Oxford University Chabad Society
SUMMER TERMCARD 2020
Welcome to Oxford University Chabad Society Summer Termcard '20! This term promises to be an exciting programme at the OU Chabad Society offering online a wide variety of high profile and stimulating events, including world renowned speakers, delicious Friday night Shabbat dinners, stimulating classes, seminars and plenty of opportunities to meet other students and make new friends. Whether you’re looking for challenging discussions, classes in Judaism or a warm environment to hang out with friends, the Oxford University Chabad Society has something to offer everyone. Looking forward to meeting you over the coming term!
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Week 0
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Weekly Friday Night Shabbat Dinner - To Go
Delicious homebaked Challah, dips, salads, chicken soup and kneidlach, honey orange chicken, potato kugel, plus dessert and plenty of drinks – L’chaim
Collect Friday, 6-7pm
Class on Jewish mysticism with Rabbi Eli at 7pm
At Chabad House, 75 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1HR
RSVP: info@oxfordchabad.org
Looking forward to seeing you!
All are welcome!
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Week 2
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Holocaust Survivor Kenneth Appel
'Kindertransport: A journey to Life'
Kenneth Appel, 92, grew up in Nazi Germany, was expelled from school when the Nazis rose to power, suffered at the hands of his former school friends, until he fled with the Kindertransport to Britain. Having arrived in Britain, he witnessed the London Blitz in 1940 and eventually put himself through university and began research at a laboratory that was working to develop penicillin. He currently lives in London.
Culham Centre for Fusion Energy), son of Holocaust survivor Kenneth Appel
Tues, 5 May, 8pm
Via Zoom
All are welcome!
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Challah Baking Demo with Freidy
Friday, 8 May, 12.30pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 835 2678 9373
Password: 608584
All welcome!
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Week 3
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Jewish Fair - Lag B'omer Celebration
Tuesday, 12 May, 2-5pm
2pm – Grand Opening: Lord Mayor of Oxford Cllr. Craig Simmons
2.05pm - Chazan Eliot Alderman – former director of Music, Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London
2.15pm – Klezmer musicians Susi Evans (clarinet) & Szilvia Csaranko (accordion & piano) - Klezmer from the New World
2.30pm - Klezmer fiddle player Ilana Cravitz
2.45pm – Israeli Musicians – Prof. Michael and Menashe Lukin - Meron tunes
3pm – Linda Dangoor, Author of Flavours of Babylon - Iraqi Jewish Dessert - Demo
3.30pm - Oxford Klezmer musicians - Leo, Tabitha and Rachel Appel
3.45pm – Members of Shir Klezmer Band – Simcha music
4pm - Oxford Klezmer Musician Matthew Faulk
4.15pm - Susi Evans & Szilvia Csaranko - Klezmer from the New World
4.30pm – Expert Jewish scribe Sofer - Arieh Freeman – Demo
4.45pm – Closing: Members of Shir Klezmer Band - Simcha music
Zoom Meeting link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Zoom Meeting ID: 828 3780 5217
Password: jewishfair
All are welcome!
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Oxford University Chabad Society invites you to
Rt Hon Dame Margaret Hodge MP
‘Where next for Labour?’
Margaret became the Labour Member of Parliament for Barking in June 1994. She has served in government, holding portfolios across education, work and pensions, business and culture. In 2010, Margaret also became the first elected Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and was also its first female Chair. Today, Margaret is the Chair of the APPG on Responsible Tax as well as the Chair for organisations in the arts and higher education.
Thursday, 14 May, 8pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 884 3668 7028
Password: 715393
To send in questions in advance please email info@oxfordchabad.org
All welcome!
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Week 4
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Dr. Benjamin Outhwaite
Dr Ben Outhwaite has been Head of the Genizah Research Unit in Cambridge University Library since 2006, having worked for the previous seven years as a Genizah researcher.
Dr Outhwaite received a B.A. in Hebrew Studies and an M.Phil. in Medieval Hebrew literature from Christ's College, Cambridge. His Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, on the grammatical description of Hebrew letters in the Genizah, was completed under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Khan.
Tues, 19 May, 8pm
Via ZOOM
All are welcome!
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'UNORTHODOX'
Q & A with Rivky Slonim
Self proclaimed Chassidic feminist and Rebbetzin at Binghampton University, NY
Wed, 20 May, 7pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3526
Meeting ID: 352 637 8774
Password: discussion
RSVP: info@oxfordchabad.org
All are welcome!
