Catch up with our online events
United Nations, Israel and 7th October
As part of “Leeds Remembers 7th October’, Prof Rosa Freedman of the the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism returns to Milim a for a special talk
Melting Point
Melting Point is the story of the forgotten search for an alternative to Palestine. Rachel Cockerell’s great-grandfather was part of a group of rebel Zionists who said “If we cannot get the Holy Land, we can make another land holy.” They scoured the earth for a temporary Promised Land, from Australia to Angola to Antarctica, and eventually led 10,000 Russian Jews to Galveston, Texas. The book is told entirely through first-hand accounts, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles and interviews.
Rachel Cockerell was born and raised in London. Melting Point was published in February 2024, and has appeared in The Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times and the New Statesman. It has been called ‘a truly radical book’ (Andrew Marr), ‘extraordinarily original’ (Laura Cumming), and ‘groundbreaking’ (Anthony Beevor). Jonathan Freedland has said of Melting Point that ‘non-fiction will be different as a result’.
The Lados Group: Saving Jews with faked Latin American Passports
This is the story of a remarkable and until now little-known rescue operation, in which Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland attempted to save Jews from the Holocaust using forged Latin American passports. It will explain their motives, their hindrances, their successes, and why they have been forgotten.
Roger Moorhouse is the author of seven books on modern Polish and German history, especially WW2, and am a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Warsaw.
The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holocaust
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, a petite and elegant aristocratic woman entered the Nazi-run Majdanek concentration camp almost daily to bring food to thousands of Polish prisoners. As a member of the Polish resistance, she also smuggled supplies and messages to underground fighters imprisoned there. However, she could not help the 63,000 Jews who were murdered in the camp’s gas chambers and shooting pits. Representing a Polish relief organization, she negotiated with top Nazi and SS officials in Lublin, headquarters of the largest murder operation of the Holocaust. None of them suspected that Countess Janina Suchodolska was, in fact, Dr. Pepi Mehlberg, a Jew and a mathematician. Two professional Holocaust historians, Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa, conducted research in nine countries to reveal this astonishing story of a Jewish rescuer of Poles during World War II. The authors discovered that Mehlberg’s postwar life was quite unusual, too. Join this program to find out how this story came to light, what feats the fake Countess accomplished, and what her activities tell us about Jewish survival during the Holocaust and the larger history of Poland under Nazi rule.
On Her Own: A Novel
A moving, page-turning story of two families in crisis and the unexpected places from which love can grow. Nina, a teenage runaway, wakes up in the unfamiliar stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment in a torn minidress. As her memory starts to resurface—the abusive older man she’s running away from, the crime she witnessed—she knows one thing: she needs to find a place to hide. When one of the building’s tenants, Carmela, a lonely old widow suffering from memory loss, mistakes Nina for her granddaughter she hasn’t seen in years, Nina jumps at the opportunity for a safe haven. Soon, the two strangers become each other’s lifeline as Nina settles into the apartment with sweet, reassuring Carmela. Meanwhile, Irina, a Russian immigrant, is living a parent’s worst nightmare: her only daughter has gone missing. She knows Nina got involved with the wrong men and will do anything to find her. Across the ocean, Itamar feels that something is happening to his mom, Carmela. The guilt over having left Israel for his pursuit of the American dream stirs childhood memories in him and a longing for the family that once was complete. Set between the eve of Passover and Israel’s Independence Day, On Her Own is a tense and immersive psychological read about two families looking for redemption and the transformative bonds between strangers. Translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston. Lihi Lapid an Israeli author, photojournalist, and newspaper columnist. She is an activist for people with disabilities. Her husband is Yair Lapid, the former Prime Minister of Israel.
The Nuances and Challenges of Life in Israel
Israeli photographer Alan Meerkin returns to Milim and will discuss the nuances of everyday life in Israel through street photography. This will include material from his book ‘Distilling Jerusalem: Portraits of the City at Many Given Moments’.
In addition, Alan will present images examining the feeling in the street, in Israel and abroad, in the face of current challenges.
Alan Meerkin is a Jerusalem-based photographer and journalist. He grew up in Melbourne before moving to Israel in 1990, where he worked as a lawyer at Israel’s Ministry of Justice. In 2020 he began photographing the beautiful community gardens at Jerusalem’s Museum of Natural History and daily life throughout the country.
Responses to 7 October: Understanding and addressing antisemitism in Universities
The second in a series of talks arranged in conjunction with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
On and immediately after 7 October there was a global rise in antisemitism at a time when it would have been expected that the world would have sympathy and solidarity with Israel and with Jews. Universities are often seen as the heartland of contemporary antisemitic thinking, including in scholarship, in the classroom, and in student discourse on campus. Since 7 October many campuses and parts of academia more generally have become hostile environments for Jews.
