Events 2008
Cecil B DeMille and the Golden Calf
02/03/2008 -
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In an illustrated talk, Simon Louvish re-examined Hollywood’s most enduring legend who directed lavish recreations of The King of Kings, The Sign of th...
On Turning Risk Into Opportunity
02/03/2008 -
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In his fascinating book, The Second Bounce of the Ball, Ronald Cohen argues that the entrepreneur’s challenge is to take advantage of situations of uncerta...
Josh and Judy’s Speed Read
02/03/2008 -
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Looking for adventure, romance, political satire? Worried about what’s left on the shelf? We helped participants find a book they will treasure for years t...
Writing Workshop
02/03/2008 -
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug–Mark Twain This workshop w...
Coexistence and Cooperation Between Israelis and Palestinians: The Untold Story
03/02/2008 -
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Holy Land Mosaic tells of Daniel Gavron’s personal journey through the relatively unknown territory of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, cooperation, pa...
Transformations
02/03/2008 -
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What does it mean to travel from a rural Ethiopian village to the heart of urban Israel?; To leap between two worlds so far apart that one would expect it wo...
The Joe Craig Show
02/03/2008 -
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Packed houses at festivals, bookshops and schools across the world have experienced ‘The Joe Craig Show’. His tall tales, improvised stories, and surpris...
In Search of Happiness
02/03/2008 -
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Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent and an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed i...
Homefront
02/03/2008 -
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Dancing Arabs, Sayed Kashua’s first novel, has been praised around the world for its uniquely human portrayal of a bright young Arab educated in an Israeli...
The Interpretation of History
02/03/2008 -
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In 1909, Freud visited America for the first and only time. In spite of a very successful reception, he seemed to have developed a severe antipathy for the U...
A Brief History of Children’s Diaries
02/03/2008 -
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Jacqueline Wilson peoples her stories with teens and pre-teens who struggle with hopelessly imperfect lives; beloved and believable characters. Jacque...
The Shel Silverstein Session of Silliness
02/03/2008 -
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The all-singing, dancing and storytelling JCC Tribute Troupe brought to life the work of Shel Silverstein. Join Ilana Bendel, Jonny Berliner, Jen Charlton an...
Poles and Jews: Troubled Neighbours?
02/03/2008 -
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Is reconciliation between Poles and Jews possible? Revisiting both the brutal Jedwabne pogrom of 1941 and stories of peaceful neighbourly coexistence, this q...
In Praise of Diasporas
02/03/2008 -
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The history of Jewish novelists has been a history of emigration: of exile and translation. From Kafka to Italo Svevo, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Saul Bel...
The Last Resistance
02/03/2008 -
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‘Language as much as deeds laid down the lines of a political tragedy’ In her latest book, The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose explores the power...
A Glimpse of Malamud
02/03/2008 -
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This is the classic story of a Brooklyn Jewish boy, the child of immigrants, who turned himself into one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Ph...
Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors
02/03/2008 -
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In Mad, Bad and Sad, cultural historian and novelist Lisa Appignanesi took us on a journey through extreme states of mind and explored how a rising professio...
The JC Evening: The Last Word: Reporting the Middle East
02/03/2008 -
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The evening opened with the award ceremony for the Chaim Bermant Prize. “I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is ...
Writing About War
02/03/2008 -
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Written as the diary of the head of a commando team stationed at Beaufort during the last winter of Israeli occupation, Beaufort is a revolutionary and poten...
All Things Tire of Themselves
01/03/2008 -
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Time parts memory They say only the aged die of nostalgia, yet Still young, I lift ten years to resurrect The Lane, Gas-lamps, fog and ch...
Klez Café
01/03/2008 -
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We went back to our roots and celebrated the folktales and folk tunes of Yiddish yore with the Jewish Community Centre’s tribute troupe. Storyteller Mekell...
The East End Now and Then
01/03/2008 -
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Bernard Kops remembers the East End of his childhood, desperately poor and teeming with Jewish immigrants, full of hopes and ambition. His Hamlet of Stepney ...
Hebrew language session
01/03/2008 -
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א. ב. יהושע ישוחח עם הקהל על ספרו אש ידידותית הנוגע בלב ההוויה הישראלית: שכול, אובדן משמ...
The Art of Blogging
29/02/2008 -
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Lisa Goldman spoke about her blog ‘On the Face’ which continued throughout the 2006 war in Lebanon, a conflict she says is the most blogged war in histor...
Fault Lines
29/02/2008 -
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In her award winning novel, Nancy Huston explores the past through four consecutive generations, taking the reader backwards in time from California to New Y...
