Recording of lectures hosted at the Oxford University Chabad Society during 2023

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Professor Zoe Waxman

'Testimony as a Response to Mass Atrocity'

Prof. Waxman has been awarded the title of Professor of Holocaust History at the University of Oxford. She is a senior research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. She was educated at the universities of York, Warwick, and Oxford and was previously a lecturer in history at Mansfield College, Oxford, and then lecturer and fellow in Holocaust Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published widely on gender, genocide, and the history of ideas. Her most recent book was Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History (2017). Her next book will be Motherhood: A Holocaust History.

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Prof. Oren Gazal

'Incarceration Rates in Israel and Judges' Biases'

Oren Gazal-Ayal served as the dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa, currently, he is a visiting fellow at All-Souls College at the University of Oxford. He heads the Center for the Study of Crime, Law, and Society at the University. He serves as the vice chair of the public committee for the prevention of false convictions and as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Minister of Justice for Criminal Procedure and Evidence Law. He is also the former president of the Israeli Law and Economics Association.

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Pre-Chanukah Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud 

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Professor Drew Weissman

Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine 2023

'The Covid vaccine was just the tip of the iceberg…the breathtaking potential of mRNA therapeutics'

Drew Weissman  M.D., Ph.D. is a professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He received his graduate degrees from Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Weissman, in collaboration with Dr. Katalin Karikó, discovered the ability of modified nucleosides in RNA to suppress activation of innate immune sensors and increase the translation of mRNA containing certain modified nucleosides. The nucleoside-modified mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine platform Dr. Weissman’s lab created is used in the first 2 approved COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. They continue to develop other vaccines that induce potent antibody and T cell responses with mRNA–based vaccines. Dr. Weissman’s lab also develops methods to replace genetically deficient proteins, edit the genome, and specifically target cells and organs with mRNA-LNPs, including lung, heart, brain, CD4+ cells, all T cells, and bone marrow stem cells.

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Professor Robert A Harris 

'The Origin of Peshat'

Robert A. Harris is professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at The Jewish Theological Seminary, teaching courses in biblical literature and commentary, particularly medieval Jewish biblical exegesis. Dr. Harris is an expert in the history of medieval biblical exegesis. His most recent book is Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency: Commentaries on Amos, Jonah (with Selections from Isaiah and Ezekiel). TEAMS Commentary Series. Kalamazoo, MI:  Medieval Institute Publications, 2017. In 2004 he published a book in the Brown Judaic Studies series, Discerning Parallelism: A Study in Northern French Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis. In addition, he has published many articles and reviews in both American and Israeli journals. His dissertation (1997) was titled The Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency.  He is currently at work on a book, tentatively titled The Reinvention of Reading in the 12th Century Renaissance. Dr. Harris’s most recent publication is “Sexual Orientation in the Presentation of Joseph’s Character in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature,” AJS Review 43:1 (Spring, 2019)

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Dr. Joseph O'Hara (Oxford)

‘Hebrew Micrography: A uniquely Jewish art form?’

Dr Joseph O’Hara is a Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and a Junior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. He works on the international project The history of the Jewish book in the Islamicate world (Oxford–LMU Munich) and is a member of Hebrew Palaeography Album, a major new initiative to produce a large-scale online repository of specimens of medieval Hebrew handwritings. He has presented on digital palaeography and also convenes the OCHJS Medieval Hebrew reading group.

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Dr. Richard Schwartz

' Maintaining Happiness During Disaster?'

Robert M. Schwartz, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and former assistant professor who did pioneering research on positive and negative emotions. In addition to scientific articles on positive psychology, he has published social and political commentaries in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jerusalem Post, Arutz Sheva, Christian Science Monitor, the American Thinker, and others

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Professor Sir Bernard Silverman FRS

'What is Modern Slavery and how can we act against it?'

Sir Bernard Silverman is a statistician whose research has ranged widely across many aspects and applications of statistics.  He gained his PhD from Cambridge in 1978, and has held senior academic posts at a number of universities.  He was Master of St Peter’s College from 2003 to 2009 and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office from 2010 to 2017, during which time his work played a pivotal role in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.   His current activities encompass geospatial and location data, the fight against modern slavery and child sexual violence, official statistics, security, and science and technology for policy, business and government.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a former President of the Royal Statistical Society, and has won leading awards for his work.

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High Holidays Seminar 2023

Avi B.

'What is the nature of Rosh Hashanah?'