Drawing on contributions to the Responses to 7 October anthology (Routledge, 2024) that she co-edited and her work as a member of the Intra-Communal Professorial Group founded to improve the atmosphere for Jewish staff and students in academia, Rosa Freedman will talk about antisemitism in universities, where it comes from, and what is being done to address it.
Responses to 7th October
The October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel came as a shock. The shock was not only that it had happened but that the attacks re-called other massacres in the Jewish past. This three-volume anthology offers in the reaction of 36 authors to these events. While many are Jewish some are not. They come from a variety of backgrounds, academics writers, lawyers, musicians and psychotherapists. They are united in attempting to help us understand how to deal with the enormity of October 7. As editors Rosa Freedman and David Hirsh say these chapters are *urgent, thoughtful, angry, reflective, raw and profound, and diverse.” Some focus on the events themselves, others delve into history, politics or law. There is also concern for the way in which reactions to October 7 have revealed a stark world of rising antisemitism. October 7 has in many ways changed the way we see the world and our relationship with friends, colleagues and communities.
This session will offer participants the opportunity to engage with the themes of this challenging anthology.
John Strawson, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of East London and Senior Research Fellow at London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemistism. He writes on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is a contributor to this collection.
The story of a life of fertility, feuds and flying. Eighty shades of Oy Vay.
Roy Homburg was born and bred in Leeds, educated at Roundhay School and qualified as a doctor at Middlesex Hospital, London University in 1966. After volunteering in 1967, Israel has been his home since. He served in the air force special flying unit for rescue and evacuation from 1969 to 2000, participated in all the wars and was decorated for a rescue in 1985. Professor Homburg has held posts as Professor and Head of Ob/Gyn at Tel Aviv University, Professor of Reproductive Medicine at VUMC, Amsterdam and at Queen Mary, London University. He has published 320 research articles/chapters in books and has written/edited 14 books. He has been invited to lecture worldwide frequently and has won prizes for research at the British, American, European and Israel Fertility Societies. He has served as Associate Editor for several prestigious professional journals and was the International Adviser for Reproductive Endocrinology for the European Society and is the Principal Coordinator of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility of International Society of IVF. He regards his biggest achievement as playing cricket for Israel.
This was a joint event with the Yorkshire Jewish Medical Professional’s Archive.
Laughing All Laughing All the Way to Freedom: Americanization of a Russian Jewish Emigre
All immigrants of the world coming to America expect it to be like their home country—only better. What they often fail to consider is that, like that of any other nation, America’s DNA differs from that of their country. It may take a lifetime to adjust to the unfamiliar country’s culture, mentality, and way of doing many things differently from the way they have known. It is especially true when immigrants come to America from a country based on different principles, in this case, collectivist Russia versus individualist America, with opposing political systems—the democratic American one and the totalitarian Soviet. This book is an account of the author’s coming to America a half-century ago with certain, mostly mistaken, expectations, and of the process of discovery on his way to becoming an American himself. In his essays, Emil Draitser uses self-deprecating humor to recollect his growing pains as he overcomes his upbringing in a totalitarian society to embrace America’s defining values
A Brilliant Commodity
During the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of diggers, prospectors, merchants, and dealers extracted and shipped over 50 million carats of diamonds from South Africa to London. The primary supplier to the world, South Africa’s diamond fields became one of the formative sites of modern capitalist production. At each stage of the diamond’s route through the British empire and beyond-from Cape Town to London, from Amsterdam to New York City-carbon gems were primarily mined, processed, appraised, and sold by Jews. In her new book, A Brilliant Commodity, historian Saskia Coenen Snyder traces how once-peripheral Jewish populations became the central architects of a new, global exchange of diamonds that connected African sites of supply, European manufacturing centers, American retailers, and western consumers. Jews were well-positioned to become key players in the earliest stage of the diamond trade and its growth into a global industry, a development fueled by technological advancements, a dramatic rise in the demand of luxury goods, and an abundance of rough stones. Relying on mercantile and familial ties across continents, Jews created a highly successful commodity chain that included buyers, brokers, cutters, factory owners, financiers, and retailers.
Katubot from the British Library’s collections
Ilana Tahan Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections returns to Milim to talk more about the Library’s collection katubot – Jewish marriage contracts
Jews milk Goats
In December 2023 Gillian Freedman published a book called Jews Milk Goats.
