Recording of 64 lectures hosted at the Oxford University Chabad Society - Academic Year 2024-2025
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Michaelmas 2025
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Professor Arthur Green
'New Thoughts on the History of Hasidism'
Arthur Green is an American scholar of Jewish mysticism and Neo-Hasidic theologian. He was a founding dean of the non-denominational rabbinical progr am at Hebrew College in Boston. Arthur Green has written numerous books, primarily focusing on Jewish spirituality and thought, including: Judaism's Ten Best Ideas, Radical Judaism, A Guide to the Zohar, Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology, and "Eh-yeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow.
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Rabbi Daniel Walker
'Light and darkness: Faith and determination after the Heaton Park Synagogue Attack on Yom Kippur'
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Benyamin Cohen
'Einstein’s Head and Einstein’s Heart'
Benyamin Cohen is a senior writer at the Forward, America’s largest and oldest Jewish news outlet. Benyamin Cohen runs Einstein’s social media accounts (with over 20 million followers) and embarked on a funny and fascinating global quest to explore Einstein’s modern-day relevance — from interviewing two Rabbi Einsteins to uncovering his deep humanitarian legacy. Beyond science, Einstein helped rescue Jews from the Holocaust, championed the civil rights movement, and advocated fiercely to create the State of Israel. Join us for this talk as we mark the 70th anniversary of Einstein’s passing.
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Lord William Hague
‘Resurgent antisemitism and the future of free speech’
William J. Hague, Baron Hague of Richmond, is the 160th Chancellor of the University of Oxford (since February, 2025), former Leader of the Conservative Party, and Leader of the Opposition, from 1997 to 2001, First Secretary of State (in the Cameron Government) from 2010 to 2015, Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2014, and Leader of the House of Commons from 2014 to 2015. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Magdalen College, during which time he served as President of the Oxford Union. At the age of 27, he was elected Member of Parliament for Richmond (Yorks) (1989-2015). As Minister for Disabled People, he was responsible for the landmark Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, the year he was appointed to the Privy Council. He became the most widely travelled Foreign Secretary in British history and was known globally for the Campaign to Prevent Sexual Violence in Conflict, which he co-founded with the United Nations former Special Envoy to the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Angelina Jolie. He is a columnist of The Times, has written two historical biographies, including William Pitt the Younger: A Biography, and William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner. Lord Hague is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
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Professor Sir Richard Evans
’Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich'
Sir Richard J Evans is the world’s leading historian of Nazi Germany and the Third Reich, former Regius Prof. of History at Cambridge, and renowned for being the principal Expert Witness, winning the libel case brought by Holocaust denier David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt in 2000. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the Learned Society of Wales. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008), and most recently 'Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich.’ Sir Richard has served as Vice-Master and Acting Master of Birkbeck, University of London, Chairman of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge, and Provost of Gresham College, City of London, from 2014 to 2020.
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Dr. Kim Treiger Bar-Am
'What makes things happen: luck, chance, fate or freedom?'
Kim Treiger-Bar-Am studied philosophy and then law at Yale University, and wrote her doctorate in law at St. John's College, University of Oxford. She has taught law in Israel for many years. Her previous books are Positive Freedom and the Law (2019), and Freedom and Respect in Jewish Ethics (2021). Her most recent book is Ethics of Truth, recalling the value of truth in society, and the way truth is strongly upheld in the Jewish tradition.
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Professor Matthew MorgensternMatthew Morgenstern is Professor in the Department of Hebrew Language and Semitic Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, specializing particularly in Jewish and Mandaean Babylonian Aramaic texts. He has previously worked on publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls and has written on the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Second Temple period.
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Dr. Vince Hunt
'A British writer's journey through the Holocaust in Latvia'
Dr. Vincent Hunt is an award-winning former BBC producer and documentary-maker who turned to long-form narrative after 25 years in radio making social history programmes about the Civil Rights movement in the US, post-colonialism in Africa and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. After marrying a Latvian he became fascinated by the twisted and tragic history of a Baltic state sandwiched between two then-superpowers, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, and set out to gather eyewitness stories of those turbulent times, translating them into English to add to the literature. The Holocaust is an inescapable part of this history, and Hunt found endless examples of the suffering inflicted on Jews during his travels. His talk highlights just a few examples as he traces the war experiences of Latvian Legionnaires in Latvia, Pomerania and Germany 1944–45. His doctorate, awarded this year, theorises his method of writing about the past, seeing the places where such significant things happened and blending oral history with history and journalistic discovery to ensure these memories and places are not forgotten.
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Professor David Katz
'Assisted dying and faith (Judaism) as a protected characteristic: Is there a conflict of interest?'
