When former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic recently claimed at his war crimes trial in The Hague that he should be “rewarded” for his actions in the 1990s Bosnian war, Sally Becker suggested on Twitter that an appropriate reward would be a nice “rest” at the Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

In the year since his appointment as Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Daniel Taub has barely drawn breath.

We have reproduced a plant cell using Lemsip capsules. We built a Museum of Tolerance which was too big to fit in the car. We created a synagogue in a shoebox, complete with a matchstick mechitzah and a cardboard congregation.

Whatever one feels about the current 50th birthday of the Beatles’ first single being celebrated somewhat more widely — and wildly — than the 90th anniversary of T S Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses (not to mention Aaron’s Rod by D H Lawrence and Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf), there is no denying the 1960s’ evocative power.

In a short item in the JC a few weeks ago, Leyton Orient fans were said to be “bemused by pictures of thousands of Orthodox Jews who used its stadium for an anti-internet rally”. This actually amused rather than bemused me. For, in researching my new book Does Your Rabbi Know You’re Here? I made two discoveries.

Sir Georg Solti, one of the 20th century’s greatest conductors, was born 100 years ago, on 21 October 1912. Now major celebrations are getting underway around the world to mark his centenary.

I was born in Jerusalem a year before the outbreak of World War II. My parents had met there (my mother was married to someone else at the time), both having left Germany in 1933 soon after Hitler came to power.

Ros Altmann
The population is ageing, the pensions industry is in crisis. Who do governments listen to? Ros Altmann. The director-general of Saga is a long time campaigner for pensioner’s rights. Her solution to the coming pensions timebomb? We live longer, we should work longer.

Avielah Barclay

H ow many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? According to the old joke, the answer is none. “Don’t worry about me,” she says “I’ll just sit here in the dark.”