It was a project that she began last year in January 2023 when she had plans to write a book about Medieval Jewry in England. This then changed and became a book about my life on a 5-acre smallholding as a religiously observant Jew.
Gillian tells stories about the smallholding around the year but explores other topics such as factory farming, wool production, the history of beekeeping and, where it all began for her, the story of the Jews in medieval England – a voyage of discovery that started when she bought two Golden Guernsey goats.
The Chosen City
Bobby Steingrove is an outsider in a large Jewish family. a His uncle Stanley runs a motion picture studio in Hollywood during the golden era of the 1930s, but Bobby’s father is dependent on his charity. When Bobby gets in to Yale, a new world on the East Coast opens up to him. He mixes with a moneyed clique of amoral young men from prep schools. Handsome and clever, Bobby is able to keep up with them while he loses his innocence and falls in love.
After an elegant party one night in a grand house in Fifth Avenue he is willingly led into in Central Park. Ultimately, what happened outside in the dark that night puts Bobby’s aspirations on hold and sends him back to Los Angeles to work in his uncle’s studio. When the dark secret in his past is discovered, he is cast out by his family and blacklisted in Hollywood. Returning to New York, Bobby seeks new opportunities to prove his talents, but it is never clear who is being seduced and by whom.
The visual atmosphere of the novel is reminiscent of the Berlin novels of Christopher Isherwood, that became famous from the film Cabaret, and deals with similar themes and cultural references. Glamour and success are counterpointed by alienation and blurred boundaries both of sexuality and morality. The youthful aspirations and desires of the complex characters come alive through their conversations.
Author David Wurtzel practised at the English Bar and for several years was consultant editor of the Bar’s magazine, Counsel. His first novel, Thomas Lyster: A Cambridge Novel was published by Brilliance Books.
Towards a Digital Renaissance - are we empowered or diminished by new technologies?
As Generative AI and Chat GPT in particular sweep the world, the capabilities of computers seem to be getting closer and closer to those of humans to answer complex questions, to draft written work from articles to letters or even job descriptions, to create artwork that appears increasingly authentical or original, to create music that sounds like artists you know and like, and to help creators avoid lots of drudgery. And yet at the same time, the deep flaws and mistakes of the technology are becoming more worrying and serious in scope; the technology’s complete inability to know right from wrong threatens to enable deep fakes and misinformation to a degree that could destabilise democracy and undermine communities across society.
United Nations, Israel and 7th October
As part of “Leeds Remembers 7th October’, Prof Rosa Freedman of the the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism returns to Milim a for a special talk
Melting Point
Melting Point is the story of the forgotten search for an alternative to Palestine. Rachel Cockerell’s great-grandfather was part of a group of rebel Zionists who said “If we cannot get the Holy Land, we can make another land holy.” They scoured the earth for a temporary Promised Land, from Australia to Angola to Antarctica, and eventually led 10,000 Russian Jews to Galveston, Texas. The book is told entirely through first-hand accounts, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles and interviews.
Rachel Cockerell was born and raised in London. Melting Point was published in February 2024, and has appeared in The Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times and the New Statesman. It has been called ‘a truly radical book’ (Andrew Marr), ‘extraordinarily original’ (Laura Cumming), and ‘groundbreaking’ (Anthony Beevor). Jonathan Freedland has said of Melting Point that ‘non-fiction will be different as a result’.
The Lados Group: Saving Jews with faked Latin American Passports
This is the story of a remarkable and until now little-known rescue operation, in which Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland attempted to save Jews from the Holocaust using forged Latin American passports. It will explain their motives, their hindrances, their successes, and why they have been forgotten.
Roger Moorhouse is the author of seven books on modern Polish and German history, especially WW2, and am a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Warsaw.
The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holocaust
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, a petite and elegant aristocratic woman entered the Nazi-run Majdanek concentration camp almost daily to bring food to thousands of Polish prisoners. As a member of the Polish resistance, she also smuggled supplies and messages to underground fighters imprisoned there. However, she could not help the 63,000 Jews who were murdered in the camp’s gas chambers and shooting pits. Representing a Polish relief organization, she negotiated with top Nazi and SS officials in Lublin, headquarters of the largest murder operation of the Holocaust. None of them suspected that Countess Janina Suchodolska was, in fact, Dr. Pepi Mehlberg, a Jew and a mathematician. Two professional Holocaust historians, Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa, conducted research in nine countries to reveal this astonishing story of a Jewish rescuer of Poles during World War II. The authors discovered that Mehlberg’s postwar life was quite unusual, too. Join this program to find out how this story came to light, what feats the fake Countess accomplished, and what her activities tell us about Jewish survival during the Holocaust and the larger history of Poland under Nazi rule.