Storytelling Masterclass
29/02/2008 -
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This session was developed from Howard Schwartz’s book Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Few have recognized the essential role of mythology in Jewi...
Agnon: Father and Daughter
28/02/2008 -
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Agnon (Ram Loevy and Micha Shagrir, 1978) Two very rare short films from 1966, one showing Agnon going about his everyday life, and the other the Nobel...
Reading Group: Everyman
28/02/2008 -
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Roth’s short novel, Everyman, explores sex, relationships, remorse and dying. The protagonist, an “everyman” figure (reminiscent of the medieva...
Meet the Author: Marie Phillips
29/02/2008 -
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Marie Phillips told us what led her to imagine Greek Gods living a pretty miserable life in Hampstead today in Gods Behaving Badly. Artemis is a dog-walker o...
Fiftysomethings: The Story So Far
28/02/2008 -
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Both Linda Kelsey and Judith Summers have written about lives turned upside down. Here they spoke about the process of putting it all on paper, about how muc...
God Wrestling
28/02/2008 -
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Shalom Auslander is angry and scared. Angry at God, at his family, his orthodox upbringing, at the world we live in. Scared, because as hard as he may try, h...
Anger, Romance and Comedy
28/02/2008 -
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The characters in Jon Canter, Lana Citron and Rudolph Delson’s novels seem to be mostly bewildered at life, often angry. They meet romance by accident ...
Bookniks Cabaret
28/02/2008 -
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An eclectic fusion of music and spoken word with a dose of Yiddish swing, the popular Bookniks Cabaret returned: hosted by Laoise, with writer and stand-up c...
Rehabilitating Rezso Kasztner
27/02/2008 -
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Dealing with Satan, Rezso’s Kasztner’s Daring Rescue Mission is the story of Reszo Kasztner, the man responsible for saving Ladislaus Lob and 1670 Jewish...
Amos Oz: The Conscience of Israel
27/02/2008 -
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Alan Yentob profiles the writer Amos Oz, in the wake of the publication of his childhood memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness taking Oz back to the settings o...
Passion: Miriam Karlin on her many passions
27/02/2008 -
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A pillar of the British acting establishment, lifelong socialist, humanist and thoroughgoing maverick, Miriam Karlin tried to tell us in 30 minutes some of t...
Meet the Author: Random Acts of Heroic Love
27/02/2008 -
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Random Acts of Heroic Love is a novel with two intertwining threads. The first, set in 1992, is the story of a man coming to terms with the loss of his girlf...
Cafe Philo: Crossing the Divide
27/02/2008 -
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Jonathan Garfinkel journeys from a Zionist education in Canada to a quest for a true perspective on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio. He witnesses the reality ...
Rethinking the Media
27/02/2008 -
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There is no such thing as unbiased information but how does the system work? What is omitted and why? During the Lebanon war of 2006, Lisa Goldman managed to...
Murder They Write
27/02/2008 -
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Jonathan Freedland, alias Sam Bourne, tackles the Middle East conflict in his second gripping thriller, The Last Testament. With the Bethlehem Murders, Matt ...
School Day
26/02/2008 -
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JBW 2008’s School Day looked at ‘Storytelling Histories.’ We invited year 6 classes to sample some of the most exciting parts of the festival i...
The Shining City on the Hill
26/02/2008 -
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Jerusalem is surely the most extraordinary city on earth. Fought over for centuries and now the iconic symbol of the terrible dispute between Arabs and Jews,...
Eyewitness: David Rubinger
26/02/2008 -
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Israel as seen through the eyes of David Rubinger, the laureate of the Israeli Prize for Photography, eyewitness to the dramatic events that took place in Is...
Growing Tales
26/02/2008 -
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Three acclaimed authors tackle the the pain, awkwardness and strange joy of growing up. Esther Freud has frequently returned to this theme in her novels. Si...
The 1948 War
26/02/2008 -
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Zionist historiography, written in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, was essentially mobilized, official historiography, which typically portrayed the war as a str...
The $3 Trillion War
26/02/2008 -
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The $3 Trillion War is a devastating reckoning of the true cost of the Iraq war – quite apart from its tragic human toll – which the Bush adminis...
S.Yizhar
25/02/2008 -
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S. Yizhar (1916–2006) was widely considered the finest of native-born Israeli writers. His books and stories are marked by a deep love of the landscape of ...
Reading group: See Under: Love
25/02/2008 -
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Momik, an only child whose parents survived the Holocaust, grows up in the shadow of their history, determined to understand the nature of the Nazi “be...
Frank’s Way: Frank Cass and Fifty Years of Publishing
25/02/2008 -
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Michael Freedland chaired a discussion with Gerry Black, author of Frank’s Way: Frank Cass and Fifty Years of Publishing, and other friends and colleag...
