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Video Series: Global Conversations

  • Global Conversations: Shameless: Exploiting the Holocaust

    Global Conversations: Shameless: Exploiting the Holocaust

    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 essay, however, the creators of these works all too often put the success of their product above the integrity of the story. Unfortunately, when creators engage in crass and self-serving exercises of exploitation, the results are shameful fictions that desecrate the past and misrepresent the Jewish people of today.

    Tanya will join us virtually from the United Kingdom.

  • Global Conversations: Adam Kirsch in conversation with Michael Gawenda

    Global Conversations: Adam Kirsch in conversation with Michael Gawenda

    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. From university campuses to TikTok and Twitter/X, the term is employed as a self-evident slur that presumes that Zionists are racist and supremacist. 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. 

  • Global Conversations: Mindless: What’s Happened to Our Universities?

    Global Conversations: Mindless: What’s Happened to Our Universities?

    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.

  • Global Conversations: Samuel Kassow & David Slucki Discuss ‘The Rudashevski Diary’

    Global Conversations: Samuel Kassow & David Slucki Discuss ‘The Rudashevski Diary’

    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.

  • Global Conversations: Hadley Freeman & Irris Makler discuss ‘Blindness: October 7 and the Left’

    Global Conversations: Hadley Freeman & Irris Makler discuss ‘Blindness: October 7 and the Left’

    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.

  • Global Conversations: Richard Cooke & Deborah Stone Discuss ‘Dark Star: Elon Musk’s Dangerous Turn’

    Global Conversations: Richard Cooke & Deborah Stone Discuss ‘Dark Star: Elon Musk’s Dangerous Turn’

    In his captivating new essay in the latest issue of the Jewish Quarterly, Walkley award-winning journalist Richard Cooke explores Elon Musk’s spectacular ambition, and how it has shaped his transition from unorthodox liberal to trolling neo-reactionary. How did the richest man in the world transform from a self-described moderate to a staunch advocate for hardline US conservatives? Why did Musk purchase the social media site Twitter, only to welcome back white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, sometimes personally?

    Cooke will speak with Deborah Stone, Editor-in-Chief of Plus61J Media, on the roots of this turning in Musk’s rise to power, and what his evolution reveals about a wider shift in the politics of Silicon Valley and beyond.

  • Global Conversations: Ben Judah & Tali Lavi Discuss ‘Ivrit: The Language That Makes a People’

    Global Conversations: Ben Judah & Tali Lavi Discuss ‘Ivrit: The Language That Makes a People’

    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. With Hebrew came a deepening of Jewish identity, of connection to religion and culture. To ancestry and community. 

    It also led him to deep reflection on crucial role of modern Hebrew in defining and reshaping the Jewish people. In this ground-breaking essay featured in the latest edition of the Jewish Quarterly, Judah delves into the remarkable evolution and revival of Hebrew – a language whose trajectory charts the recent history of the Jewish people.

    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.

  • Global Conversations: Javier Sinay in Conversation with Elissa Goldstein

    Global Conversations: Javier Sinay in Conversation with Elissa Goldstein

    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.

  • Global Conversations: Devorah Baum in conversation with Andrew Dean  

    Global Conversations: Devorah Baum in conversation with Andrew Dean  

    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) and the forthcoming On Marriage (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin). She co-directed the feature films The New Man and Husband. She guest edited the special issue of Granta #146 on ‘The Politics of Feeling’ and she has written for a range of publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Tate and the Jewish Quarterly.

  • Global Conversations: Professor Steven Nadler in conversation with Dr. Rachael Kohn

    Global Conversations: Professor Steven Nadler in conversation with Dr. Rachael Kohn

    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 of The Jewish Quarterly, in an article titled ‘The Curse on Spinoza’, he provides new insights into Spinoza’s excommunication. He will be probed in this interview by renowned academic, broadcaster and author, Dr. Rachael Kohn, who also brings enormous research and knowledge to the topic.