On Her Own: A Novel
A moving, page-turning story of two families in crisis and the unexpected places from which love can grow. Nina, a teenage runaway, wakes up in the unfamiliar stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment in a torn minidress. As her memory starts to resurface—the abusive older man she’s running away from, the crime she witnessed—she knows one thing: she needs to find a place to hide. When one of the building’s tenants, Carmela, a lonely old widow suffering from memory loss, mistakes Nina for her granddaughter she hasn’t seen in years, Nina jumps at the opportunity for a safe haven. Soon, the two strangers become each other’s lifeline as Nina settles into the apartment with sweet, reassuring Carmela. Meanwhile, Irina, a Russian immigrant, is living a parent’s worst nightmare: her only daughter has gone missing. She knows Nina got involved with the wrong men and will do anything to find her. Across the ocean, Itamar feels that something is happening to his mom, Carmela. The guilt over having left Israel for his pursuit of the American dream stirs childhood memories in him and a longing for the family that once was complete. Set between the eve of Passover and Israel’s Independence Day, On Her Own is a tense and immersive psychological read about two families looking for redemption and the transformative bonds between strangers. Translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston. Lihi Lapid an Israeli author, photojournalist, and newspaper columnist. She is an activist for people with disabilities. Her husband is Yair Lapid, the former Prime Minister of Israel.
The Nuances and Challenges of Life in Israel
Israeli photographer Alan Meerkin returns to Milim and will discuss the nuances of everyday life in Israel through street photography. This will include material from his book ‘Distilling Jerusalem: Portraits of the City at Many Given Moments’.
In addition, Alan will present images examining the feeling in the street, in Israel and abroad, in the face of current challenges.
Alan Meerkin is a Jerusalem-based photographer and journalist. He grew up in Melbourne before moving to Israel in 1990, where he worked as a lawyer at Israel’s Ministry of Justice. In 2020 he began photographing the beautiful community gardens at Jerusalem’s Museum of Natural History and daily life throughout the country.
Responses to 7 October: Understanding and addressing antisemitism in Universities
The second in a series of talks arranged in conjunction with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
On and immediately after 7 October there was a global rise in antisemitism at a time when it would have been expected that the world would have sympathy and solidarity with Israel and with Jews. Universities are often seen as the heartland of contemporary antisemitic thinking, including in scholarship, in the classroom, and in student discourse on campus. Since 7 October many campuses and parts of academia more generally have become hostile environments for Jews.
Drawing on contributions to the Responses to 7 October anthology (Routledge, 2024) that she co-edited and her work as a member of the Intra-Communal Professorial Group founded to improve the atmosphere for Jewish staff and students in academia, Rosa Freedman will talk about antisemitism in universities, where it comes from, and what is being done to address it.
Responses to 7th October
The October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel came as a shock. The shock was not only that it had happened but that the attacks re-called other massacres in the Jewish past. This three-volume anthology offers in the reaction of 36 authors to these events. While many are Jewish some are not. They come from a variety of backgrounds, academics writers, lawyers, musicians and psychotherapists. They are united in attempting to help us understand how to deal with the enormity of October 7. As editors Rosa Freedman and David Hirsh say these chapters are *urgent, thoughtful, angry, reflective, raw and profound, and diverse.” Some focus on the events themselves, others delve into history, politics or law. There is also concern for the way in which reactions to October 7 have revealed a stark world of rising antisemitism. October 7 has in many ways changed the way we see the world and our relationship with friends, colleagues and communities.
This session will offer participants the opportunity to engage with the themes of this challenging anthology.
John Strawson, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of East London and Senior Research Fellow at London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemistism. He writes on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is a contributor to this collection.
The story of a life of fertility, feuds and flying. Eighty shades of Oy Vay.
Roy Homburg was born and bred in Leeds, educated at Roundhay School and qualified as a doctor at Middlesex Hospital, London University in 1966. After volunteering in 1967, Israel has been his home since. He served in the air force special flying unit for rescue and evacuation from 1969 to 2000, participated in all the wars and was decorated for a rescue in 1985. Professor Homburg has held posts as Professor and Head of Ob/Gyn at Tel Aviv University, Professor of Reproductive Medicine at VUMC, Amsterdam and at Queen Mary, London University. He has published 320 research articles/chapters in books and has written/edited 14 books. He has been invited to lecture worldwide frequently and has won prizes for research at the British, American, European and Israel Fertility Societies. He has served as Associate Editor for several prestigious professional journals and was the International Adviser for Reproductive Endocrinology for the European Society and is the Principal Coordinator of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility of International Society of IVF. He regards his biggest achievement as playing cricket for Israel.
