We are delighted to welcome Anshel Pfeffer, senior correspondent and columnist for Ha’aretz and Israel correspondent for The Economist, to open our year by giving us thoughts from his many and most recent visits to Ukraine. Born in Manchester and immigrating with his family to Israel at the age of nine, Anshel’s British passport has allowed Ha’aretz to send him to cover stories, such as the 2011 Egyptian revolution, in countries that are reluctant to permit entry to Israelis. Over the past 25 years, he has covered education, politics, security and foreign affairs, and received the B’nai Brith award for ‘Recognizing Excellence in Diaspora Reportage’ for his column ‘Jerusalem and Babylon’, a series of articles which covered issues relating to Israel and Jewish identity. His latest book, Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu (2018: Hurst Books) won plaudits from The Times (“a sober and erudite profile”), The Literary Review (“truly fascinating”), and Jonathan Freedland in The New York Review of Books (“a detailed, revealing and shrewd biography”).
Anshel observes that “after two reporting trips to Ukraine during the current war and numerous previous visits over the past 15 years, it is clear that the war has also awakened new feelings of Ukrainian patriotism among the country’s large Jewish community”- a community which historically has suffered greatly from Ukrainian nationalists. In his talk, Anshel will address this apparent paradox.
The electronic English edition of Ha’aretz, Israel’s foremost Hebrew language newspaper, may arrive daily in your electronic post by ordering it from www.haaretz.com. For the first year, subscriptions are at half price ($65).
Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society 