5786 / 2025-26 PROGRAMME

Programme 5786 – 2025/26

In-person meetings start at 7:30pm, unless otherwise indicated.

Joining details for ZOOM meetings will be sent shortly before each meeting via the Lit.’s email list.
To be added to the mailing list, please email: ejlsoc@gmail.com

The subscription this year is just £20 – still a great bargain!

Please sign up now to avoid a queue at the first meeting, Payment for a single meeting is £10.

Full-time students pay £5 for this year’s membership and admission to all meetings, or £2 per meeting for full time students.

You can pay your subscription in two ways. The first is preferred. In both cases please email the treasurer (Gillian Raab) at gillian.raab@gmail.com to let her know you have paid this year’s subscription and giving your email(s), name(s), and (optionally)  telephone contacts.

19 October 2025 2:30pm Opening Talk by Mahmoud Muna & Matthew Teller on Daybreak in Gaza. In person.

This is Gaza – a place of humanity and creativity, rich in culture and industry. A place now utterly devastated, its entire population displaced by a seemingly endless onslaught, its heritage destroyed. Daybreak in Gaza is a record of an extraordinary place and people, and of a culture preserved by the people themselves. Vignettes of artists, acrobats, doctors, students, shopkeepers and teachers offer stories of love, life, loss and survival. They display the wealth of Gaza’s cultural landscape and the breadth of its history. Daybreak in Gaza humanises the people dismissed as statistics. It stands as a mark of resistance to the destruction and as a testament to the people of Gaza. DAYBREAK IN GAZA has been longlisted for the 2025 Palestine Book Awards.

Mahmoud Muna is a Palestinian writer, publisher and bookseller from Jerusalem. He runs Jerusalem’s celebrated Educational Bookshop and the Bookshop at the American Colony Hotel, both centres of the city’s literary scene. Muna is active in many cultural initiatives across Palestine and published the first Arabic edition of Granta magazine. Matthew Teller is a UK-based writer and broadcaster. He has written on the Middle East for the BBC, Guardian, Independent, Times, Financial Times and has produced documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and World Service. Teller is the author of Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City, which was a 2022 Telegraph Book of the Year. www.matthewteller.com.

Friday 7 November 2025, 1pm Manya Wilkinson, on Lublin. In person at the New College Festival of Books and Belief, New College, Mound Place.
This event is co-sponsored by EJCC, the Netherlee & Clarkston Charitable Trust and Edinburgh Jewish Studies.

Elya is the lad with the vision, and Elya has the map. Ziv and Kiva aren’t so sure. The water may run out before they find the Village of Lakes. The food may run out before the flaky crescent pastries of Prune Town. They may never reach the Village of Girls (how disappointing); they may well stumble into Russian Town, rumoured to be a dangerous place for Jews (it is). As three young boys set off from Mezritsh with a case of bristle brushes to sell in the great market town of Lublin, wearing shoes of uneven quality and possessed of decidedly unequal enthusiasms, they quickly find that nothing, not Elya’s jokes nor Kiva’s prayers nor Ziv’s sublime irritatingness, can prepare them for the future as it comes barrelling down to meet them. Absurd, riveting, alarming, hilarious, the dialogue devastatingly sharp and the pacing extraordinary, Lublin is a journey to nowhere that changes everything it touches.

Manya Wilkinson is a Jewish New Yorker who has lived in the North of England for over twenty years. Her novel Lublin published by And Other Stories (2024) and is the winner of the Wingate Literary Prize 2025 and the RSL Encore Award for best second novel 2025. Until recently Manya was a senior lecturer on the MA in prose and scriptwriting at Newcastle University, with a special interest in voice and dramatic structure in both script and fiction. She is currently mentoring writers and teaching prose workshops both on-line and in person. Her first novel, Ocean Avenue, was published by Serpent’s Tail. Her short stories have been published by Comma Press. Her radio dramas have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Afternoon Play, Saturday Drama, Writing the Century, and Woman’s Hour. She has also written several stage plays and film scripts and contributes regularly to the writing magazine, Mslexia, with articles and guides to writing drama and prose fiction.

16 November 2025 Gavin Schaffer, An Unorthodox History. In person.

A bold, new history of British Jewish life since the Second World War that wrestles Jewish history away from the question of what others have thought about Jews, focusing instead on the experiences of Jewish people themselves. Exploring the complexities of inclusion and exclusion, the book shines a light on groups that have been marginalised within Jewish history and culture, such as queer Jews, Jews married to non-Jews, Israel-critical Jews and even Messianic Jews, while offering a fresh look at Jewish activism, Jewish religiosity and Zionism.
Weaving these stories together, the book argues that there are good reasons to consider Jewish Britons as a unitary whole, even as debates rage about who is entitled to call themselves a Jew. Challenging the idea that British Jewish life is in terminal decline, An unorthodox history demonstrates that Jewish Britain is thriving and that Jewishness is deeply embedded in the country’s history and culture.

