A sack of post

Today was just like Xmas, with a sack of post from friends and (literary) family of Five Leaves. The biggest box comprised returns from the bookstall at the Jewish studies Xmas Limmud conference, which answers the question of what some Jews do for Xmas. They buy some Five Leaves' books in breaks from their conference. I also received the programme for Jewish Book Week (www.jewishbookweek.com), which I'm a bit grumpy about as JBW did not ask the biggest publisher of Jewish books outside London (that's Five Leaves) if we had anything new. But I'll get over it, and the programme has some good features, including our local Dickens' nut Michael Eaton on Fagin, and old Bernard Kops is there with his new David Paul book. One to avoid is Colin Shindler and Nick Cohen lashing themselves into an intellectual frenzy about how the left is anti-Semitic. But there is good stuff in the programme.
Colin Ward - no stranger to this blog - is the subject of a special issue of Anarchist Studies (in stock at Housmans). Anarchist Studies is a spined journal edited by Ruth Kinna, who has appeared at our States of Independence and Lowdham Book Festival. In the same post was was the "Wardist" journal The Land, which I hope is also on sale in Housmans. The last journal in the post was a recent issue of Tribune, which included a nice review of one of our Cable Street books. Trib has been struggling of late, so do buy it when you see it. A few days into the new year and I'm already behind with my reading, but it was kind of London Books (www.london-books.co.uk) to swap some of our London titles for their new reprints of John Sommerfield's May Day and Simon Blumenfeld's Jew Boy, the latter having an introduction from our friend and author Ken Worpole. I must say that London Editions produces some very attractively-designed, and affordable, hardbacks.
The final batch of post comprised booking forms for stalls at our next States of Independence day event in Leicester, on March 17. I'll post about this soon, but stalls are booking nicely and the programme is coming together.

Banks of the Clyde

On 11th May, on this blog, I discussed boycotts, based round a university boycotting Tony Kushner because of his views on Israel. Now there is a more serious issue. According to an article in the Jewish Chronicle on May 21st "books by Israeli writers could be removed from Scottish libraries" as a result of West Dumbartonshire Council (hands up all those who can list any town covered by WDC!) passing a "boycott" resolution. The paper was not exactly first with the news here since the Council passed the boycott resolution in 2009, but never mind. Following that article the Scottish Daily Express, owned by the pornographer Richard Desmond, quotes someone from the Israeli Embassy comparing the Council to Joseph Goebbels burning books by Jewish authors. Well, if true it would certainly make a change from the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Championship at the Council's Loch Lomond Festival. It gets worse; the Pipe Band lovers' plans became (Jerusalem Post) a wave of censorship that had spread all over Scotland while the Israel YNet News Service said bookshops too were subject to such censorship. The outgoing Israeli Ambassador, Ron Prosser, thought that a wave of book burning could erupt. Well, it could, though perhaps not immediately as the next activity on the WDC website is the Vale of Leven Fun Run so they will be a wee bit busy for a while. Prosser said that "A place that boycotts books isn't far from a place that burns them". Oddly enough he did not take issue with Jonathan Hoffman of the (British) Zionist Federation who called for a boycott of this year's entire Jewish Book Week because one of the many events featured one Israeli writer whose views he did not share.

Anyway, two and a half years after passing a policy saying the Council would not buy goods "made or grown in Israel", which presumably means you can't buy an Israeli date with your bottle of Irn Bru in the Council canteen, we're talking about book burning. Only, in that time no books have been withdrawn from stock; the Council continues to buy books written by Israeli or Jewish writers and bookshops are awash with The Hare with Amber Eyes. Libraries and bookshops will continue to stock books by Israeli and Jewish writers. Easy to check on that - that Council, for example, has its entire library catalogue on line. Perhaps the critics could have spent a minute on that interweb thing before getting overexcited. They could have found that WDC stocks 276 books of Jewish interest, including many by Israeli writers. Rather a healthy number I would have thought, given the tiny number of Jews and less Israelis likely to be living in the area. I should point out, because I have checked the catalogue, that my fellow deep-fried Mars Bar eaters from WDC do appear, however, to be boycotting (or, rather, not have many) Five Leaves' books by Jewish and non-Jewish writers. Now that is the serious issue.

Jewish Book Week 2011

No sessions on Five Leaves' books at this year's Jewish Book Week. Mustn't grumble. But there is a short film by Richard Zimler, The Slow Mirror, based on the title story by him in our collection The Slow Mirror and other stories: new fiction by Jewish writers. Here's a trailer for the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOCCob62WzE&feature=related. The Slow Mirror is still available through our website.

Several of the contributors to our more recently anthology of short fiction by (mostly) Jewish writers, The Sea of Azov, appear in their own right - Nicole Krauss from America, Eskhol Nevo from Israel and Tania Hershman from Bristol, while Shaun Levin (who was in The Slow Mirror as well as being the author of our A Year of Two Summers) runs a writing workshop. Similarly Joanne Limburg and Ruth Fainlight, from our Passionate Renewal book of Jewish poets are appearing - Ruth reading from her "New and Selected" from Bloodaxe, Joanne is taking part in a Bookniks salon. Michael Rosen, also in Passionate Renewal and author of several Five Leaves' books appears with John Hegley and Jackie Kay, who we have anthologised a few times.

The full programme appears at http://www.jewishbookweek.com/