This was a joint event with the Yorkshire Jewish Medical Professional’s Archive.
Laughing All Laughing All the Way to Freedom: Americanization of a Russian Jewish Emigre
All immigrants of the world coming to America expect it to be like their home country—only better. What they often fail to consider is that, like that of any other nation, America’s DNA differs from that of their country. It may take a lifetime to adjust to the unfamiliar country’s culture, mentality, and way of doing many things differently from the way they have known. It is especially true when immigrants come to America from a country based on different principles, in this case, collectivist Russia versus individualist America, with opposing political systems—the democratic American one and the totalitarian Soviet. This book is an account of the author’s coming to America a half-century ago with certain, mostly mistaken, expectations, and of the process of discovery on his way to becoming an American himself. In his essays, Emil Draitser uses self-deprecating humor to recollect his growing pains as he overcomes his upbringing in a totalitarian society to embrace America’s defining values
A Brilliant Commodity
During the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of diggers, prospectors, merchants, and dealers extracted and shipped over 50 million carats of diamonds from South Africa to London. The primary supplier to the world, South Africa’s diamond fields became one of the formative sites of modern capitalist production. At each stage of the diamond’s route through the British empire and beyond-from Cape Town to London, from Amsterdam to New York City-carbon gems were primarily mined, processed, appraised, and sold by Jews. In her new book, A Brilliant Commodity, historian Saskia Coenen Snyder traces how once-peripheral Jewish populations became the central architects of a new, global exchange of diamonds that connected African sites of supply, European manufacturing centers, American retailers, and western consumers. Jews were well-positioned to become key players in the earliest stage of the diamond trade and its growth into a global industry, a development fueled by technological advancements, a dramatic rise in the demand of luxury goods, and an abundance of rough stones. Relying on mercantile and familial ties across continents, Jews created a highly successful commodity chain that included buyers, brokers, cutters, factory owners, financiers, and retailers.
Katubot from the British Library’s collections
Ilana Tahan Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections returns to Milim to talk more about the Library’s collection katubot – Jewish marriage contracts
Jews milk Goats
In December 2023 Gillian Freedman published a book called Jews Milk Goats.
It was a project that she began last year in January 2023 when she had plans to write a book about Medieval Jewry in England. This then changed and became a book about my life on a 5-acre smallholding as a religiously observant Jew.
Gillian tells stories about the smallholding around the year but explores other topics such as factory farming, wool production, the history of beekeeping and, where it all began for her, the story of the Jews in medieval England – a voyage of discovery that started when she bought two Golden Guernsey goats.
The Chosen City
Bobby Steingrove is an outsider in a large Jewish family. a His uncle Stanley runs a motion picture studio in Hollywood during the golden era of the 1930s, but Bobby’s father is dependent on his charity. When Bobby gets in to Yale, a new world on the East Coast opens up to him. He mixes with a moneyed clique of amoral young men from prep schools. Handsome and clever, Bobby is able to keep up with them while he loses his innocence and falls in love.
After an elegant party one night in a grand house in Fifth Avenue he is willingly led into in Central Park. Ultimately, what happened outside in the dark that night puts Bobby’s aspirations on hold and sends him back to Los Angeles to work in his uncle’s studio. When the dark secret in his past is discovered, he is cast out by his family and blacklisted in Hollywood. Returning to New York, Bobby seeks new opportunities to prove his talents, but it is never clear who is being seduced and by whom.
The visual atmosphere of the novel is reminiscent of the Berlin novels of Christopher Isherwood, that became famous from the film Cabaret, and deals with similar themes and cultural references. Glamour and success are counterpointed by alienation and blurred boundaries both of sexuality and morality. The youthful aspirations and desires of the complex characters come alive through their conversations.
Author David Wurtzel practised at the English Bar and for several years was consultant editor of the Bar’s magazine, Counsel. His first novel, Thomas Lyster: A Cambridge Novel was published by Brilliance Books.
Towards a Digital Renaissance - are we empowered or diminished by new technologies?
As Generative AI and Chat GPT in particular sweep the world, the capabilities of computers seem to be getting closer and closer to those of humans to answer complex questions, to draft written work from articles to letters or even job descriptions, to create artwork that appears increasingly authentical or original, to create music that sounds like artists you know and like, and to help creators avoid lots of drudgery. And yet at the same time, the deep flaws and mistakes of the technology are becoming more worrying and serious in scope; the technology’s complete inability to know right from wrong threatens to enable deep fakes and misinformation to a degree that could destabilise democracy and undermine communities across society.