Ken Talks London Speaker panel May 2026

Join our four incredible speakers together on stage with acclaimed British actress Louisa Clein for a moderated panel discussion.

Listen to Louisa, Luciana Berger, Jonathan Harounoff, Keith Kahn-Harris, Michal Oshman talk about the thread that links their talks along with some audience questions. 

Brought to you by Joice Global & Shalom Speakers. Supported by Israel Bonds.

Transcript

SPEAKER_08 0:00

I'm sure everyone will agree with me. It's been an extraordinary evening of four incredibly different talks. Unbelievably thought-provoking. And when I was asked to come on board and have this question and answer session after the talks, one of the questions I wanted to ask you for was how do we think the four talks are connected if there is a connection? And before I listened to you all, I thought, how on earth could these four talks about such different things ever be connected? And maybe later we can ask what you all think, but I would love to hear from the four of you because I see an immediate connection between these four very, very different talks. Luciana.

SPEAKER_05 0:49

Thank you so much, and um great to be part of this conversation. I would bring it back to the theme of technology and how we can use technology for good. Some of the challenges in terms of politically, how we can actually bring people together and campaign, but also recognising the challenges of technology and thinking about ourselves and our soul. And obviously, in the cultural space and in music, uh there's some fantastic things going on as well. So that's why I'd bring it back to you.

SPEAKER_06 1:17

First of all, thank you so much to the Ken Talks team and Louisa and fellow panelists. It's an honour to be here. Um, I agree totally with what Luciana said about the technology, but I would also add that there's a flavour of looking forward of what the future could hold, whether it's in how do we make ourselves less interesting, more boring, or what can we do to help free the people of Iran, or how do we retain our individuality in an AI-driven world, or how do we protect our children against the algorithm? I think it's all looking forward to how we best protect ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

I think that we're in a state of tumult in society generally at the moment, and I think the sort of talks we had today actually reflect that in different in different sorts of ways. How do we ground ourselves in what's important in a world that is in a state of flux where technology is moving fast, where the political environment, where revolutions happen and unhappen at extraordinary speed. I think all of us have had different ways in which we approach that. And it's a task that pretty much all of us have today. We are not in a world where we can just be assured that the world we woke up to yesterday is the world that's going to wake up to tomorrow. That's a task for all of us, and we just have different ways of dealing with that.

SPEAKER_08 2:53

I think, you know, as an actress, I I see my industry um being threatened by AI. Um, I I see that there is a real fear that that technology can be weaponized, and yet also, you know, we we hear 70 days, you said, of of internet blackout in Iran. How how important it can be, and how we are craving it back for for Iran, and yet the dangers of when we can hold on to it, it's it's a it's a battle that we're all facing. Um now my husband's gone to Spurs tonight. I don't know how how many other other halves are not here because of the Tottenham game. Um if if when I go home, I want to try and summarise this evening to the people around me. How would you sum up in a small, in one two sentences, what do you want people to take away from each of your talks tonight that they go home and they tell their their partners, their their parents, their children, who, whoever?

SPEAKER_06 3:57

I would say that there are a lot of problems in the world, but I think there's also a lot of hope, and the Jewish people are incredible people with incredible allies, and yesterday's uh rally against anti-Semitism outside Downing Street was an incredible testament to that, the fact that so many non-Jewish allies were there, including an extraordinary uh Iranian diaspora community. Uh, but I think um having this kind of gathering where you can be anywhere in the world, you could be at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, I can't remember what the stadium's called, it could be anywhere in the world, but is that what it's called? Okay. There you go. Um but that people are still choosing to spend their evenings here to engage in different ideas across a myriad of topics, I think gives me a tremendous amount of hope, whether it's and the topics are so varied and so extra so interesting, and I think that gives me a lot of hope for uh a Ken Talks 2.0 next year as well.

