Jonny Gould's Jewish State

"Seek the peace and prosperity of the city of your exile, pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper", Jeremiah 29:7, recited to me by the remarkable Trevor Horn.The Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello Award winning record producer, coined "the man who invented the 80s", gives me a very personal interview about his current projects, (touring and a new album) plus a rundown of his musical career and influences.He also discusses his journey into Judaism; something he says he "believes in more than anything else".It turns out Frankie goes to Synagogue! Jonny produces these podcasts for free. You can help support the show with Gift Aid at https://www.donorbox.org/jgpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode goes some way to explaining the Jewish relationship with football, both today and in the twentieth century. My guests today are Ivor Baddiel, the comedy writer and biographer David Bolchover, who wrote "The Greatest Comeback", the amazing story of football's greatest Jewish hero, Bela Guttmann. If you've been to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, you'll almost certainly have heard the word, "Yid" chanted in support of Spurs - or worse, AGAINST them by opposition fans. You may have even chanted it yourself. But what does it mean exactly? Do you think it still has a place on football's terraces? Campaigner Ivor Baddiel and his brother David began a campaign eight years ago with a short film, "The Y Word" which explained that it's a derogatory term for Jewish people - like the P or N Word. The podcast includes an excerpt from Ivor and David’s short film, The Y Word starring Gary Lineker and Frank Lampard.Would you like to help Jonny in the production of these podcasts which support Israel and the Jewish diaspora? You can do so here and also see his full set of episodes too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My two guests today are from very different parts of British society - but united in opposing Jeremy Corbyn and the scandal of antisemitism sweeping Labour. Jassem Tamim (pictured hugging our own James Marlow at the 2021 Israel Solidarity Rally in Kensington, London) is a Sunni Muslim originally from Morocco, who considers his opposition to antisemitism as payback to Britain for the tolerance and acceptance he's found since moving here. He also believes it's his Islamic duty to defend Israel and Jews. And Richard Millett is the longtime activist who the Labour leader famously called “lacking English irony”. I ask both of them what the hard-left takeover of Labour has done to Britain? LISTEN to their insightful answers and fascinating stories here. Jonny produces these podcasts to support Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Want to help him? Buy him a coffee here. You can help support the show at https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=BW4GZLQCCL29Y&item_name=Podcast+production+&currency_code=GBP&source=url Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dov Forman and her great-grandmother Lily Ebert have co-written a book, “Lily’s Promise” about her Holocaust story. But 35 years before, I recorded the same idea with my own grandma.Grandma Olga’s recorded voice and when and where we recounted her life story will always be my most treasured episode.This is her eyewitness testimony of leaving Nazi-occupied Vienna for a new and as yet, uncharted home in the UK.She rebuilt her life in Birmingham where I grew up and where back in 1984, we recorded a chat on cassette in her front room.At the time, she was 77 and I was just 17.The motivation to record this way back then was to explain, to my as yet unborn children, who we are and how we got here.Grandma began life in England as a 32-year-old housemaid in a faraway London suburb before meeting my fellow refugee grandpa at a friendship club in Birmingham.They got married and lodged in an upstairs room next to Sutton Town's football ground. Eventually, they managed to buy their own home and set up a typewriter repair shop down the road.I’m so proud of my grandma and grandpa, at how quickly they got themselves together in Birmingham after the disasters which befell their Viennese lives.Their story is a constant motivation for me. The family history handed down to me was largely happy in outcome, except for the murderous loss of my great grandparents in a Polish death camp. Yet every single one of my grandparent’s brothers and sisters survived, fanned around the world to rebuild lives thousands of miles apart - but still close together in contact and spirit.From Shanghai to Palestine, Nottingham to Vancouver, Chicago to Glasgow, Vienna to Toronto. And of course, Birmingham, where my grandma and grandpa arrived in September 1938 and April 1939 respectively. The story of Bela Guttmann, clubmate of my grandfather and great uncle in the legendary Hakoah Vienna FC who hid in a loft in Hungary to survive the war, made me realise that the comparative safety of my own family’s story was at odds with so many others.As the Churchill movie, which dramatised the imminent invasion of Britain in 1940, my grandparent’s arrival in the UK wasn’t even the end of their escape from tyranny.Listening to my dear grandma, who told me she ran her own exotic pet shop in Vienna in well to do 1920s society, only to become a penniless chambermaid in Northwood in the 1940s, inspires me to dig deep and accept whatever problems are thrown at me - and to climb back.Jonny Gould's Jewish State is supported by Dangoor Education. (Picture: Grandma Olga Posaner and my mum, Yvonne Gould, taken in the back garden of their home in Birmingham Road, Sutton Coldfield in 1948)You can help support the show right here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a very special episode for me. I rediscovered an old cassette I’d recorded of an interview with my late Grandma in 1984, when she was 77 - and I was 17.Thursday afternoons were always lunch at Grandma and I’d always wanted to record her voice for future Gould/Posaner generations.She narrates her own escape from Hitler's Vienna in 1938 and arrival in Birmingham.It’s her story of rebuilding family life destroyed by tyranny, the upheaval of leaving a place that made her - mixed with the heartache of saying goodbye to her parents, who she would never see again.She learned years later, they were murdered in a Polish death camps.There's also an extensive interview with Euan Philipps, spokesperson for Labour Against Antisemitism on his tireless campaign against the worst excesses of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and what he hopes will happen.Jonny produces these podcasts. You can help support the show and see all of his latest episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark joins me to discuss moving to Israel with his fiancée, Mandy Blumenthal, what prompted their decision to leave the UK and the Israeli health system which promises him the world’s best treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, a condition he’s had since his twenties.He’s had a remarkable legal career, the highlight was when he represented more than 120 victims of phone-hacking and exposed the News of the World’s role in the scandal. When specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire and royal reporter, Clive Goodman, were both charged in 2006, Mark noticed what others had missed. Although the charges related were mostly to youngsters of the Royal Family, Mark was concerned that Mulcaire’s wider targets included five others, among them the chairman of the professional footballers Association, Gordon Taylor. “I saw the news and thought ‘They hacked Gordon to get that story’.” He calls it his “light-bulb moment”.Mark exposed the full scale of criminality inside Murdoch’s paper and then later inside Mirror Group Newspapers. LISTEN to the remarkable Mark Lewis on the next chapter of his remarkable life. Jonny produces these podcasts for free.You can help support the show at https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=BW4GZLQCCL29Y&item_name=Podcast+production+&currency_code=GBP&source=url Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“We ought not deal in the soft bigotry of low expectations of the Palestinians” – Benjamin Anthony, CEO, MirYam Institute.This is the first podcast in a series on Jewish and Israeli issues - so let's start with the biggest of them all: peace with the Palestinians.Brigadier General Amir Avivi (ret.) and Sgt. Benjamin Anthony of The New State Solution were in London to meet Egyptian officials to discuss their plan to create a Palestinian state from Gaza to North Sinai. Egypt is key to realising their vision as they would have to cede land for the New State.But then so is the agreement of the Arabs of the West Bank and the Gazans too. Can they do it? Is there a window of opportunity opening with the thawing of relations with Saudi and Oman?Listen to the opportunities they believe are available. Jonny asks for your support to help him make these podcasts. You can help support the show right here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices