As Londoners and West End tourists are all too aware, Leicester Square has been having a facelift. This week the hoardings will finally come down and the square, unveiled by London mayor Boris Johnson, will take on its new role as "the entertainment gateway to the West End".

In many ways, it was the trip I never thought I’d take. Like a lot of Jewish people, my knowledge of the Holocaust came from books, films and documentaries, as well as encounters with survivors. But the death of my mother Millie three years ago suddenly brought my family history to the fore and I found myself discussing it with my son Robert, who has always wanted to trace our heritage.

Since football is tribal our allegiance for the 1999 European Cup final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich was clear. I was an Arsenal fan and my Israeli friend supported Liverpool, so we were both cheering the Bavarians.

Only my friend's daughter was puzzled: "Daddy, why do we want the Germans to win?" He thought for a moment: "For Jewish reasons!"

Mum, dad, I'm joining a circus." These are perhaps not the words most Jewish parents want to hear when talking to their offspring about career choices. But they would be wrong to object.

So says trapeze artist Adam Cohen. He has been performing for more than a decade, studying the flying trapeze and teaching children acrobatics and circus stunts.

Seldom do children grow up in the care of their parents while inside an orphanage. Such, however, was the unusual upbringing my elder brother Charles and I received when, in 1951, at the respective ages of six and four, we moved with our parents into an apartment in an imposing red-bricked Victorian building in south London that was home to 200 less fortunate Jewish children.

Jewish charity leaders will be keeping a close eye on Chancellor George Osborne.

Kerri Sackville is not exhausted. This is an unfamiliar feeling for the Australian writer whose debut book about the trials and tribulations of family life has become a best-seller Down Under.

A week into a visit to the UK to promote When My Husband Does the Dishes (He usually wants sex!) the jet-lag has worn off, and Sackville is bursting with energy.

At 8.15am on April 12 1942, Sergeant Maxwell Addess and his observer, Sergeant B.A.T. Lane took off from North Coates airfield in Lincolnshire on a reconnaissance mission over the coast of Holland. 236 Squadron, to which Max belonged, was tasked primarily with shipping reconnaissance and escort duties. In some ways, this was just a routine mission.

One of the most salutary effects of ageing is the realisation that the advancing years do not necessarily bring wisdom or emotional maturity. When something goes wrong, you still look for somebody else to blame. If you break a vase, you curse whoever left it in your way, and any motoring mishap is inevitably the other driver's fault.

There is an old Jewish music hall joke: "Did you know that the Jews were responsible for the sinking of the Titanic?"

"No they weren't, it was the iceberg."

"Oy, already. Iceberg, Goldberg?

If you have any interest at all in science, a chat with Daniel Zajfman can be pretty instructive. As head of the world-renowned Weizmann Institute in Israel, he is at the forefront of scientific research in his country. During an hour's conversation at his London hotel, topics veer from the origin of the universe to how to make a radio from rotten potatoes.

Readers, you may remember that, late last year, I got dumped by my girlfriend Mandy when she finally twigged I wasn't going to be able to provide her with the things she really wanted: my ultra-rare Frankie Say Arm The Unemployed T-shirt from 1984 and box set of nine Seinfeld DVDs.

Mark Ronson is reminiscing. "My grandmother was so funny. She's not around any more but when we were kids we'd go over to her house and she'd only have two periodicals on the table: French Vogue and the Jewish Chronicle". He smiles. "Those were like her Bibles."

The memory is partly prompted by the fact Ronson is talking to the JC, partly by the fact he is back in London.

We are arranged in a circle, surrounded by pots of coloured paint and plastic stencils, ready to create designs for Purim T-shirts. The place is northern Israel, minutes from the Mediterranean. Ages range from 18 to 25. In the past few days we have been donkey riding in biblical costumes, taken part in adventure activities in the Carmel forest and toured the Mini Israel theme park.

What makes a Jew? This is the question at the heart of Israeli filmmaker Ronit Kerstner's documentary Torn.

Thanks to Joshua Foer I have several images floating around my head that I cannot get rid of. These include Claudia Schiffer swimming in a giant tub of cottage cheese, a man sitting on a toilet wearing only a snorkel and Paul Newman in my kitchen chopping elk sausages.

Susy Stone

Educated at Henrietta Barnet School in north London and graduated in French from London University. She taught at JFS and later became headteacher of Bell Lane Primary School in Hendon and the Akiva School in Finchley.

If ever there was a time for the Jewish community to learn from its history, it is now, as many face economic difficulties and poor job prospects.

"The situation is dire for graduates," said Shraga Zaltzman, managing director of Jewish careers company, TrainE-TraidE, which worked with around 1,700 people last year. "The market is not good, and companies are looking to cut costs.

Tributes flowed around the world when the iconic Bloom's restaurant in Golders Green finally closed its doors in 2010.

But while the likes of Steven Berkoff, Maureen Lipman and Giles Coren mourned its demise, others questioned how such a supposedly popular eaterie, which first opened in Whitechapel in 1920, could end up going into liquidation.