In this episode we spend time with David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore and ask -  ​​Where do Jews really come from? Are they white or people of colour? And how should we deal with the ethnic diversity within Jewish populations, with differences between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews?

Questions around whether Jews are white or people of colour has become a fraught issue. In an ideal world (or the ideal for at least most of us in the multicultural liberal west,) it shouldn’t matter. However, race, ethnicity and politics have always been intertwined, and this question takes us to some surprising places in the battle of racial politics. 

In particular, both the far right and now the progressive left are drawing a lot of meaning from the question ‘are Jews white or people of colour?’, with Jews seemingly on the wrong side of each of their equations. They are non-white for the far right, and quintessentially white for the progressive left. 

To help answer this question and more, we have two guests with very different lenses. Our first, Simon Sebag Montefiore, is one of the world’s leading historians. He outlines the historical, archaeological and genetic consensus, and any counterviews, on where Jews come from and how Jewish populations have moved through the ages. We also have author, comedian and documentarian David Baddiel to help with the cultural and political significance of this question, and to explore whether Jews are privileged enough to be ‘deemed’ white, regardless of their Middle Eastern heritage. 

BIOS

David Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter.

In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK’s first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock’n’Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.

Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don’t Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David’s most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY -   A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST  won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award.  His latest book is THE WORLD:   A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller.

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