SPEAKER_07 4:54

I can follow that Jewish uh I have my special mic still. Um I think that uh when you were saying uh you know Jewish community and um yesterday the demonstration, I think that for many of the challenges that we face today, and again, I'm talking about this culturally, spiritually, also religiously, we are gifted so many antidotes through Judaism to be able to deal with these times exactly. Personally, I feel like uh going back to that space that we all need for our soul, I think Shabbat is an incredible gift, however you decide to celebrate it once a week, to just take a minute and reflect and recharge and not having to actually be always on and measured and performing all the time. Um, and the other thing I think is that by speaking and giving koach strength to each other, we become less anxious. Because let's be honest, many of us are carrying real anxiety about our future professionally, family, where do we belong, where do we even live? That's the conversation we had in the green room, let's be honest. There's some great things coming up, Luciana promised. I'm kidding. Um, so because we've never been in this situation, I think when we're really asking huge questions, one of the things that really can ground us is knowing that we've been through challenges before. And that could be what kind of gives us a sense of uh hope and confidence.

SPEAKER_08 6:17

I love that. Thank you, Keith.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Well, speaking as a Watford fan, uh who knows, who knows what mediocrity is, and also someone with a soft spot for Borham Wood, who failed to get through the playoffs to leave at Rochdale uh yesterday. I know all about uh disappointment. Um in all seriousness, I'd like to put on the record that I know full well that we are a very, very interesting people. Uh I wouldn't have spent most of my a lot of my a huge chunk of my working life within working within Jewish communal contexts and dealing with all the aggravation that comes with it if I didn't think there was something special about us. But I think maybe we sometimes have to put that to one side and start to reach in to the fact that we are also just human and not get caught up in a trap of trying desperately to prove prove to the world our worth. Because actually, I don't think any people in the world or any human being should ever have to demonstrate their worth to the world. We exist, that's just it. And we can be, even if we're mediocre, we have the right to be mediocre. If we're it's if we're amazing, we have the right to be amazing too. Uh it sometimes strikes me that there is so much we can point to where we can say that the things that Jews have brought to the world. But sometimes I think maybe we should refuse to play that game and actually just exist for the sake of existence, which is quite a subversive thing, but also uh I think a fundamentally human thing.

SPEAKER_08 8:13

It's quite freeing to see that. It is. I like it. Um I want to open it up to the audience. Um, look, already hands up. I love that. Um, yes.

SPEAKER_04 8:26

Um I'm definitely James Stewart, but um, not going to talk about my own self, I want to ask a question specifically about RAM. How far do you think in today's world RAM is winning with its influence over our society today? Because it's all very well contemplating publication in the Middle East, but that's becoming a reality now here in Britain. So, how do you how do you think people will counteract it? How successful do you think they are? Do you think they will succeed?

SPEAKER_06 8:59

Bad question for me.

SPEAKER_08 9:03

I'm interested, are you talking about Iran as the the nation, or are you talking about Iran as in the regime? Okay.

SPEAKER_06 9:14

Thank you for your question. I think the past few months has really demonstrated that the conflict and the chaos that the Islamic Republic wants to cause is not confined just to the Middle East. They've certainly succeeded in globalizing the Intikada, not just through their missiles and drones, and not just through their conventional proxies that we all know Hamas and other movies, but they've now started the piece in off the top-up terrorist rooms that have reached our neighbourhoods, our communities. Golders Green. I I just happened to be a few weeks ago in Golders Green having brunch on that morning. Um it really came into life, like it was a real reality of just how close to home this is to that uh you have this uh this regime, this terrorist regime, thousands and thousands of miles away. Its sole purpose is essentially to bring harm and bring concern to the Jewish community thousands of miles away from Israel. And that day was actually particularly striking for me because that happened an hour before I was scheduled to speak for the Holocaust of Vider Center in Golders Remote, in Golders Remote, and that event still went ahead, but it was a completely surreal experience. We were in um the room with about 30 holocaust dividers, and it's in the case. You look outside the window of this holocaust divider center, and I just listened to the location, um and you see on one side of the window um fake, the afternoon is having that. And then you look outside another window, this isn't like a exaggeration, this is quite a window. And you can see on the other side it's a memorial. It's a memorial wheel that was originally erected to display the side of the legend to all of the uh hostages in hand. And all of those hostages with hand into uh a memorial for the Iranian people sorted by the Islamic Republic. And that memorial was also vandalized a few weeks ago. So I think the Islamic Republic is exactly a striking point, so to speak, in the same way. But I think the sort of response that you're seeing from the Jewish community and communities worldwide of resilience, not backing down the pride of community, um, is I think the best antidote to this terrorism that the Islamic Republic is trying to wage. So I think they have succeeded in certain parts, but they're not going to defeat the um boundless uh resilience of the Jewish people.

