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Jewish Book Week Online Events - Wednesday

Jewish Book Week 2025

Wed 5 Mar
Words

Jewish Book Week Online Events - Wednesday

Jewish Book Week 2025

My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah - 12:30pm

Speaker Denis Hirson

Chaim Weizmann: A Biography - 2:00pm

Speaker Jehuda Reinharz
Chair Trudy Gold

On the third day of online events at Jewish Book Week 2025, bestselling author Denis Hirson recreates 1960s Johannesburg in his breathtaking memoir, while Historian Jehuda Reinharz discusses his co-authored new biography of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann.


My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah – 12:30pm

What kind of bar mitzvah lasts just half an hour? From the highly unusual ceremony as he turned 13 to the day his family secrets exploded, Denis Hirson recreates 1960s Johannesburg in his breathtaking memoir.

With the surprising help of his 11-year-old daughter, the writer and lecturer confronts the troubles of his past with wisdom and humour, finally coming to understand his own father. The bestselling author of The House Next Door to Africa joins us to reflect on familial and political divisions in apartheid-era South Africa, and the silences that surrounded his Jewish heritage.

This event will last approximately 1 hour.

Register here to attend this online event.

About the speaker:

Denis Hirson has lived in France since 1975, yet has remained true to the title of one of his prose poems, The long-distance South African. Most of his nine books, both poetry and prose, are concerned with the memory of the apartheid years in South Africa. Two of his previous titles, The House Next Door to Africa and I Remember King Kong (the Boxer) were South African bestsellers. His most recent books are Ma langue au chat, sub-titled tortures and delights of an English-speaker in Paris, and a book of conversations with William Kentridge, Footnotes for the Panther.


Chaim Weizmann: A Biography – 2:00pm

Historian Jehuda Reinharz, co-author of a magisterial new biography of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, joins us to discuss how a Russian Jew who immigrated to the UK in the early 20th century advanced Theodor Herzl’s vision for a Jewish state.

Written with fellow historian Motti Golani, this biography presents Weizmann as a complex figure, celebrated for his intelligence, wit, charisma, and dedication, yet also marked by human flaws—including his infatuations, political manoeuvring and elitism. From Weizmann’s childhood in Belarus to his influential relationships with British prime ministers and U.S. presidents, this is the definitive account of a pivotal leader.

This event will last approximately 1 hour.

Register here to attend this online event.

About the speaker:

Jehuda Reinharz is the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History at Brandeis University and the author and co-author of more than thirty books in Jewish studies, including The Road to September 1939: Polish Jews, Zionists, and the Yishuv on the Eve of World War II and Zionism and the Creation of a New Society.

Date:Wed 5 Mar
Start time:12.30pm (Doors: 12pm)
Venue:Kings Place
Price:Free tickets for all Jewish Book Week online events can be booked via the link below.
Register here

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