In 1982 nearing the end of a remarkable life, consultant David Henryk Ropschitz put pen to paper to share his own story of 1940s wartime survival. His highly personal novel is about life in the Italian internment camp, Ferramonti, where thousands of Jews and other ‘undesirables’ were imprisoned. In his novel Dr Ropschitz looks back … Continue reading Ferramonti: Salvation behind the barbed wire
Stanley Kubrick is generally acknowledged as one of the world's great directors. Yet few critics or scholars have considered how he emerged from a unique and vibrant cultural milieu: the New York Jewish intelligentsia. In this talk, Nathan Abrams re-examines the director's work in context of his ethnic and cultural origins. Focusing on several of … Continue reading Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual?
In the 1940s a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had fled. Of those remaining, most escaped in the 1970s or were killed. Today, fewer than half a dozen remain. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home … Continue reading The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland
Klezmer – the instrumental music of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews – has survived assimilation, suppression and eradication and is now a recognisable ‘world music’ commodity, as well as an object of serious musicological study. But what relationship does today’s klezmer bear to its 19th and early 20th century roots, and what happens to traditional music when its … Continue reading Klezmer Music: History and Contemporary Practice Around the World
Max Lewkowicz’s richly detailed documentary celebrates the illustrious Broadway show Fiddler on the Roof, the evergreen shtetl-set musical first staged in 1964 with choreography and direction by Jerome Robbins and starring Zero Mostel as Teyve, the milkman. Contributions from a range of interviewees – including people attached to the original production, such as producer Hal … Continue reading Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
Willesden Cemetery, which opened in 1873, is one of London’s most prestigious Jewish cemeteries. It is run by the United Synagogue who were fortunate to be awarded a £1.7m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to open Willesden Jewish Cemetery as a place of heritage for the public. The United Synagogue website describes the Cemetery as … Continue reading Willesden Jewish Cemetery
Adapted from Tatiana de Rosnay’s best-selling novel of the same name, Sarah’s Key is an account of research by a journalist into a shameful incident in French history which intertwines with a story of a young Jewish girl from that time period. ‘In Paris in 1942 the French police round up 10-year-old Sarah (Mélusine … Continue reading Sarah’s Key
During the Inquisition, the Crypto-Jews or Chuetas publicly professed Catholicism while privately adhering to Judaism. Synagogues were secretly built in private homes. Signs of this “secret” community can still be found today. We will visit the inside of the permanent exhibit in the Jewish Quarter Interpretation Center inaugurated in 2015 as we trace the footsteps … Continue reading The Secret Jews of Majorca Island
A Call to Spy is an historical drama inspired by the true stories of women recruited into England’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Desperate for new recruits, the SOE, created in 1940 after the fall of France and before the US joined the war, decided to train women as spies as it … Continue reading A Call to Spy
“Ghetto” is an extraordinarily complex word which is both a noun and an adjective. It has layers of contrasting meanings accrued over five hundred years and a bewildering array of settings across the globe. It refers to medieval and early modern Jewish history; black experience in the great northern cities of America in the twentieth … Continue reading The Ghetto: Travelling through history
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