Recorded live at Jewish Book Week in March 2026, this conversation brings together two writers whose books map Jewish histories that rarely make it onto the festival circuit. With a sold-out crowd at Kings Place in London, Samantha Ellis and Jordan Salama talk about language, loss, food, family archives, and what it means to carry more than one Jewish story at once.
Our Guests
Samantha Ellis is a playwright, journalist and author, the daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees. Her books include How to Be a Heroine and Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life. Her latest, Chopping Onions on My Heart (published in the US as Always Carry Salt), explores Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, a language on the verge of extinction, and what we can and cannot pass on to our children. She also worked on the first two Paddington films.
Jordan Salama is an award-winning writer whose journalism at The New Yorker covers migration, culture and the environment across the Americas. His second book, Stranger in the Desert, follows his great-grandfather's trail as a Syrian Jewish travelling salesman in the Argentine Andes in the 1920s, beginning with a binder of family history discovered in his grandfather's basement.
Jewish Book Weekis London’s longest running literary festival, hosted by the Jewish Literary Foundation. It attracts award-winning authors and thinkers every year for an exciting programme of debates, talks, and performances at Kings Place, London and online. Find out more here.
Key Topics
- Arab Jews: why the term matters, why it's contested, and what it opens up
- Jewish futures: a generational shift in who is telling these stories and why now
Your Guide
- Judeo-Iraqi Arabic: the Jewish dialect of Arabic spoken by Iraqi Jews, now critically endangered
- Kubba shwandar: Iraqi Jewish dumplings of lamb and rice, cooked in a sweet and sour beetroot sauce
- Turcos: the name given to Arabic-speaking Ottoman immigrants in Latin America, Jewish and Christian alike
Want to learn more?
Samantha Ellis appeared previously in Season 2: S2E5 Endangered, Not Erased
Explore related conversations on Iraqi/Sephardi identity:
S3 E2 Plural and Partial with Linda Dangoor
S2 E9 Echoes of Aden at the Table with Claudia Mendoza
S1 E6 Other Within the Other with Carol Isaacs
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Show credits
Host / Producer: Eylan Ezekiel
Post-production: Communicating for Impact
Artwork: Emily Theodore
Music: Aleksafor utransndr Karabanov
Sound effects: Serge Quadrado
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