Gavin Schaffer is Professor of Modern British History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on race, ethnicity and immigrant histories and regularly contributes to television and radio.

30 November 2025 Mark Solomon, Works of Emancipation: Jewish Themes in the Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer. In person.

The name of Meyerbeer is all but unknown today, except to serious opera buffs, but in his time (1791–1864) he was one of the most celebrated composers in the world, famous as the leading exponent of French grand opéra. A scion of the wealthiest Jewish family of Berlin, with religious roots in the early Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement. Meyerbeer lived a secular life devoted to music in Italy, Paris, and as court composer to the King of Prussia. Unlike other Jewish musicians of his time, however, he did not follow the fashion of conversion to Christianity, but kept the vow he had made to his formidable mother – an influential figure in her own right – to remain faithful to the religion of his forebears. Throughout his life he was alert to signs of antisemitism, and suffered particularly from the vicious attacks of Wagner. This talk, illustrated with musical examples, will argue that, beneath the surface of his operas dealing with grand historical – and often Christian – themes, lies a sharp awareness of the issues confronting Jews of his time: emancipation, enlightenment, conversion, intermarriage, and of course, persecution. After a brief consideration of his first, and only biblical opera, Jephtha’s Vow (1812), we will focus on his most famous work, Les Huguenots (1836) and his last, posthumously produced opera, L’Africaine (1865).

Mark Solomon is Rabbi of Sukkat Shalom, Edinburgh’s Liberal Jewish Community, as well as Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation. He is senior lecturer in Rabbinic Literature at Leo Baeck College, London, and Rosh Beit Din for Liberal Judaism. He has been deeply involved for many years in interfaith dialogue, particularly with Christians and Muslims, and a leading rabbinic advocate for LGBT+ rights. A lover of classical music and opera, he enjoys performing cantorial, Yiddish and Hasidic music as well as Burns songs and Gilbert and Sullivan. He would never attempt to sing Meyerbeer.

14 December 2025 Anthony Julius, Abraham: The First Jew. Zoom.

The story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history In this new biography of Abraham, Judaism’s foundational figure, Anthony Julius offers an account of the origins of a fundamental struggle within Judaism between skepticism and faith, critique and affirmation, thinking for oneself and thinking under the direction of another. Julius describes Abraham’s life as two separate lives, and as a version of the collective life of the Jewish people. Abraham’s first life is an early adulthood of questioning the polytheism of his home city of Ur Kasdim until its ruler, Nimrod, condemns him to death and he is rescued, he believes, by a miracle. In his second life, Abraham’s focus is no longer on critique but rather on conversion and on his leadership over his growing household, until God’s command that he sacrifice his son Isaac. This test, the Akedah (or “Binding”), ends with another miracle, as he believes, but as Julius argues, it is also a catastrophe for Abraham. The Akedah represents for him an unsurpassed horizon—and in Jewish life thereafter. This book focuses on Abraham as leader of the first Jewish project, Judaism, and the unresolvable, insurmountable crisis that the Akedah represents—both in his leadership and in Judaism itself.

Anthony Julius is Chairman of the London Consortium, a Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Vice-President of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. The author of several books, including T. S. Eliot: Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, he was the defense attorney in the renowned Irving vs. Lipstadt Holocaust denial case, and continues to be active in the fight against anti-Semitic activities.

11 January 2026 Phil Alexander, Klezmer – Now and Then, There and Here. In person.

In this talk, Phil will give a brief history of eastern European Jewish klezmer music, and will also bring the story more up to date, with examples of how this traditional, ritual, place-bound art form functions in different ways and different places around the world today. The talk will include live and recorded musical performance.

Phil Alexander is a musician and academic. He plays and writes about klezmer, jazz, and folk music, with a particular interest in musical life and the city. He is currently lecturer in Music Performance at the University of Edinburgh and is a member of the bands Triptic and Firelight Trio.

8 February 2026 Adam LeBor, The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940–1945. In person.

Budapest, autumn 1943. Four years into the war, Hungary is allied with Nazi Germany and the Hungarian capital is the Casablanca of central Europe. The city swirls with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But Budapest remains at peace, an oasis in the midst of war where Allied POWs, and Polish and Jewish refugees find sanctuary. The riverside cafes are crowded and the city’s famed cultural life still thrives. All that comes to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invade. By the summer, Allied bombers are pounding its grand boulevards and historic squares. Budapest’s surviving Jewish population has been forcibly relocated to cramped, overcrowded Yellow Star houses. By late December, the city is surrounded and under siege from the Red Army. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians die in the savage siege as Budapest collapses into anarchy. Hungarian death squads roam the streets as the city’s Jews are forced into ghettos. Russian artillery pounds the city into smoking rubble as starving residents hack chunks of meat from dead, frozen horses. Using newly uncovered diaries, documents, archival material and interviews with the last survivors, Adam LeBor brilliantly recreates life and death in the wartime city, the catastrophic fate of half of its Jewish population and the destruction of the siege. Told through the lives of a cast of vivid, gripping characters, including glamorous aristocrats, spies, smugglers and SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish schoolboy, Hungary’s most popular actress and her spy chief lover, a Jewish businesswoman who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a Christian doctor hiding her Jewish neighbours and a teenage Hungarian soldier, the story of how Budapest slowly dies as the war destroys the city is utterly compelling.

