Nicholas Saphir considers himself a proud Zionist. He is descended from the Hebrew poet Bialik, he is passionately committed to Israel and holds former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in high regard.

He is also the UK chairman of the New Israel Fund (NIF), an organisation which has been pilloried by right-wingers. They allege that the NIF supports organisations which work against the interests of the state of Israel, and that groups supported by the NIF supplied much of the evidence used in the Goldstone Report, which severely criticised Israel's 2009 incursion into Gaza.

It is perhaps not particularly surprising that three months into her new job, President Obama's special envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism has been subjected to abuse. What is startling is that, up to now, none of Hannah Rosenthal's critics have come from the extreme right or the Islamic world - they have nearly all been Jewish.

It is said that there is an application for everything on the Apple iPhone. So what about an app to make you a holier Jew?

Well, now there is.

From America comes the mitzvah app - which is set to take the community by storm. The Orthodox world, which has traditionally been suspicious of digital technology, is embracing this development, although there is a minority that feels that the new app will herald a Big Brother culture in Judaism.

Dame Gail Ronson has moving on her mind. Jewish Care's new deputy president is looking forward to the organisation's departure for its new headquarters in Golders Green this autumn. She is also beginning to wonder whether it might just be time to put the family house in Hampstead up for sale. Not that the matter is up for discussion with her husband, property millionaire Gerald Ronson. "It's a sore subject," she laughs. "I'm not allowed to bring it up. But I would love to move. I have to spend a lot of time in central London and the driving is killing me. It adds two hours to my day."

Arsenal has played a big part in Brian Glanville’s life. They were the team his father supported, they were the first club side he ever watched and, as a child in the 1930s and ’40s, he was obsessed by the team, particularly their star player Eddie Hapgood, to whom he wrote regular fan letters.

Six years ago, a small club from Galilee won the Israeli State Cup. It was the equivalent of Wimbledon beating Liverpool in the FA Cup Final at Wembley — except more so, because B’nei Sakhnin were the first Arab club ever to achieve this kind of success in Israeli football, and in winning the cup, surviving in the country’s Premier division and representing Israel in the Uefa Cup in Europe, Sakhnin became a focal point and a source of pride for all Arab Israelis.

Efraim Zuroff is running out of time. Zuroff is a Nazi-hunter — in fact, since Simon Wiesenthal’s death in 2005, he has become the world’s most prominent hunter of Nazi war criminals. However, the number of those who perpetrated the Holocaust has been reduced by the passage of time. Those who remain alive are in their late 80s and 90s. Despite this, Zuroff has vowed to give them no respite.

Many people feel they have a vocation for their jobs but few in showbusiness have actually experienced a calling. But this happened to Daniel Cainer, who had what he describes as “a vision” which compelled him to perform.

Cainer, who for the past two years has been touring with his successful show Jewish Chronicles, says the original idea of writing and singing Jewish-inspired songs came to him in a rather unexpected way.

There have been very few British comedies about Jewishness — and even fewer that actually made anyone laugh. But The Infidel, a comedy written by David Baddiel on a Jewish (and Muslim) theme, does just that, by poking fun at both religions.

The mother of Muslim minicab driver Mahmud dies suddenly. As he goes through her papers, he realises that he has been adopted as a baby… from a Jewish family.

At first glance, Howard Jacobson might be considered a strange candidate to make a film on the Creation. He is not religiously observant but then neither is he a convinced atheist. So given that Channel 4 wanted a polemical treatment of the subject, as the first part of its series The Bible — A History, why choose someone who cannot decide whether the Creation happened, or if it did, what it means?

Amid all the testimonies about Auschwitz and the Final Solution which have been published since the end of the Second World War, one small group has remained silent.

Alongside the main Auschwitz complex was a prisoner-of-war camp known as Auschwitz E715, where the inmates included several hundred British soldiers.

They have not talked about their experience until now, partly because they were traumatised by what happened to them in the camp, partly because they thought that no-one would be interested, but mainly because few people were aware of their existence.

A new year has begun and for many people that means a renewed attempt to find that one special person with whom to share their lives. But what makes them think that after a lifetime of trying and failing to achieve that special relationship, they are going to succeed now?

Think of acrobats, jugglers and clowns in Eastern Europe and the image that comes to mind is the Moscow State Circus.

However, there is a show coming to London which uses traditional circus skills in a new context — a unique cultural fusion called Circus Klezmer. The performers use circus tricks to tell the story of a wedding in an Eastern European shtetl, to the accompaniment of klezmer music. And if all that is not culturally fused enough, all the parts and instruments are played by a cast from the Spanish Catalan region.

January

The best thrillers are tense, full of twists with plots that take you first one way and then another, serving up breath-taking cliff-hangers, driving you crazy with suspense.

In a way one could say the same about the career of thriller writer David Kessler, whose life has taken a few twists of its own since he decided at the age of 15 that he wanted to be a professional writer.

Having made his career choice, he left school without qualifications, and drifted through menial jobs both here and in Israel as he tried to write that elusive thriller.