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Rabbi Eli Brackman

'Maimonides on the sound of the Shofar'

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Professor Rabbi Efraim Kanarfogel

'The Literary Artistry of Rashi and the Tosafists in Their Piyyutim for the Eve of Rosh HaShanah'

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Dr. Naftali Loewenthal

University College London

'Teachings on repentance in Chabad thought'

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Dr. Israel Sandman

'The source of the Divine Kingship'

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Dr. Daniel Rand

'Teshuva: obligation or opportunity?'

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Prof. Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg

'Rosh Hashana: the day of the creation'

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Randol Schoenberg

'The Recovery of the Nazi Stolen Klimt Paintings from Austria' 

Randol Schoenberg  is a leading US lawyer   specializing in cases involving looted Nazi art and the recovery of property stolen by the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust. During the past decades, he has litigated several prominent cases, including the Republic of Austria v. Altmann case, in which he sought the return of six famous Klimt paintings to his client, Maria Altmann.

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Levana Chajes

'Exploring the Mysteries of the Ma'arekhet ha-Elohut - Systematizing the Divine in Kabbalistic Tradition'

Levana Chajes has been a student and teacher of Jewish thought and rabbinic literature for nearly two decades. Levana studied rabbinic literature at Matan in Jerusalem for one year before commencing her BA studies at Tel Aviv University. At Tel Aviv University, she graduated summa cum laude in Jewish thought and general philosophy. Levana continued her training at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was a Mandel Fellow, again graduating summa cum laude. She was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hassenfeld Award for Academic Excellence, the Ben Tzvi Institute Research Grant, the Belven-Gelles Scholarship, and the Bechana Award for Academic Excellence, and the Gaon prize. Her MA thesis, “On the Discourse of Unity and the Discursive Unity of Ma‘arekhet ha-elohut,” was the first comprehensive treatment of a seminal kabbalistic work written ca. 1300. A monograph based on this thesis is currently under review for publication. Levana will begin doctoral research on the Ma’arekhet ha-elohut and its Italian reception in the fall 2023.

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Rabbi Professor Tyson Herberger

'Halachic Times at Extreme Latitudes'

Tyson Herberger is an associate professor of religion and religious education at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Previously he served as the rabbi of the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw, Chief Rabbi of Wroclaw and Lower Silesia, and in other rabbinic and academic posts. He is married to an Oxford alum (Jewish studies at Mansfield), and honored to be the father of two amazing children. He is in Oxford to represent the World Jewish Congress in a seminar between the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) and the Holy See.

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Maia Elsner

'Art as survival: Life and work of Holocaust survivor Dante Elsner'

Maia Elsner grew up in Oxford and is granddaughter of Holocaust survivor and artist Dante Elsner. She is the author of the poetry collection, Overrun by Wild Boars (flipped eye, 2021), which won a Somerset Maugham Award and was listed as one of the top ten books of 2021 by The Telegraph. She is most recently author of Dante Elsner (Guillemot Press, 2023), that tells the story of her paternal grandfather who survived the Holocaust by hiding in the forests of East Poland after his parents and brother were killed. He later found in making pots and paintings a reason to live. 

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Dr. Yaacov Falkov

'The Holocaust in Latvia: Figures, Characteristics, Reaction of the Allied Powers, and Post-War Memory'

Dr. Yaacov Falkov is an Israeli-Latvian historian of WWII. He is a former visiting fellow of the OCHJS and Massada Fellowships Programme (Worcester College), a lecturer in history at the Tel-Aviv University, and a scientific advisor to the Ghetto Fighters Museum (Israel) and The Riga Ghetto Museum (Latvia). Falkov published two books: Forest Spies. The Intelligence Activity of the Soviet Partisans 1941-1945 Jerusalem, Magnes Press and Yad Vashem, 2017 (in Hebrew); Between Hitler and Churchill. Two Jewish Agents and the Effort Made by British Intelligence to Prevent Secret Polish-Nazi Collusion Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 2021 (in Hebrew); and co-authored the book: Fighters Across Frontiers. Transnational Resistance in Europe, 1936-48 Manchester, Manchester UP, 2020. Currently, Falkov is completing a new study on Soviet intelligence knowledge of the Holocaust.

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Symposium on Jewish Medical Ethics

A showcase of six presentations from leading rabbinic and ethical experts on Jewish medical ethics

Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz

'Coercion and consent in Jewish medical law'

Rabbi Dr. Tatz studied medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, and is founder and Director of the Jerusalem Medical Ethics Forum.

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Professor David Katz

'The Vaccine Story'

David Katz is Emeritus Professor of Immunopathology at University College London (UCL). He edits the International Journal of Experimental Pathology and for 16 years has served on Fitness to Practice Panels, chairing Tribunals for the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.