Adam LeBor is a British author, journalist and editorial and media trainer. His clients include the Financial Times, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Citywire, the Arvon Foundation and Mishcon de Reya. He has more than thirty years experience as a journalist and he has written fifteen critically-acclaimed books – eight works of non-fiction and seven thrillers. More information is at https://adamlebor.com/about/ and he is on Twitter or Instagram @adamlebor.

22 February 2026 Judith Olszowy-Schlanger & César Merchán-Hamann, Jewish Languages and Book Culture. Zoom or in person.

From Cairo Genizah to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, the spread of books in Jewish vernacular languages and Hebrew characters offers us an extraordinary insight into the linguistic richness of Jewish life. For over two millennia, Jewish communities have used languages other than Hebrew for daily oral communication, including Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-French, Judeo-Italian, Yiddish and Ladino. They used the Hebrew alphabet to write these languages down and developed sophisticated systems to transmit texts in them. Many of these vernacular languages became also languages of book culture. Produced and sold cheaply, using the tools of the book cultures of host societies, these publications reached a wide audience. The Bodleian Libraries’ collections host an unparalleled collection of texts in Judeo-languages, giving us a picture of the works created and of the specific ways in which they were produced and communicated. Since some of the languages are now extinct or moribund, these manuscripts and books are also important testimonies to cultures that are no more. Generously illustrated and ranging in time from the Middle Ages to the Emancipation, this collection of essays showcases important hallmarks in the intellectual and social history of the Jews.

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger is President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Her research concerns medieval Hebrew palaeography and codicology, legal documents, Cairo Genizah Studies, Hebrew Book History, Hebrew linguistic tradition, and intellectual contacts between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours. César Merchán-Hamann is the Victor Blank Hebraica and Judaica curator in the Bodleian Library and director of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library at the University of Oxford.

8 March 2026 Moshe Koppel, Unplugged: Jewish Wisdom in the Age of AI. Zoom.

In our rapidly evolving digital world, artificial intelligence is transforming how we work, communicate, and even think. This talk explores what happens when an ancient tradition encounters these cutting-edge technologies. After providing a clear, accessible explanation of how AI actually works and where it’s headed, we’ll examine the challenges this technological revolution presents: the potential obsolescence of many white-collar jobs, increasing digital isolation, and the temptation to reduce complex moral decisions to utilitarian calculations. The Jewish tradition—with its emphasis on collaborative learning, intentional unplugging through Shabbat, and nuanced ethical reasoning that balances principles with context—offers thoughtful perspectives worth considering as we navigate these challenges. While no tradition has all the answers for unprecedented technological shifts, Judaism’s long experience adapting to societal changes while preserving human connection and meaning provides valuable insights. As AI handles more of our cognitive tasks, perhaps ancient wisdom can help us reflect on a fundamental question: with all this technology saving us time, where exactly are we rushing to?

Moshe Koppel is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University and a pioneer in artificial intelligence research. Born in New York and living in Israel for 45 years, he has published over 100 articles in leading academic journals across multiple disciplines including mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Koppel is the founding director of Dicta, a research institute dedicated to developing innovative AI tools for the analysis and processing of modern and classical Hebrew texts. His work bridges cutting-edge technology with linguistic and textual analysis, creating new ways to make ancient texts more accessible through digital tools. His interdisciplinary expertise extends beyond traditional computer science, with significant contributions to the social sciences, as well as three books on Jewish thought, including Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures, published by Koren.

22 March 2026 Sharon Mail, An Unbreakable Bond: The Targu Mures Holocaust Survivors And Their Scottish Saviours – A Story That Had To Be Told. In person.

The talk will focus on the book – why it was written; how the desperately struggling Targu Mures community of concentration and labour camp survivors were discovered by a member of the Glasgow Jewish community; the setting up of the Targu Mures Trust; and a description of how the lives of both the survivors and their Scottish saviours were transformed and a beautiful friendship developed. It will include readings from the book and a slide show.

Sharon Mail has been writing and taking photographs for the Jewish Telegraph Group of Newspapers since January, 2006. Her first book, We Could Possibly Comment – Ian Richardson Remembered was published in 2009. Her latest book, An Unbreakable Bond – The Targu Mures Holocaust Survivors and Their Scottish Saviours, was published in October, 2024. She is the President of Strathkelvin Writers, where she has been a member for 22 years. Sharon is also a freelance book editor. She edited the first four books in the Jack Cuthbert Mystery series written by Dr Allan Gaw, including The Silent House of Sleep, which won the Bloody Scotland Debut Novel of the Year in 2024. She is a member of Giffnock Newton Mearns Synagogue.