V When 18-year-old Hortense arrived in Surrey to work as a domestic cook, she suffered a huge culture shock. The educated daughter of a Jewish doctor in Breslau, Germany, she was used to having servants, not being one.

Rabbi Anna Gerrard is sick and tired of spaghetti and baked beans.

The minister of the Gloucestershire Liberal Jewish community is part of a Liberal Judaism Centre team who are taking part in this year’s Live Below the Poverty Line — the campaign which asks volunteers to spend only a pound a day on food for five days in order to raise awareness about extreme poverty.

A controversial joint anti-hunger project between the Board of Deputies and Oxfam will go ahead after deputies voted in favour of the scheme.

The Grow/Tatzmiach programme will bring Jewish campaigners together with experts from the NGO to tackle injustices in the international food system.

Choreographer Arlene Phillips is among Jewish anti-poverty campaigners who have spent this week existing on a food budget of £1 or less a day to draw attention to the plight of the world’s poorest people.

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?

On April 24 1932, a five-foot-tall Jewish man led a hike up a mountain, which in turn led to titanic clashes between Britain's political left and right, between working and upper classes, and even to a public inquiry involving pop-star Madonna.

Of all Complicite's book adaptations, Bulgakov's mind-expanding novel is surely the most ambitious.

Efforts to alleviate poverty, particularly among children, in Manchester's Charedi community have been stepped up with the launch of a new organisation and the extension of an apprenticeship scheme.

The Israel-based welfare body Mesila has started work in the north-west with the aim of getting families to understand how they can deal with their debts and come off benefits, rather than simply receiving charity.