SPEAKER_08 12:06

Thank you. There is a gentleman, yes.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

Uh I found all of your talks fascinating, thank you. Um Dr. Keith, your your point, your idea about Jews accepting their mundaneness as well as trying to uh think uh bigger than that. Um to me that feels maybe the least hopeful of all of the comments that have been put forward. My my concern, I like the idea in theory, but my concern in practice would be that it is just not in our DNA to sort of shrink back from that. And I'd be interested in the thoughts from the whole panel on that.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

I mean, I think what I'm advocating is something a little bit more flexible. I'm not, as I said, I was I try to be clear, I don't I'm not against demonstrations or vigils or fighting our chord or any of those things. I am um troubled though when that becomes the centre of Jewish life. Um when the when the everyday stuff that is necessary for Jewish community gets swallowed up in that. Um I'll give an example of just this, there are many examples I can point to, but I'll give you one from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Um we have a lot of the stuff that we want to do, that we do, is actually quite dull. Uh that includes, for example, we've done various reports on how many kids go to Jewish schools. That's not glamorous work, it's also necessary work. Uh how many synagogue members are there in this country? And that sort of work is getting harder and harder and harder to fund. In fact, there hasn't been a proper count of synagogue members in the country for about 10 years. There have been partial counts and there have been estimates. There have been quite a lot of surveys on anti-Semitism and I know one of the things I do is I run an archive of social research on European Jewish populations. The amount of research on anti-Semitism has skyrocketed, which is fine in and of itself. It's a phenomenon that needs to be understood. But there is some evidence that sometimes it happens at the expense of other stuff. Uh, because the other stuff doesn't necessarily attract funders, it doesn't make headlines, and if we lose that, that's what troubles me. So we have to be able to do the forward-facing, the front-facing stuff, and we also have to do the dull. That's what resilience is a lot of the time. Resilience is actually about dull endurance. It's about, you know, going to school, it's about committed. Oh God, is it about committed? Which is like, you know, that's what the British Jewish community exists of. They're nearly a there are extraordinary number of charities in this country, all of whom have trustees, all of whom have AGMs. If we lose that and we focus too much on the external-facing stuff, then I worry about what will be there left for us to defend.

SPEAKER_05 15:41

I'm going to take a slightly different view and say, I agree with you on some of the points that you raised. But I I'm a I'm on the advisory board of the Union of Jewish Students, and what I think we can take and be really heartened about is just over the course of the past year or so, there are more Jewish students on campuses across the country doing more Jewish things. They're also fighting anti-Semitism, but they're also coming together and doing cultural things, Shabbat things, things that have got nothing to do with anti-Semitism. And I totally accept that we've got an issue with philanthropy and giving, and that no one wants to fund the non-anti-Semitism or the non-for want of better term, sexy stuff. But that doesn't mean as a community that I don't think we are vibrant or robust. I'm a parent of children at Jewish schools. If I think about everything within my local community, it's pretty vibrant. Um, yes, we have to fight, and yes, we've got to do the external-facing stuff as well. And I don't want our lives in this country to be defined by vigils and uh demonstrations and fighting anti-Semitism, which is a serious problem. But I also take heart from the fact that I'm seeing some great things happening as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

I mean, that that's I wouldn't disagree with that. I think we're probably uh pointing to the same thing. I would say to add to what you're saying, is that sometimes it's an opportunity that people discover their Jewishness sometimes in a negative way. And the challenge is to move people from a negative kind of Judaism towards a positive Judaism, and that's probably the sort of thing you're talking about at UGS.