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Professor Charles Foster

'Issues of identity in medical ethics'

Charles Foster is a Fellow of Exeter College, a member of the Oxford Law Faculty, a Senior Research Associate at the Uehiro Institute for Practical Ethics (within the Faculty of Philosophy), and a Research Associate at the Ethox Centre and the Helex Centre (both within the Faculty of Medicine).

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Dr. Alberto Giubilini

'Freedom of conscience and medical professionalism: an impossible marriage?'

Alberto Giubilini is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, based at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.

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Dr. Brian D. Earp

'Should doctors perform religious rituals? The new debate on 'female circumcision'

Brian is a Senior Research Fellow in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and The Hastings Center, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

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Professor Simon Hiscock

'Oxford Botanic Garden at 400: reflecting on the past, celebrating the present and looking to the future '

Professor of Botany in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford; and the Director of the Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum. 

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Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman

'Life at War in Ukraine'

Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman is the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Kyiv, and Kyiv great choral synagogue (aka “Brodsky shul”). Rabbi Azman has been at the forefront of efforts to support East-Ukrainian refugees in Kyiv and Ukraine and facilitated the evacuation of wounded people to hospitals in Israel. In 2015 he founded the project to resettle homeless Jews, the village of Anatevka.

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'Judicial Reform Review in Israel'

Professor James Friedberg 

Posten Professor of Law, West Virginia University. 

Dr. Ruvi Zeigler 

Associate Professor in International Refugee Law at the University of Reading, School of Law and an Associate Academic Fellow of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple; Research Associate of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

Jonathan Hasson

Doctoral student at Oxford Law Faculty. He holds an LL. B. from Tel Aviv University, and an LL.M from the University of Haifa

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Joseph Raz Memorial Lecture

Professor Yossi Nehushtan

Former student of Joseph Raz, holds degrees from Striks Law School (LLB), the Hebrew University (LLM) and Oxford University (BCL, MPhil, DPhil). He is currently a Professor of Law and Philosophy at Keele University. 

'The Meaning and Importance of Autonomy in a World in Which We Have no Free Will'

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Recording of lectures hosted at the Oxford University Chabad Society during Hilary Term 2023

Rabbi Danny Goldstein

'Keys to a happy marriage' 

Rabbi Danny Goldstein graduated and received Rabbinical ordination from the Talmudical Institute of Upstate New York, and recently studied at the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy. Rabbi Goldstein is a high school principal, educator and executive director at the Talmudical Institute. His teaching ranges from teaching kindergarten students, high school students, advanced Talmudic studies to post high school students, the daily daf of Talmud to community laymen and a course in the fundamentals of Kabbalah. Rabbi Goldstein is the proud husband of Dr. Lea Goldstein.

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Professor David Aberbach

'The Environment and Literature of Moral Dilemmas'

David Aberbach wrote his D.Phil. at Oxford and taught at Oxford, Cornell, and McGill Universities.  His books on Hebrew literature include studies of Mendele Mocher Sefarim, C.N. Bialik, and S.Y. Agnon; Imperialism and Biblical Prophecy 750-500 BCE; Revolutionary Hebrew, Empire and Crisis; and The Bible and the ‘Holy Poor’: from the Tanakh to Les Misérables. His most recent book is: 'The Environment and Literature of Moral Dilemmas' (Routledge).

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Professor Kate Miriam Loewenthal

'Trauma and Religious Faith'

Prof. Kate Miriam Loewenthal is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, Professor of Abnormal Psychology, New York University in London, and Visiting Professor at Glyndwr University, Wales and Heythrop College, London University. She is author of Religion, Culture and Mental Health (2006), An Introduction to Psychological Tests and Scales (2001, 2nd edition), Mental Health and Religion (1994), and The Psychology of Religion: A Short Introduction (2000), among numerous other influential works in the field of psychology of religion. Her most recent book is: ‘Trauma and religious faith.’

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Professor Ignacio Carbajosa 

'A curious Megillat Esther, or how to find a needle in a haystack'

Ignacio Carbajosa is Full Professor of the Hebrew Bible at San Dámaso University (Madrid). He completed his PhD at the Pontifical Biblical Institute (Rome, 2005) with a dissertation entitled The Character of the Syriac Version of Psalms. A Study of Psalms 90-150 in the Peshitta (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

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Trevor Stern 

‘American and Zionist: The ideology of Mordecai Manuel Noah’

 

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Rabbi Professor Alan Brill

'Rabbi on the Ganges: A Jewish Hindu Encounter' 

Rabbi Prof. Alan Brill is the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University, where he teaches Jewish studies in the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program. 

