Programme 5787 – 2026/28
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.
pay via internet banking:
Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society
Royal Bank of Scotland
Sort code 16-00-01
Account Number 30285937
25 October 2026 Opening Talk by Shelley Klein on The See-Through House: My Father in Full Colour. In person.
Shelley Klein grew up in the Scottish Borders, in a house designed on a modernist open-plan grid. With colourful glass panels set against a forest of trees, it was like living in a work of art. Her father, Bernat Klein, was a textile designer whose pioneering colours and textures were a major contribution to 1960s and 70s style. Thirty years on, Shelley moves back home to care for her father, now in his eighties: the house has not changed and neither has his uncompromising vision – or his distinctive way of looking at the world. Told with great tenderness and humour, this is Shelley’s account of looking after an adored yet maddening parent and a piercing portrait of the grief that followed his death.[1]
Friday 6 November 2026, 1pm Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, Breaking Binaries: A Progressive Rabbi Engages with Contemporary Issues. In person at New College, Mound Place.
Co-sponsored by the New College Festival of Books and Belief and Edinburgh Jewish Studies Network.
Everyone needs to book a ticket to attend this event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-college-festival-elli-tikvah-sarah-tickets-1996241367668?aff=odcleoeventsincollection However, if you are a paid up Lit. member you will receive a booking code a couple of weeks in advance of the event, so that you can book a free ticket to Elli Sarah’s talk.
Join us for a lunchtime event with Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah celebrating ‘Breaking Binaries’ (Unusual Publications, 2026), her new book challenging the oppositions that shape contemporary thought and practice. ‘Breaking Binaries’ explores gender, Jewish identity, conflict, interfaith engagement, and our responsibilities to the planet. An LGBT+ pioneer, equal-marriage campaigner, and longstanding advocate for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, Rabbi Sarah brings decades of rabbinic, interfaith, and activist experience to these urgent questions. Discover how moving beyond either/or thinking can open richer, more compassionate possibilities for communities, relationships, and our shared future as earthlings in a divided world.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah was ordained in July 1989 by Rabbi Lionel Blue (Leo Baeck College). An LGBT+ pioneer and campaigner for equal marriage, Elli has also been engaged in interfaith dialogue and actively committed to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence for decades, and has written extensively on these areas. Author of ‘Trouble-Making Judaism’ (2012), Elli’s latest book is ‘Breaking Binaries. A Progressive Rabbi Engages with Contemporary Issues’ (2026). Rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue for twenty years, following her retirement (2021) Elli became Emeritus Rabbi of the congregation. Elli is married to artist and biblical scholar, Dr Jess Wood MBE.
22 November 2026 Ayelet Harris on the Kibbutz Movement after 7 October 2023. Zoom.
Ayelet Harris currently serves as the Head of the Community and Society Division at the Kibbutz Movement. She oversees the social and community strategy for 259 kibbutzim. Her role involves managing a diverse team of experts, presiding over significant investment funds, and navigating the intricate intersection of government relations, philanthropy, and grassroots leadership. Her recent work has been defined by crisis-to-recovery leadership. Following the events of October 7th, she has spearheaded the regional rehabilitation systems for displaced communities in the Negev and the North, focusing on building long-term resilience and sustainable growth models.[2]
13 December 2026 Carole Angier, Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald. Zoom.
W.G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Through books including The Emigrants, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, he pursued an original literary vision that combined fiction, history, autobiography and photography and addressed some of the most profound themes of contemporary literature: the burden of the Holocaust, memory, loss and exile. The first biography to explore his life and work, Speak, Silencepursues the true Sebald through the memories of those who knew him and through the work he left behind. This quest takes Carole Angier from Sebald’s birth as a second-generation German at the end of the Second World War, through his rejection of the poisoned inheritance of the Third Reich, to his emigration to England, exploring the choice of isolation and exile that drove his work. It digs deep into a creative mind on the edge, finding profound empathy and paradoxical ruthlessness, saving humour, and an elusive mix of fact and fiction in his life as well as work. The result is a unique, ferociously original portrait.[3]
Carole Angier is the award-winning biographer of Jean Rhys, Primo Levi and W G Sebald. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. Before becoming a writer (or rather a published writer), Carole combined bringing up her son with teaching literature and philosophy, plus reviewing and writing literary journalism for several national papers and magazines. She began writing biography in its heyday and for over a decade was a full-time writer. That could not last for ever, however, and she returned to part-time teaching as well as writing. She was an RLF Fellow at the University of Warwick (1999–2003) and Oxford Brookes (2010–11); founded and taught life-writing courses at Warwick (2002–3) and Birkbeck (2005–10); and was associate lecturer in creative writing at Oxford Brookes (2011–2013). She was a mentor with Gold Dust for 10 years. As the child of refugees, Carole has long been concerned with the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers.[4]
[1] https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/439995/the-see-through-house-by-shelley-klein/9781529111545
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-harris-a1948418/
[3] https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/speak-silence-9781526634795/