SPEAKER_05 17:14

Although I would say, if you're talking about campuses, you talked about all these trustees which are great, all these organizations. We are a small community, and we do have a challenge that on campuses alone there are 50 different organizations doing things with Jewish students on university campuses. Now, for a community of around 300,000, we have to question whether that's a good uh use of resources and perhaps whether we've got too many trustees, you know, thinking about these organizations when actually we could consolidate and bring that together and be more effective and do some of the less sexy stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So the stuff about consolidation. Uh I remember that sort of stuff being discussed. When I first started doing stuff in the Jewish community in like the mid-1990s professionally, they were talking about consolidation, and sometimes it happens, but then another organization gets set up the next day after. Okay. It is a sign that it is something Jews love to do. We do love to set up an organization.

SPEAKER_08 18:14

I would just like to add that there is, I think it's May that it's Jewish culture month, isn't it, this month, where there's all celebration of all joyful things Jewish, which I think everyone can have a look into and see about food, about culture, art, theatre, music, everything. Um, yes. What will do each of you, both of you?

SPEAKER_00 18:37

So you were discussing social media earlier, and I think it also includes the world of AI, but social media has become like a cesspit for hate, both in the younger generations and for all, unfortunately, it takes over everything. Like you said, fitness or cooking or who knows what, you'll find some anti-Semitism within it somehow, whether it's in the comment section or the bias behind it. So, how would you advise that the this generation, the younger generation, as well as the generation that's leading the next generation, to tackle this, both by the people that want to fight the fight, but those who also just want to live their lives and continue without being drawn into the negativity and the hate?

SPEAKER_05 19:14

Well, thank you so much. I mean, the first point is that I think we should protect kids. And I just want to make the distinction because perhaps I didn't make the point clearly enough, but it's about social media, it's not about the internet, it's not about banning young people from accessing the internet. You can access many different sites which don't have the algorithmic content, which is often very divisive and extreme and has the anti-Semitism on it, things that people aren't searching for. It doesn't, you know, social media has the doom scrolling that is particularly problematic for young people, especially where there's the extreme and very um dangerous algorithms. And it's those platforms that enable stranger contact, uh, particularly which we know uh predators are using in this country. So those are the kind of the three key things that define social media against all other elements of the internet. And I do think we should be doing everything possible to keep people under the age of 16 off it while their brains are underdeveloped, and we can be doing much to develop things like digital resilience and giving children their childhood back and their time to do other things, including sleeping and learning and everything else. That doesn't mean that we don't need to address the harms online for post-16. And we do now have the online safety act in this country, but I think everything is demonstrated that it hasn't kept up to date with the advances of all things online, and there are still many, many issues. Now, again, we're seeing governments starting to react to this, uh, including our own, but we need to see that happen more apace. And it's you know, there's obviously there's different formats. So there's another big issue that we're discussing at the moment, which is AI chatbots. How do you hold an AI chatbot responsible for uh you know what's happening, what has happened in the US, where two young people have taken their lives because of engagement with an AI chatbot. So we have to keep up with the technology. Uh uh and in terms of whether you stay on it or stay off it, we would all love to challenge all these people. A lot of it is bots as well, so it's about uh seeking the uh ensuring that the platforms themselves stop the bots that are just churning out this hate. We know that there's these bot factories that uh some of which are in Iran, some of which are in Russia, uh, and in other countries as well, which are spewing out these hate, they have to be stopped. So, again, we've got to do more to hold the social media platforms to account. But for people that want to fight it, we we've got a job to do. We know for every piece of pro-Israel content on TikTok, there are 80 pieces of content against, so it is a big challenge, uh, and those figures are similar on other platforms as well. Um, but I think ultimately we just carry on doing what we're doing, and if we can be proud of that, there if people have the resilience to do so, then they can and should. But I totally understand why people might not want to.