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Week 5
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Dr. Norman Lebrecht
'Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947'
Norman Lebrecht is a historian, cultural commentator, broadcaster and award-winning novelist. His 12 books about music have been translated into 17 languages. Among the best-selling titles are The Maestro Myth, Who Killed Classical Music and Why Mahler Norman Lebrecht’s first novel The Song of Names won a Whitbread (now Costa) Award in 2003. It was filmed in 2018-19 with Tim Roth and Clive Owen in the leading roles. His latest non-fiction work, Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947, is published by Oneworld (UK) and Scribner in the US.
In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the way we see the world. Many of them are well known Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth. What do these visionaries have in common? They all have Jewish origins. They all have a gift for thinking outside the box and all of them think fast. In 1847 the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world s population, and yet they saw what others could not. How?
Tues, 26 May, 8pm
Via Zoom
All are welcome!
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We warmly invite you to celebrate the
Festival of Shavuot - Tikkun Leyl Shavuot Programme
Commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai 3315 years ago
Thursday, 28 May, 5.30pm-8pm
Tikkun Leyl Lecture Programme:
Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London
'The concept of Torah from Heaven'
Naftali Loewenthal lectures in Jewish Spirituality at University College London’s Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies. He is author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990) and his forthcoming book is Hasidism beyond Modernity, Studies in Habad Thought and History, to be published by the Littman Library.
Dr. Peter Bergamin, University of Oxford
Peter Bergamin is currently Visiting Scholar of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and Tutor at Mansfield College. He completed his DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2016. His research focuses on Maximalist-Revisionist Zionism, and Jewish anti-British resistance during the period of the Mandate for Palestine. A monograph based on his doctoral thesis (The Makings of a Zionist Revolutionary: Abba Ahimeir’s Ideological Genesis, 1921-1934), was published by I.B. Tauris, in 2019.
Dr. Israel Sandman, University College London
Israel Sandman is a Fellow at the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London and an expert on medieval Jewish philosophy and manuscripts.
Tzivia Berkman, Israel/Oxford
‘Why do we read the Book of Ruth on the holiday of Shavuot?'
Dr. Ros Abramsky, Birkbeck College/Oxford
‘The hiding of the light’
Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society
'What exactly did Moses recieve at Sinai?'
Professor Jeremy England
Jeremy England is an associate professor of physics at MIT, where he leads a research group that studies the statistical mechanics of emergent life-like behavior. He was raised Jewish but did not study Judaism until he attended graduate school at Oxford University, while studying at St. John's College, Oxford from 2003 until 2005.
Zara Bomberg
Zara studied Physiotherapy at Oxford Brookes University, works as a Childrens Physiotherapist at Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust and most recently, during the outbreak of COVID, as a health care assistant on an ICU COVID ward at Watford General Hospital NHS in London.
Professor Joshua Getzler, University of Oxford
'Regime Change and Torah'
Joshua Getzler is Professor of Law and Legal History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. He completed his first degrees in law and history at the Australian National University in Canberra, and his doctorate in Oxford, as a member of Balliol and Nuffield Colleges. He serves on the editorial board of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Equity and is co-editor of the new OUP monograph series Oxford Legal History.
Via ZOOM
For more info about the holiday visit: www.oxfordchabad.org/
All are welcome!
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Shavuot Festival Dinner To-Go
Thursday, 28 May
Friday, 29 May
Collect from Chabad House, 75 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1HR on Thursday, 28 May, 3pm-5pm
RSVP: info@oxfordchabad.org
All are welcome!
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Week 6
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Rabbi Mendy Chitrik
'Challenges facing Jews of Turkey'
Rabbi Chitrik serves as rabbi of the Istanbul Ashkenazic community since 2003 and the Chabad representative for Turkey.
Tuesday, 2 June, 5.30pm
Via ZOOM
The history of the Jews in Turkey covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey. There have been Jewish communities in Anatolia since at least the fifth century BCE and many Spanish and Portuguese Jews expelled from Spain by the Alhambra Decree were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire in the late 15th century, including regions now part of Turkey, centuries later, forming the bulk of the Ottoman Jews. Today, the vast majority of Turkish Jews live in Israel, while modern-day Turkey continues to host a modest Jewish population.
All are welcome!
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Week 7
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Lecture in honour of 75 Years since VE Day
Michael Kushner
'Bletchley Park and the Jewish Contribution'
Miriam Rorigues Pierera Mendes
Ms. Pierera Mendes is a Jewish Ex-serviceman who served Bletchley Park transcribing German communications during the war.
Michael Kushner is a lecturer of Signals Intelligence & Bletchley Park, the British government's World War Two ultra top secret code breaking establishment in north Buckinghamshire. Prior to volunteering at Bletchley park, Michael worked for 20 years for Thorn EMI in the consumer electronics industry. He became a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain and has a keen interest in historic military communications. In 1992 the Bletchley Park trust was formed. Michael was living close by and wanted to get involved. He then studied the history of code breaking, as more of the Top Secret information was now being released. In 2004 he trained as a volunteer guide at Bletchley Park. Michael also holds a gold award from the Association of Speakers Clubs. As a competent public speaker he is now giving lectures of World War Two signals intelligence onboard Cunard and P & O ships, also across the country for many societies and organisations.
