Summer Termcard '21

 

Oxford University Chabad Society

SUMMER TERMCARD 2023

Welcome to Oxford University Chabad Society Summer Termcard '23! 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 and Lunch - To Go Packages or Outdoor Shabbat dinner and lunch

Delicious homebaked Challah, dips, salads, chicken soup and kneidlach, honey orange chicken, potato kugel, plus dessert and plenty of drinks – L’chaim

Collect Friday, 12-2pm

Outdoor Shabbat dinner and lunch @ Chabad House, 75 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1HR

RSVP: [email protected]

Looking forward to seeing you! 

All are welcome! 

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Mark Malawa

'From Kuwait to Jerusalem: Growing up as an Arab Muslim - discovering I’m a Jew'

8th Annual Oxford JEWISH FAIR - Lag B'omer on Broad Street

Friday, 30 April, 12-5pm

Grand opening by The Lord Mayor of Oxford, Cllr Mark Lygo - at 1pm

London Jewish Music Band 'SHIR' - Ivor Goldberg and Maurice Chernick - Klezmer, Israeli, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ladino and Simcha music.

Oxford musician Matthew Faulk - including Yiddish music

* Chazan Eliot Alderman

* Kosher Food Stand - hotdogs, shawarma, falafel, desserts - outdoor seating on Broad St

* Jewish Art - including locally made Oxford Judaica

* Kosher and Israeli wine tasting - with Steven Zimmer

* Judaica Books - inc. celebrating the works of Rabbi Lord Sacks

* Jewish History of England Exhibition

* Kosher cooking demo - pickle making with Pammy Brenner

* Crafts

* Archery

* Scribal Art - with Hebrew manuscript display of Torah scrolls from the British Library - 17th c. Kaifeng Torah Scroll - and the 17th c. Pusey House Oxford Torah Scroll.

Looking forward to seeing you!

For more info, to volunteer at the fair, to volunteer or become a sponsor, please email: [email protected]

This event is supported by Oxford City Council, the Community Security trust (CST), Kedem Europe, Mamou Family, JTrails - the National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail, Oxford Jewish Chaplaincy, Aisenthal, British Library, Pusey House, Oxford.

All participants must follow the current Covid guidelines while attending the fair. 

All are welcome! 

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Week 2

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'How my grandparents were saved by Prince Philip's Mother, Princess Alice of Greece'

Evy Cohen is the granddaughter of Haimki and Rachel Cohen who were rescued during the Holocaust by Prince Phillips’ mother, Princess Alice of Greece

Monday, 3 May, 7pm

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85112280109?pwd=UGdUNlZVcmp1UXZLUkRWNGQ4bUIvQT09

Meeting ID: 851 1228 0109
Passcode: talks

Hosted together with Jewish communities of Denmark, Dublin, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Holland

All welcome! 

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Week 3

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Rebetzin Chavie Bruk

'Breaking Stereotypes: A Chassidic family in rural America'

 

 

All welcome!

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Oxford University Chabad Society invites you to a lecture

Israeli archaeologist Yossi Stepansky

'The history of Meron, in Northern Israel: what is there that attracts 2 million people yearly?'

Yosef Stepansky is a field archaeologist, formerly Inspector of Antiquities of Eastern Galilee under the Israel Antiquities Authority. He has performed many archaeological excavations and surveys in upper and lower Galilee, including at Meiron – one of the richest and most interesting sites in the region. He has authored 4 books and more than one hundred academic articles (including one in ARAM, sponsored by the Oxford U. Oriental Institute); Yosef lives in Safed, Israel, with his wife and five children, and is currently an independent archaeologist, lecturer and certified tour-guide.

Tuesday, 11 May, 8pm

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84324019441...
Meeting ID: 843 2401 9441

Passcode: 722359

All are welcome!  

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Week 4

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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

Sunday, 16 May, 5pm-8pm

Tikkun Leyl Lecture Programme:

Pammy Brenner, Oxford

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

'Rashi on Ruth in the super-commentary of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson'

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London

"When Israel said 'we will do and we will hear'.." 1912 , exploring a four year teaching by Rabbi Shalom Dober Schneersohn which began on Shavuot, 1912.

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. Ros Abramsky, Oxford

'The body in question'

David Frisch, St Cross College

Professor Marc Brettler, Duke University

Marc Brettler is an American biblical scholar, and the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University. He earned his B.A., M.A., and PhD from Brandeis University, where he previously served as Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies.

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. 

Professor Joshua Getzler, University of Oxford

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. 

Brian Deutsch, Oxford

Brian Deutsch is an Oxford scholar with expertise in Hebrew manuscripts. He served as an assistant cataloguer of the Hebrew collection at Christ Church, Oxford.

Professor Hindy Najman, University of Oxford

'The poetics of the book of Ruth and the Ethics of Supererogation (Lifnim Meshurat Haddin)'

Hindy Najman is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oriel College, University of Oxford. Her publications include Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra, Past Renewals: Interpretive Authority, Renewed Revelation and the Quest for Perfection, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism, and a recent essay entitled “Ethical Reading: The Transformation of Text and Self.”

Professor Benjamin Sommer

"What Does It Mean That God 'Speaks'? A Close Look at an Important at Numbers 7:89" 

Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Senior Fellow, The Kogod Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought, The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America 

Via ZOOM

For more info about the holiday visit:  www.oxfordchabad.org/shavuot 

All are welcome! 

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Shavuot Festival Dinner To-Go

Sunday, 16 May

Monday, 17 May 

Collect from Chabad House, 75 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1HR on Thursday, 16 May, 3pm-5pm

RSVP: [email protected]

All are welcome! 

