- Sunday, 24th March
- 8pm at Hashomer House
The Making and Unmaking
of a Zionist
Antony Lerman
in conversation with Brian Klug
Meretz UK is delighted to host two compelling speakers whose views demand attention. Expect a fascinating presentation followed by a lively debate!
- This meeting was originally booked for 20th Jan but had to be postponed due to poor weather. We hope all who planned to attend can make this one.
In his controversial new book, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist: A Personal and Political Journey, Antony Lerman traces how, as a teenage socialist, he enthusiastically embraced Zionism, became an Israeli citizen in 1970 and a kibbutznik, and served in the Israeli army. But he returned to England in 1972 and developed increasing doubts about Israel's trajectory.
After a few years as an academic he joined the Institute of Jewish Affairs, and in the 1980s and 1990s he became active at the highest levels of international Jewish political and intellectual life. Gradually losing his Zionist ardour he became a leading critic of Israel’s political direction. Lerman also criticised what he saw as the Jewish community's increasingly shrill sense of victimhood, and clashed with the Jewish establishment.
While he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in the mid-2000s, communal leaders acted to silence him and prise him from his post. His latest book has generated strongly divergent opinions, as evidenced in Ha'aretz, in Al Arabiya and in the Jewish Chronicle - to cite just three!
Brian Klug is Senior Research Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Benet's Hall Oxford University and author of Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life (2011). For more on his ideas see this link.
Both appeared together with Diana Pinto at the recent Jewish Book Week
Admission: £5.50, concessions £4.50, members £2Light refreshments servedHashomer House, 37a Broadhurst Gardens NW6 3QTTube: Finchley RoadOverground: Finchley & FrognalBuses: 82, 13, 113, 46, C11, 268