SPEAKER_08 21:51

We have one more question. I know this gentleman, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Um it's struck me that actually a flag between everything you were talking about. Identity. Always the triple technical terms of everything else, even in terms of Scandinavian extreme methods, where the fancy even if we make up the costume of identity as well. And always try to be the drive from self-identification there are for women, but also that kind of obsession of the West House, which is to be one's best self, almost that personal brand of identity. And that everybody on social media is having a better life than you, and their identity is better. And kind of that's what drives that. And it's like your your point about mundanity and border actually is really important because that's almost like the counter-argument to what is driving so many outfits now. The fact that actually it's the antiquity of anything that's not to be the enemy, to be boring, or to be dull, or to not be your best, best, best, best self. And actually, that is something a bit like you mentioned with Shabbat. Shabart is something that, as we get so obsessed with technology, the idea of having one day, just one day when we switch it off, is something that actually has always been kind of taken up by other communities as well. So I just wondered if you if you know, do you think actually, although you used it with humour, but do you believe there's almost a movement in the mundane?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

I mean, I think the capacity to uh to sit with in action and to not be constantly stimulated is something that we definitely have to recapture. Um but the thing when you were talking that that I was thinking about is how is how it is whack-a-mole, a lot of this technological stuff, because the very technologies that have had a devastating impact as Luciana was talking about, have also liberated people. And it can be the same technology. And the same technology that can, I'm thinking about VPNs here, that allow people under 16s to circumvent social media bands, also allows people in dictatorial societies to access the internet. And it all comes down to one thing, is that technology can be used for good or ill. And it comes back to what Michal was saying, which is actually when you drill down, you have there's no avoiding things like values and beliefs and soul and stuff like that. How we do that, I'm not I'm not always I'm not always sure. Um but like yeah.

SPEAKER_08 24:58

Sorry, I'm gonna have to bring the conversation to an end. I Luciana, who started the com the the the talks, you have one more thing to say.

SPEAKER_05 25:09

Yeah, I was gonna add on the on the the point about particularly children being bored and uh or having space to be bored and just to be alone with their thoughts and to play or to read. What we now know is really, really, really important. And actually it's shown to produce dopamine as well amongst children. We don't talk about that enough, we don't know about that enough. Our children too often are constantly connected. I think it was just the other day that we learned about how many hours a day babies are spending on screens. So absolutely is something for us all to consider. And I am now trying to adopt the techno ship. Um I've just bought one of those things to lock away my phone and really trying to have that time of separation because I mean we can all see how many hours a day we're spending on the device, especially if our work requires it. And again, having that separation of time just to be whether it's with nature or disconnected, I think is really important.

SPEAKER_07 26:01

If you have to remember one thing, TikTok, there's no TikTok in China. In China, there's only the that you read, right? That you encourage reading. So I think it's about how we self-manage ourselves and resist all these temptations, you can say, and really focus on what matters most. And that's the hardest work going back to identity. There was a false talk about identity for five years with diversity and inclusion and all those kinds of movements that didn't make space for everyone. I think maybe now there's an awakening to really ask, like, what makes me me? What do I believe in, and what what is my role in the world? And I think that's all of us were trying to touch on that from different perspectives.

SPEAKER_08 26:41

Thank you. What a wonderful way to end. I want to say thank you to all four of you for your honesty, for your clarity, for bringing ideas that challenge us, not just for us to listen to you, but to think, to go home and to really think about what you've all spoken about. Um, and thank you to all of you here tonight for being part of this. This is the first one. I'm sure it's not going to be the last one. And thank you, Ken.