(Jerusalem, Nov. 26, 2018)–Noted historian Sir Simon Schama will deliver the B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem ‘Jerusalem Address’ entitled “Jewish Arguments Then and Now“ on Dec.13. The event will be led by B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem Chairman Haim V. Katz and concluding remarks will be made by Charles O. Kaufman, president of B’nai B’rith International. Yoel Rappel, historian, author and editor of Schama’s acclaimed “The Story of the Jews” in Hebrew will present a literary introduction of his work.
Schama is university professor of art history and history at Columbia University, a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature and contributing editor at the Financial Times.
The event will take place on Thursday, Dec. 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Konrad Adenauer Conference Center, Mishkenot Sh’ananim, Jerusalem. The media are invited.
The ‘Jerusalem Address’ was established by the B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem in 1985 as its most prestigious forum for addressing fundamental challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people. It has consistently hosted some of the most outstanding minds of our times, including Abba Eban, Professor George Steiner, Professor Shlomo Avineri, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, Bernard-Henri Levy, Professor Bernard Lewis, Ambassador Max M. Kampelman, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Melanie Phillips and Howard Jacobson.
Schama is the author of 18 books, which have been translated into 16 languages, and is the writer-presenter of 50 documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC2 and PBS. He was art critic for the New Yorker in the 1990s and won a National Magazine Award for his art criticism in 1996, published as “Hang-Ups, Essays on Painting (Mostly).” His film on Bernini from the “Power of Art” series won an Emmy and his series “A History of Britain and The American Future. A History” won Broadcast Critics Guild awards. His art history work also includes “Rembrandt’s Eyes,” (1999) “The Power of Art,”(2006) and “The Face of Britain.” (2015)
He has published a work of fiction, “Dead Certainties: (Unwarranted Speculations)” and his work for the theater includes the stage adaptation of “Rough Crossings” (with Caryl Phillips) for Headlong Theatre, and in 2011, a short play for Headlong’s site-specific production about 9/11, Decade.
Schama won the NCR nonfiction prize for “Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution,” the WH Smith Literary Award for “Landscape and Memory,” and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States for “Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution.”
His latest book, “The Story of the Jews Volume 2: Belonging”was short-listed for the Baillie-Gifford Prize and was among The Economist Magazine’s Best Books of 2017. In 2011, he received the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement and in 2015 the Premio Antonelli Feltrinelli in historical sciences from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome .
He delivered the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. in 2006 entitled “Really Old Masters: Infirmity and Reinvention,” the Anthony Hecht Lectures in the humanities at Bard College on memory in contemporary art and most recently, the Jerusalem Lectures for the Israel Historical Society. He curated the Government Art Collection exhibition “Travelling Light” at the Whitechapel Gallery and “The Face of Britain” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2015, at the time of a television series and book on British portraiture. He has collaborated with Anselm Kiefer, John Virtue, Cecile B. Evans and Damien Hirst on exhibitions and catalogue essays. His latest work for the BBC/PBS was a series on world art history, “Civilisations,” broadcasted in the spring of 2018. In November 2017 he delivered a lecture entitled “The Anglo-Jewish Community and the Balfour Declaration” at a Knesset conference organized by the B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem on behalf of the Balfour Centenary Committee entitled “Centenary of the Balfour Declaration: Historical Context, Contemporary Implications.“
To register, please write to worldcenter@012.net.il or call +972-2-6253743
B’nai B’rith International has advocated for global Jewry and championed the cause of human rights since 1843. B’nai B’rith is recognized as a vital voice in promoting Jewish unity and continuity, a staunch defender of the State of Israel, a tireless advocate on behalf of senior citizens and a leader in disaster relief. With a presence around the world, we are the Global Voice of the Jewish Community. Visit www.bnaibrith.org