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Oxford Scriptural Reasoning Society invites you to a lecture

'Popular Religion'

Rabbi Eli Brackman

Wed, 19 May, 1pm

At St Hilda’s Interfaith College space, Cowley Place, Oxford

For more info, email [email protected]

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Week 5

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Professor Sacha Stern 

'Calendars in the Making: The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages (Leiden 2021)'

Sacha Stern is Professor of Rabbinic Judaism and Head of Department at the UCL Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He holds a BA in Ancient History from Oxford (1986), an MA in Social Anthropology from UCL (1988), and a D.Phil in Jewish Studies from Oxford (1992). He has also studied in Yeshivot in Israel. Before joining UCL in 2005, he was Lecturer in Jewish Studies at Jews' College, London and then Reader in Jewish Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). He is author of: 'Calendars in the Making: The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages (Leiden 2021).'

Wed, 26 May, 8pm

All are welcome! 

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Week 6

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Dr. Julie Dunne

'Finding Oxford’s medieval Jewry: using organic residue analysis, faunal records and historical documents'

Julie is a biomolecular archaeologist working in the Organic Geochemistry Unit, School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol. She is passionate about using archaeological science to answer questions about how people lived in the past. Her research interests vary from African archaeology to medieval Britain. Julie is the lead author of the recent research on Oxford’s medieval Jewry, from the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry

Tuesday, 1 June, 8pm

This talk will present the findings that archaeologists have discovered from the medieval Jewish community of Oxford that they said were the earliest evidence of a religious Kosher diet was observed iin medieval England. The findings, locked inside pottery fragments excavated in Oxford, go back to the 12th and 13th centuries following William the Conqueror’s invitation to Jews in Northern France to settle in England.The fragments came from two former homes in Oxford’s centre that belonged to Jews: Jacob f. mag. Moses and Elekin f. Bassina, according to a report in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on the findings by the team led by Dr. Dunne, the University of Bristol.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81648738360?pwd=VXVaV0IxS3lhUXI2cjdHT2ZnSUJCQT09

Meeting ID: 816 4873 8360
Passcode: 157202

All welcome!

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Week 7

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Emeritus Professor Shalom Sabar 

'Rembrandt, the Bible, and Hebrew script'

Shalom Sabar is Professor of Jewish Art and Folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sabar is the last Jewish baby born and circumcised in the ages old neo-Aramaic speaking Kurdish-Jewish community of Zakho. He earned his PhD in Art History from UCLA (1987), writing on the illustrated marriage contracts of the Jews in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. His research joins together the disciplines of art history and folklore, highlighting issues pertaining to the folk nature of Jewish art and Jewish material culture, visual materials and objects associated with rituals in the life and year cycles, and the evidence these materials provide about the relationships between the Jewish minorities and the societies that hosted them in Christian Europe and the Islamic East. Among his books are: Ketubbah: Jewish Marriage Contracts of the Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum and Klau Library (1990); Mazal Tov: Illuminated Jewish Marriage Contracts from the Israel Museum Collection, Jerusalem (1994); Jerusalem - Stone and Spirit: 3000 Years of History and Art (with Dan Bahat; 1997); The Life Cycle [of the Jews in the Lands of Islam; 2006]. Sabar served as editor of Rimonim (a Hebrew periodical of Jewish art), co-editor of Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore, and is on the editorial board of the periodical Pe’amim and a multi-volume series dedicated to the Jewish communities in the lands of Islam (both published by Ben Zvi institute). He serves as a visiting professor and lectures widely in universities, museums, and public institutions in Israel, Europe and the US. Currently Prof. Sabar serves as the Schusterman Visiting Scholar in the Stroum Jewish Studies Program at the University of Washington, Seattle WA. In addition, he guides travelling seminars to Jewish sites in Europe, North Africa and Central Asia.

Tues, 8 June, 8pm

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87307372008?pwd=TDFlOUpiaWswY0pPTWV4V0FwYUNNdz09

Meeting ID: 873 0737 2008
Passcode: 811862
 

All are welcome!

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Week 8

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'A Mathematician's Odyssey: From Nazi Germany to Oxford'

Walter Bodmer, born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt in 1936, is a world-leading geneticist who has made major contributions to the study of the genetics of human populations, gene mapping and cancer genetics and to our understanding of the human tissue typing system. He was one of the first to suggest the idea of the human genome project. Early in his career, Walter helped to discover the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system, vital for the success of organ and bone marrow transplants. Walter’s interest in human populations led him to set up a UK population gene bank that could be used as a control group in research. More recently, he has successfully grown bowel cancer cells in the lab in structures similar to those found naturally inside the bowel. Walter is credited with beginning the movement for the public understanding of science, having chaired the first committee set up to establish standards for communicating science and technology. He was the first Director General of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and was knighted in 1986. He is currently Head of the Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory, Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford and former Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. 

Tues, 15 June, 8pm

At Slager Jewish student centre, 61 George Street, Oxford, OX1 2BQ

Looking forward to seeing you!

All are welcome!

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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 

For Zoom info and handout in advance:  [email protected]

All welcome!

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Jewish mysticism class

Every Thursday, 7-8pm

Please email [email protected] for Zoom info and 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: [email protected]

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Sign Up

If you or a friend would like to sign up to the

Chabad Society, please email:

[email protected]

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Oxford Chabad Society Committee 

Michelle Rapoport (University) - President, Uri Shine (University) - Treasurer, Isabella Heinmann (St Hildas) - Secretary, Jozef Kosc (Green Templeton), Marthe Goudsmit (Law), Avi Blumgart (St John's), Jonathan Sheinman (Queens), Dario Val Nure (Brookes), Pamela Brenner (Kellogg), David Frisch (St Cross).

Senior Member: Prof. Nir Vulkan (Worcester)

To join the committee, email: [email protected].

Directors

Rabbi Eli & Freidy Brackman

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Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Www.oxfordchabad.org