David Katz is Emeritus Professor of Immunopathology at University College London (UCL). His research interest has been in antigen presentation, in particular the role of dendritic cells in induction of immune responses in health and disease. His joint research group (with Professor Benny Chain) was recognised for original work investigating how these cells function, and how they can be injured, leading to immunopathology. 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. He is currently a deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s Medical Academic Staff Committee (MASC).
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Hilary term 2025
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Rabbi Moshe Genuth
'Demystifying Jewish Mysticism'
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Holocaust Survivor
Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky
'How a deal with Eichmann saved me from the Holocaust'
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky’s life unusually has included surviving Holocaust ghettos and camps in Hungary in 1944-5 and then fellowship appointments to two Oxford colleges. Professionally reputed as a scholar of corruption and of the funding of political parties and election campaigns, he devised the UK’s democracy promotion framework for the policy planning staff of the Foreign Office, advised international organisations, governments and public organisations in 25 countries and served on the UK Commission on a Bill of Rights.
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Prof. Alan Silman
'Hunger and starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto'
Alan Silman is currently a Professor of Musculoskeletal Health in the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics and a Senior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He was formerly the Medical Director of Arthritis Research UK. He has published over 500 scientific papers and a number of books. Much of his research career was in dissecting the contribution of “nature vs nurture” in various diseases. He has a long standing interest in the origins of Jewish communities around the world.
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Pre Purim Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud - Six lectures
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Sir Stephen Fry
‘Thinking about my Jewishness’
Stephen Fry is an English actor, with Jewish heritage, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director and all-round national treasure. Fry has written and presented several documentary series, contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, appears frequently on radio, reads for voice-overs and has written four novels and three volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and his latest, More Fool Me.
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Jonathan Sacerdoti
'Grace Under Fire'
Jonathan Sacerdoti is a journalist and commentator with a broad focus on global affairs, culture, and society. With over 15 years of experience reporting on Israel and the Middle East, he has covered wars, politics, and culture, including as the UK correspondent for Israeli TV channel i24news. He is a regular commentator on international news channels, and has contributed to a wide range of outlets, including Fox News, BBC, Sky News, Talk TV, Channel 4, i24news, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Spectator, and the Jewish Chronicle. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, Jonathan is passionate about tackling antisemitism and racism.
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Professor Patrick Hayes
‘Why Hannah Arendt Matters’
Official Fellow and Tutor in English, Fellow for Libraries and Keeper of the Archives, St John’s College, University of Oxford. His first two books focused on modern fiction, and considered questions about literary value in contrasting ways. The first, J.M. Coetzee and the Novel (2010), Philip Roth: Fiction and Power (2014). His recent work is Beyond the Ancient Quarrel (2018)—a collection of essays by a range of contemporary philosophers and literary critics.
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Prof. Kerstin Hoge
'On Chickens and Humans in Sholem Aleichem’s Kapores'
The Isaac Meyers Memorial Lecture
Kerstin Hoge is the Yiddish Lector at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and was appointed as University Lecturer in German Linguistics in 2008. She teaches German and General Linguistics to students across the university. Her current work focuses on the cross-linguistic properties of causal interrogatives. She is the review editor of the Journal of Linguistics.
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Dr. Ros Abramsky
'Degrees of Separation'
Ros Abramsky is an Oxford researcher who studied Crystallography at Birkbeck, where she taught Science Communication, as well as at Imperial College. She completed her PhD in Information Science from Loughborough University
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Pre-Passover Seminar
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Dr. Benjamin Scher
'Drug, Policy, Homelessness and the Story of Passover'
Ben is a DPhil student in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation and a member of Wolfson College, Oxford. His doctoral research is funded by the Society for the Study of Addiction and is jointly supervised by Dr Benjamin Chrisinger (University of Oxford) and Dr Gillian Shorter (Queen’s University Belfast). He holds a BA in Combined Social Sciences (Anthropology and Philosophy) from the University of Durham and an MA in Public Issues Anthropology from the University of Waterloo where he was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Pre-Passover seminar 2025
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Audrey Royall
'The City as Monument: Holocaust Representation in Austria'
Audrey Royall is a MSc student in Archeology at the University of Oxford, Jesus College. She received her BA in Anthropology from Princeton University. Her main research interests are early 20th century Jewish communities and post-World War II Jewish identity
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Pre-Passover seminar 2025
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Dr. Israel Sandman
'R. Eliezer vs. R. Akiva on Plagues: negating externals to uncover underlying goodness vs. radical upheaval'
Dr Israel M. Sandman's research focuses on medieval Hebrew manuscripts and premodern Jewish thought. He is affiliated with University College London's Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies.
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Pre-Passover seminar 2025
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Dr. Naftali Loewenthal
'The Rebbe's letter on the Four Sons'
Naftali Loewenthal is Associate Professor (Teaching) at the Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL. He is author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago, 1990) and Hasidism beyond Modernity, Studies in Habad Thought and History (Littmann Library).