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Raphael Rutman

'Challenges facing Jews of Ukraine'

Raphael Rutman is the Executive Vice Chairman of the Council of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, responsible for all its diplomatic and international relations, including with the office of President Vladimir Zelensky. Raphael became an envoy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Ukraine in 1993, and has been instrumental in the opening of many children's social programs and orphanages in many cities of Ukraine. 

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Professor Michael Yudkin

'Amnesty International and the Jewish Question '

Michael Yudkin was tutor in Biochemistry at University College, Oxford, until 1993, after which he moved to Kellogg College. He then taught in the Department for Continuing Education until retiring from his Professorship in 2005. He was active for many years in the campaign for Jews to be allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel, and he continues to work against the boycott of Israeli academics.

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​ Dr. Rebecca Wolpe 

‘Working with Holocaust Documents: A Personal Perspective’

Rebecca Wolpe has a BA in Hebrew from Wadham College, Oxford, and an MA and PhD in Yiddish from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has worked at Yad Vashem for around nineteen years in various capacities, including guiding in the museum and translating/editing various books. She has also translated documents from the Ringelblum Archive as well as other private memoirs. About the lecture: Over the years I have had the privilege of working with a lot of Holocaust documents, including some in Yiddish that have only now been translated. I would like to share some of the amazing stories I've encountered, including a look at the original Yiddish manuscripts, some difficulties we've encountered and some startling coincidences.

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Professor Emily M. Rose 

'Little Hugh of Lincoln, Ritual Murder and King Henry III'

Emily Rose, MBA, PhD, Visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish studies is a scholar of Medieval and Early Modern Europe whose work has been hailed as ‘a model of thoroughgoing historical scholarship presented to a general audience and should be studied by scholars who wish to bring the humanities to the public square’. A graduate of Oxford with an Honours degree in Modern History, she has been a Research Associate at the Department of History, Harvard University for the past two years and, before that, taught at five universities. Her book, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford University Press, 2015), was named one of the ‘Ten Best History Books of the Year’ by the Sunday Times of London and described by the Wall Street Journal as ‘a landmark of historical research’.

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Roland Brandman

'The Sapphire Mind: Jewish Meditation's Treasures for Life'

Roland Brandman studied at the University of Oxford and is the author-editor of Sapphire Mind, a new synoptic philosophy and major anthology of Jewish meditation. He lectures and writes about traditional sources for Jewish contemplative thought and practice. Roland is the Chairman of HaMakom (the leading Jewish-meditation charity), a chazan, a property lawyer, and a member of the Athenaeum Club. Roland will be discussing aspects of his recently published book, Sapphire Mind, touching on a range of ideas for meditative thought and life based on Jewish mystical traditions ancient and modern (such as the nature of and our relationship to consciousness, reality, suffering and spiritual practice). He will also comment and take questions on the status quo of Jewish meditation in Britain. We will also try practising a specific meditation technique from one of the Kabbalistic sources, suitable for beginners and advanced practitioners alike.

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Holocaust Survivor Dr. Agnes Kaposi OBE FREng

'How I survived the Holocaust in Hungary'

Born in Hungary, in 1932, Agnes survived the Debrecen ghetto and, after her transport to Auschwitz was diverted due to an administrative error, she worked as a child labourer in the agricultural and armament labour camps of Austria. She returned to Hungary to live under the Stalinist communist regime. In 1956, she graduated fr om the Technical University of Budapest with a degree in electrical /electronic engineering. She contributed to the development of the Hungarian TV broadcasting infrastructure. After the 1956 Uprising against Communist rule, she escaped from her native Hungary and obtained a labour permit to work in England as an industrial researcher in the Telecommunication and Computer industries. She obtained a PhD in Computer Aided Design and worked as a lecturer, researcher and consultant in academic institutions and in the Telecommunication and Computer Industries in Britain. In 2020 she published her autobiography Yellow Star-Red Star. She was appointed MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust Education and Awareness.

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Professor Elliot R. Wolfson 

'Mysticism and the Quest for Universal Singularity: The Light of Infinity in the World of Finitude'

Elliot R. Wolfson Wolfson is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, previously the Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University (1987-2014). He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Near Eastern and Judaic studies from Brandeis University, where he trained under the supervision of Alexander Altmann. His main area of scholarly research is the history of Jewish mysticism but he has brought to bear on that field training in philosophy, literary criticism, feminist theory, postmodern hermeneutics, Eastern mystical traditions, and the phenomenology of religion. He is also considered to be "the leading scholarly interpreter" of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, influential former leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty.

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