To mark the launch of their new education pack Making a Difference: Promoting Race Equality in Secondary Schools, Youth Groups and Adult Education – a Jewish Perspective, the Jewish Council for Racial Equality held a panel discussion at Jewish Book Week on the theme of ‘Making A Difference: Educating Jewish Children for Life in Multicultural Britain’.

How does family history spur someone to literature? And what happens when that history coincides with some of the 20th century’s most dramatic and painful events? David Baddiel’s latest novel, The Secret Purposes, is based on the life of his German refugee grandfather. In Jacob’s Gift, Jonathan Freedland explores the identity he is passing on to his young son. Anne Karpf’s memoir, The War After, looks at the ways her life has been affected by her s...

They are shared by all the religions of the Book but how resonant are the Ten Commandments in our lives today? Even such apparently obvious ones like thou shalt not kill are being questioned by the supporters of euthanasia.

Our glittering panel of writers discussed the relevance of the Ten Commandments today, proposed their own commandments and questioned the need for a common ethical backbone for the 21st century.

Is reconciliation between Poles and Jews possible? Revisiting both the brutal Jedwabne pogrom of 1941 and stories of peaceful neighbourly coexistence, this question was addressed by Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska, editors of Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust. The discussion was chaired by Anne Karpf.

The quest for an elixir of youth is never-ending. Yet there are surprising predictors linked to longer and more enjoyable lives: how much one earns, how healthy one is and how one spends one’s time. Neuroscientist Daniel Glaser discusses the joys and injustices of growing old with health equity expert Michael Marmot and the authors of two new books on ageing, Lynne Segal and Anne Karpf.

Jeremy Gavron’s searching account of his mother, who was rarely talked about after her death, documents the too-short life of this extraordinary woman, as he pieces together the events and pressures that led to Hannah Gavron’s suicide when he was just four. Jeremy Gavron discusses his deeply personal and moving memoir with columnist, writer and sociologist Anne Karpf.

Darian Leader and Emma Tarlo unveil some of the mysteries of our bodies. Psychoanalyst Darian Leader’s Hands: What We Do with Them – and Why is a fascinating odyssey through the history of what human beings do with their hands, drawing examples from popular culture, art history, psychoanalysis, technology and clinical research. Anthropologist Emma Tarlo’s book Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair is full of surprising revelations and penetrating insights, from fashion and beauty to re...

In Rick Gekoski’s Darke, the protagonist eschews the outside world, turning to philosophers and poets to make sense of humanity’s tragic essence. But just as he prepares to abjure life entirely, he is offered a chance of salvation. Jeremy Gavron’s Felix Culpa, is a stylistically experimental noir fiction, posing the question: whose stories deserve to be told? And whose words should do the telling?