Published: 4 June 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
THIS YEAR’S LIMMUD OZ festival of Jewish ideas and culture is completely online, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. But the program is as diverse as ever. The Jewish Independent will be hosting three sessions, encompassing some of the Jewish world’s primary concerns – the climate challenge, the crazy state of Israeli politics and the existential threat facing Jewish diaspora media.
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On Monday, June 8, Ittay Flescher, The Jewish Independent’s Jerusalem correspondent, will moderate a discussion titled The climate crisis and need for co-operation in the Middle-East, with three members of EcoPeace Middle East, an organisation that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists.
In this session, Gidon Bromberg, co-founder of Eco Peace, Nada Majdalani, who is the Palestinian Director of EcoPeace, and Yana Abu Taleb, the Jordanian Director, will discuss how they work to promote cross-border cooperative efforts to protect their shared environmental heritage.
Also on June 8, prominent Israeli journalist and blogger Tal Schneider will be in conversation with Dr Shahar Burla, an editor at The Jewish Independent. In a session titled Making sense of Israeli politics, Schneider and Burla will discuss how Israeli politics works and why it matters to us.
Schneider is the diplomatic and political correspondent for Globes Business Newspaper, has her own political blog called “The Plog” and was ranked 32nd on Forbes magazine’s 2017 list of Israel’s most influential women.
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On Sunday, June 14, in a session titled Jewish diaspora media: mission (virtually) impossible? Eetta Prince-Gibson, former Editor-In-Chief of The Jerusalem Report and now correspondent at large, talks to Michael Visontay, Editor of The Jewish Independent, about the challenges facing Jewish diaspora media.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the closure of two venerable diaspora newspapers, in the UK and Canada, and driven several other to put out their hands for emergency funding. The digital revolution, plunging ad revenue, plummeting sales and now the coronavirus have created a perfect storm.
Prince-Gibson, an American-born journalist who now lives in Israel, will share her insights on whether this crucial element of the Jewish diaspora is on life support, or whether its future is better than it looks.
FULL SCHEDULE AND BOOKINGS
Photo: From left: Tal Schneider, Gidon Bromberg, Eetta Prince-Gibson
