In partnership with Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) and The Jewish Quarterly, we invite you to a compelling conversation with award-winning UK journalist Tanya Gold and Dr Daniel Haumschild, Manager of Exhibitions and Storytelling at MHM. In novels, film and popular culture, the Holocaust genre is booming. As Tanya Gold shows in this crucial Jewish Quarterly…

The current issue of The Jewish Quarterly presents: ‘The Z Word: Reclaiming Zionism’ by Adam Kirsch.

In the aftermath of October 7, Zionism has increasingly been used by critics of Israel as a term of derision. Yet, as Adam Kirsch writes in this groundbreaking essay, the challenge for Jews today is not merely to counter attempts to distort and corrupt the meaning and origins of Zionism. The Jewish people, he argues, do not need to defend the term – they need to reclaim it.

In this special conversation, Emeritus Professor Cary Nelson discusses the state of university discourse after October 7 in conversation with Professor Kim Rubenstein. Nelson argues that the university – an institution dedicated to the search for truth, knowledge and freedom – became overrun by a toxic and dangerous fervour. Civil discourse was abandoned, as campuses became the epicentre of hate speech, bigotry, conspiracy theories, denialism and antisemitism. Yet, as Nelson reveals, this betrayal of the university’s ideals was decades in the making.

The upcoming issue of The Jewish Quarterly presents the diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski, a Jewish teenager in the Vilna Ghetto. An only child, Rudashevski was transferred to the ghetto at age 13 and used a small notebook to chronicle his experiences, wonder, hopes and regrets. The diary was later discovered in an attic which was the final hiding place for him and his parents. On Tuesday 12 November, join Samuel Kassow in conversation with David Slucki as they discuss Yitskhok Rudashevski’s remarkable diary, filled with the observations of a teenager whose belief in culture, history and knowledge defied the cruelty that surrounded him.

In her Jewish Quarterly essay ‘Blindness’, Hadley Freeman addresses a most perplexing phenomenon that has arisen out of the Gaza war, rearing its head immediately after October 7: the exponential rise in antisemitism on a world stage. This has been all the more shocking as it has been most evidently propagated within the political left, taking many by surprise.

In this Global Conversation, join Hadley in conversation with foreign correspondent Irris Makler for an examination of the equivocations, contortions and hypocrisy displayed by elements of the left across the political, media, arts and higher education sectors.

Richard Cooke will speak with Deborah Stone on the roots of the turning in Elon Musk’s rise to power, and what his evolution reveals about a wider shift in the politics of Silicon Valley and beyond.

When award-winning writer, Ben Judah, embarked on a pandemic-fuelled mission to learn Hebrew, he did not anticipate the immensely personal internal shift that would occur in him. Judah will speak with critic and writer Tali Lavi about his experience of longing for and learning the language, and of his belief in Hebrew as the missing connection between Israel and the Diaspora.

The 1994 ‘AMIA Bombing’ was an attack on Argentina’s Jewish centre in which 85 people were killed. Join writer, editor and digital producer, Elissa Goldstein in conversation with award-winning author and journalist, Javier Sinay to discuss his remarkable essay in the May issue of the Jewish Quarterly. The essay examines the ongoing political intrigue surrounding this catastrophic crime and the reasons it remains unsolved.

Dr Andrew Dean (Deakin University) will interview Devorah on her latest essay, ‘The Myth of the Jewish Literary Mafia’ featured in the Jewish Quarterly. Devorah Baum is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Southampton. Her books include Feeling Jewish: a book for just about anyone (Yale University Press), The Jewish Joke (Profile)…

Presented in partnership with The Jewish Quarterly, the latest entry in our series of Global Conversations is only a few weeks away. Professor Steven Nadler, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has spent a great deal of his professional life researching and writing about Spinoza’s life, philosophy and relationship with his faith. In the current issue…