to the tragic lovers is more emotional than he cares to admit. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

1930s Shanghai: in the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world; a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made – and lost. Award-winning author Paul French offers a spellbinding account of Shanghai’s lawless 1930s, and two of its most notorious criminals who bestrode the city like kings: ‘Lucky’ Jack Riley, an ex-Navy boxing champion; and ‘Dapper’ Joe Farren, a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto to establish a chorus line that rivalled Ziegfeld’s. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

International human rights lawyer Philippe Sands discusses the intriguing tale of Otto von Wächter, governor of Nazi occupied Krakow and Galicia, indicted for murder, but who escaped justice. Philippe is joined by Eli Rosenbaum, who leads the US government unit responsible for deporting Nazi war criminals, and Hugh Levinson, head of BBC Radio Current Affairs. Sponsored by Joanna Millan, in memory of Jerry Gotel. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

Emigré sculptor Oscar Nemon, whose subjects included Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Sigmund Freud, was one of the 20th century’s greatest and most flamboyant artists. Born into a Jewish Croatian Family, he sought refuge from the Nazis in England. His daughter Aurelia Young, in conversation with cultural historian Patrick Bade, told his rip-roaring story. In association with Insiders/Outsiders and State-F22 This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Acclaimed poet and publisher to the great and good, Jeremy Robson talks about his five decades in publishing, working with such intriguing and diverse figures as Marc Chagall, Ted Hughes (with whom he took a poetry tour of Israel), Joan Collins, Michael Winner, Muhammad Ali, Spike Milligan and Dannie Abse. Jeremy was in lively conversation and readings with his friend and author, the award winning actress Maureen Lipman. This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

In a world riven with bitter divisions, perverting every opportunity for dialogue, Simon Schama examins the peculiar force of contradictory argument in Jewish tradition. From its distinctive place in the Bible, to the struggle to reconcile revelation with reason in the works of Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn, at stake is not just the character and future of Israel, but the unity or division of Jews and Judaism world-wide. Sponsored by David and Judy Dangoor This event took place on 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Oscar Wilde said that doing nothing is, ‘the most difficult thing in the world’. Today we live in a culture that demonises idleness, and the glorious art of doing nothing is disappearing. We are subject to a constant flow of information, and a permanent busyness pervades even our quietest moments. But although inactivity can induce lethargy, it can also foster imaginative freedom and creativity. Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen explores the paradoxical pleasures of inactivity, and asks how we might live a different and more fulfilled existence. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Explore a collection of political tales selected and introduced by the brilliant critic and author Michael Rosen. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political tales appeared frequently in British workers’ magazines, delighting readers of all ages, In Workers’ Tales, described by Philip Pullman as ‘a wonder-filled collection, which testifies to… the breadth of the human imagination but also to the enduring importance of my favourite virtue, hope’, Michael Rosen brings together more than forty of the best. This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

In apartheid South Africa, many desperate parents fought to rescue their children, arrested for so-called ‘anti-apartheid’ activities, from the state’s clutches. Many of these children were tortured, some were murdered; some were as young as nine years old. The Knock on the Door tells the story of the parents who fought back, and of how the anti-detention movement became part of the mass uprising that brought down apartheid. John Simpson chairs a panel with author Terry Shakinovsky, journalist Jonathan Rosenthal, and mother and son Audrey Coleman and Keith Coleman, who experienced these dreadful crimes. In association with JCORE This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019.

The 11th and 12th centuries, from William the Bastard’s conquest in 1066 to the death of Henry II in 1189, have been described as a golden age for Anglo-Jewry. For over a century they were protected as ‘the King’s Jews’, flourishing both intellectually and economically. Their international connections and intellectual tradition placed them at the centre of an explosion of learning in Europe. But was it really so good for the Jews? This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Our world is undergoing a seismic transformation. Digital technologies – from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality – are transforming the way we live together, and the future of politics. Artificial intelligence alone raises tremendous legal and ethical issues. In a world transformed by technology, where does humanity figure? Our expert panel discuss. Sponsored by Eduard Shyfrin and family This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019

Eli Rosenbaum of the US Justice Department has been described as ‘the world’s most successful Nazi hunter’. However, Professor Mary Fulbrook, in her new book, Reckonings, argues that the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators have evaded responsibility for their crimes. Seventy years after the Nuremberg Trials, Joshua Rozenberg chairs a panel discussion to explore whether justice has, or ever could have, been done. Sponsored by Ali and Avi Goldberg This event took place on Sunday 3rd March as part of Jewish Book Week 2019