Anne Karpf


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’.


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.

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?