Films: Preliminaries and Khirbet Hizeh
25/02/2008 -
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The voice of this film is that of the Israeli author S. Yizhar, who reads the first few chapters of his autobiography “Mikdamot” (“Preliminarie...
Great Writers of the 20th Century: Isaiah Berlin
25/02/2008 -
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A careful analysis of Sir Isaiah Berlin’s writings and lectures suggests a multi-layered Jewish identity. On the one hand, a deep commitment to Zionism...
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
24/02/2008 -
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In his remarkable and original epic, part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part detective work, Daniel Mendelsohn tried to reconstruct the reality o...
We Are Strangers Here: Discover the Author: Ruth Borchard
25/02/2008 -
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When Ruth Borchard, died some years ago an unpublished manuscript written in 1941 was found amongst her papers. This novel, We Are Strangers Here,has finally...
Israel Through My Lens: Sixty Years as a Photojournalist
25/02/2008 -
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David Rubinger has captured some of the most powerful images of his time. No one has done a better job of showing the history of Israel in all its glory and...
The Clothes on Their Backs
24/02/2008 -
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In her then new novel, Linda Grant wrote about a sensitive girl growing up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. The dramatic a...
Once Upon A Country
24/02/2008 -
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“I have faith that, sooner or later, somehow or another – I’m not sure how – Jews and Arabs will find a way to live together that is tota...
Respect, Reconnect, Reconstruct
24/02/2008 -
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Willow Winston interweaves emotional energy and mathematical form, bridging visual arts, science and music. In some of her book art, metallic threads between...
Round Table Discussion: Israel at 60, coming of age
24/02/2008 -
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A lively debate which went beyond the current issues and will looked at some of the really major questions that can only be approached with a sense of perspe...
Jewish Mysticism
24/02/2008 -
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Jewish Mysticism is concerned with the infinity of meaning embedded in the sacred text and with grasping the divine being which transcends the boundaries of ...
The Rise of the Hebrew Republic
24/02/2008 -
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Israel’s odyssey over the last sixty years has been a remarkable cocktail of resilience, innovation and agony. Many Israelis agreed with David Grossman whe...
Theodor Herzl
24/02/2008 -
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Conventional accounts maintain that the Dreyfus Affair was the turning point in Herzl’s life towards Zionism. However, a careful analysis of his writin...
Spinoza and Secular Jewish Culture
24/02/2008 -
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The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated in 1656, branded a heretic by the Amsterdam Jewish community. He denied Providence and a personal God, and ...
Family Affairs
24/02/2008 -
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Here, three highly distinctive writers explored dysfunctional families; mining relationships, love and betrayals, secrets and lies. When We Were Bad, ...
Jewish Heritage in England: The Challenges of Historic Building Conservation in the Jewish Community
24/02/2008 -
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Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London is the oldest synagogue in Britain. It bears witness to the stability of Jewish life in England since the Cromwel...
Joseph and His Coat of Many Dreams
24/02/2008 -
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Pomegranate Puppet Theatre presents ‘Joseph and his Coat of Many Dreams’ The fabulous Pomegranate Puppet Theatre returned with ‘Joseph and His C...
National Space / Private Home: Cultural Shifts in Israeli Literature
24/02/2008 -
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What themes preoccupy Israeli literature today and how do they reflect and shape the national psyche? What space do ‘private homes’ occupy within the nat...
Roman Mysteries
24/02/2008 -
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Through The Roman Mysteries Caroline Lawrence draws readers into the world of Ancient Rome following the stories of Flavia, a young Roman girl and her closes...
The Unique Case of Jewish Secularism
24/02/2008 -
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The peculiar fusion of religion and nationalism in pre-modern Judaism has had a unique impact on contemporary Jewish secularism. For many centuries one could...
Criminal Lies
24/02/2008 -
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In his book, The Crime of My Very Existence, Michael Berkowitz investigates the myths and realities of “Jewish criminality”. Philip Kerr has given vivid ...
Tales of the Great Jewish Mystics
24/02/2008 -
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A substantial body of Jewish mystical tales constitute the legendary dimension of the Jewish mystical tradition. These tales cover a range of mystical experi...
From Closing the Sea to Here I Begin: A Journey Through Writing
24/02/2008 -
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‘Closing the Sea’, Yehudit Katzir’s first book (published in Israel in 1990), has captivated readers’ imagination in an unprecedented way. Subsequen...
Israel at 60: Heroes and Anti-Heroes
23/02/2008 -
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In a unique 15 minute film shot in Israel exclusively for our Jewish Book Week audience, the multitalented writer and film-maker Etgar Keret and internationa...