Tuesday, 9 June, 8pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85095540040?pwd=NWhhVUFaRC9MNEVaeExoWXVmREJXQT09
Meeting ID: 850 9554 0040
Password: 299496
All welcome!
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Professor Abigail Green
‘Jews and Muslims in the History of Europe
– reading the continent against the grain’
Abigail Green is Professor of Modern European History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her first book, Fatherlands: state-building and nationhood in 19th century Germany (2001), explored the tensions between state-building and nationhood in Germany. Shortlisted in the 2002 Das Historisches Buch awards, it is regarded as a seminal contribution to the literature on German nation-state formation. More recently, her work has focused on international Jewish history and transnational humanitarian activism.
Abigail won the Sami Rohr Choice Award 2012 for her biography of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), the preeminent Jewish figure of the 19th century. She has most recently been awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship to work on a new project, a book on liberalism and the Jews tentatively entitled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights.
Tues, 16 June, 1pm
Info : Info@oxfordchabad.org
All are welcome!
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Elia Meghnagi
'Escape from Benghazi: The story of Libyan Jewry'
Elia Meghnagi was raised in Benghazi, Libya, where he attended an Italian Catholic school run by friars. At the age of 17 he left his home and family to take up a scholarship for a pre-university year in Cambridge, UK. Having been warned not to return to Libya, he then spent two years at Gateshead Yeshiva before moving to London to obtain a degree in Telecommunications and Electronics. During these years he managed to bring his parents, two brothers and a sister to join him. His work in telecoms took him to many parts of the world before he joined his brothers in 1988 to become a director of Snowcrest, a kosher manufacturing company. He has devoted much of his time to Jewish education, and is also a director of the Simon Weisenthal Centre, UK. Now semi-retired, he and his wife enjoy spending time with their five children and a generous number of grand-children (most of whom live in Israel). He also writes and gives talks about outstanding Jewish personalities, Jewish practice, and the Libyan Jewish community.
Tuesday, 23 June, 8pm
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CLASSES AND COURSES
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Talmud Class
Join us to study subjects in Judaism's all-important 6th century legal work of the Talmud that shapes Jewish law and thought up until today.
Every Sunday, 7pm
At Slager Jewish student centre, 61 George Street, Oxford, OX1 2BQ
All are welcome!
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Parsha Class
Join us for a weekly Parsha class for the Torah portion of Emor online with Rabbi Eli, exploring the Torah portion through the classic commentaries and Oxford Hebrew manuscripts of Rashi's commentary.
Every Wednesday, 7pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 868 3784 3681
Password: 998563
RSVP for handout in advance: info@oxfordchabad.org
All welcome!
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Jewish mysticism class
Every Thursday, 7-8pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 854 0766 2866
Password: 367158
Please email info@oxfordchabad.org for a handout to be sent to you before the class.
Looking forward to seeing you!
All are welcome!
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The Tajtelbaum Jewish Study Hall
The Tajtelbaum Jewish Study Hall is open daily for you to study with a fully stocked Judaica library, wireless internet and FREE coffee and refreshments on offer.
At Slager Jewish student centre, 61 George St, Oxford, OX1 2BQ
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Oxford Kosher Cafe
Enjoy a full menu of delicious Kosher food, which is situated in our spacious lounge with internet wireless connection, Wii, Jewish newspaper and satellite TV, in addition to our well stocked and diverse Judaica library with over 2000 interesting titles. Drop by for soups, deluxe sandwiches, bagels, salads, schnitzel, soft drinks and a range of delicious pastries.
OPEN daily: 12.30pm-2pm
At Slager Jewish student centre, 61 George St, Oxford, OX1 2BQ
Order out during lockdown: info@oxfordchabad.org
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Sign Up
If you or a friend would like to sign up to the
Chabad Society, please email:
info@oxfordchabad.org
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Oxford Chabad Society Committee
Samuel Weinman (St Anne's College) - President, Daniel Kolsky (Lincoln), Secretary, Michelle Rapoport (University) - Treasurer, Yoni Isaacs (Lincoln), Amber Borowiec (Hertford), Jozef Kosc (Green Templeton), Marthe Goudsmit (Law), Harry Hatwell (St John's).
Senior Member: Prof. Abigail Green (Brasenose)
To join the committee, email: info@oxfordchabad.org.
Directors
Rabbi Eli & Freidy Brackman
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Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Www.oxfordchabad.org