Our latest special commission from Tristram Ruth Padel & Nicholas de Lange on one of Europe’s oldest Jewish communities, virtually eliminated by the Nazis.

Crete saw a higher proportion of Jews deported by the Nazis than any other country, virtually eliminating one of Europe’s oldest Jewish communities. Rabbi Nicholas de Lange, Professor of Hebrew & Jewish Studies at Cambridge and author of The Penguin Dictionary of Judaism, conducts high holiday services on the Greek island.

Award-winning poet Ruth Padel turns to the forgotten Jews of Crete in her latest novel Daughters of the Labyrinth, described as ‘magical and historical, surprising, elegant and beautifully written’ by Andrew O’Hagan, having first visited as a student on an archaeological dig.

They will be in conversation with writer and executive director of Jewish Renaissance Aviva Dautch.

In Association with Jewish Renaissance

Nicholas de Lange has written a number of books about Judaism and about Jewish history, specialising in Greek-speaking Judaism. His latest book is The Jews of Byzantium. He is the Visiting Rabbi of the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Haniá, Crete

Ruth Padel is an award-winning poet, journalist and broadcaster. She lives in North London with her daughter.

Aviva Dautch is Executive Director of Jewish Renaissance magazine, an academic and poet. Poetry commissions include the British Museum for Refugee Week, and Hay and Bradford Literature Festivals for the Gustav Klimt Centenary. A sequence of her poems were published in Primers Three (Nine Arches Press: 2018). Aviva received an Author’s Foundation Award from The Society of Authors to work on her first collection, We Sigh For Houses, which was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 poetry programme in August 2020