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Pre-Passover seminar 2025
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Rabbi Dr. Jeremy England
'The Signs of Moses'
Jeremy England was born in Boston, and became Rhodes Scholar at St John’s College Oxford after graduating from Harvard in 2003. While a physics professor at MIT, he originated the theory of life-like self-organization known as dissipative adaptation. Now an ordained orthodox rabbi, start-up co-founder, and visiting professor of physics at Bar-Ilan University, Jeremy lives in Israel with his family and works in biotech at the intersection of AI and oncology.
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Pre-Passover seminar 2025
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Prof. Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg
‘Redemption without illusions: Pesach as a preparation for the future redemption’
Naftali Rothenberg is a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and the Rabbi of Har Adar township, Israel. Rabbi Rothenberg is a visiting associate in the programs of law and religion and love in religion at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. His current research is on the influence of Leone Hebreo, Dialoghi d’amore, supported by the Venice Center for International Jewish Studies and Ca'Foscari University of Venice. He has published numerous articles and 12 books, among them: The Wisdom of Love - Man, Woman & God in Jewish Canonical Literature (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009) and his forthcoming book is: 'Rabbi Akiva's Philosophy of Love' (Palgrave). Naftali Rothenberg is the 2011 laureate of the Liebhaber Prize for the encouragement of religious tolerance in Israel.
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Pre-Passover seminar 2025
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Summer Term 2025
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Lord Eric Pickles
'Are we living in a post-Holocaust World?'
Lord Eric Pickles, PC was appointed the UK Government Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust issues 2015-2025. He is a British Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Brentwood and Ongar from 1992 to 2017, served in David Cameron's Cabinet as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015, served as Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2009 to 2010 and was later the United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion from 2015 to 2017. He stood down as an MP at the 2017 general election, but continued in his role as Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust issues under Prime Ministers Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. He is the chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel in the House of Lords as of 2023
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Professor Hindy Najman
'Vitality of Scripture'
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.” Her new book is entitled: Reading Practices and the Vitality of Scripture (Oxford University Press).
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Professor Mark Harris
'Is There Any Intersection Between Science and Theology?'
Mark Harris is the Andreos Idreos Chair in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford; Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre in Science and Religion, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. Active in physics for many years, he is known (with Steve Bramwell of University College London) as the discoverer of 'spin ice', currently a major research area in the physics of magnetism. By the end of 2020, more than 6,000 journal articles had been published on the topic since its original discovery in 1997. A little after this original breakthrough, he also discovered theology, and began to broaden his interests beyond magnetism. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2012 to establish its Science and Religion programme. In 2023 he moved to Oxford to take up the Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion, and to direct the Ian Ramsey Centre
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Professor Golda Akhiezer
'Hebrew medieval manuscripts: Historical overview'
Golda Akhiezer is currently a member of the academic staff of the Department of Jewish History at Ariel University and the director of the Center for Research on Jewish Communities of the Caucasus and Central Asia at the same institution. The primary focus of her research is Jewish historical thought, Jewish-Christian and Karaite-Rabbanite polemics and the study of Jewish manuscripts. She earned her PhD in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a dissertation on Karaite historical thought (2008), after which she attended post-doctoral studies at Boston University. Her academic career began with involvement in research at the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. Subsequently, she held a teaching position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
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Professor Paul Weindling
'Nazi research on brains taken from Polish Jews (and others), and postwar issues 1945-2026'
Paul Weindling is Professor of the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University and formally part of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He was from 1999-2004 a member of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft President’s Committee for the History of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft under National Socialism, and was on the Advisory Boards of the AHRC project on German-Jewish refugees, and on the history of the Robert Koch-Institute. He is currently on the advisory board of the project of the German Society for Psychiatry project on psychiatrists in Nazi Germany, and a member of the project on the history of the German Foundation for Memory, Responsibility and the Future.
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Delia Del Prete
'The Anatomy of the Sacred: Divine Anthropomorphism from Shiʿur Qomah to Renaissance Kabbalah'
Delia is currently a PhD student at La Sapienza, University of Rome. Her project aims to delineate the figure of Solomon within the work of Yoḥanan ben Yiṣhaq Alemanno. To this end, she is preparing a critical edition, with a translation and a study on the sources and reception of his work Ḥesheq Shelomo (‘The Passion of Solomon’), a mystical commentary on the Song of Songs commissioned by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. She holds a Masters degree from La Sapienza University. Additionally, she received a Master’s degree in Jewish Studies and Jewish-Christian Relations from the Gregorian University in Rome. Her research interests focus on medieval and Renaissance Jewish texts and Jewish mysticism, particularly the Kabbalah current and Christian Kabbalah. In this regard, her previous research has investigated the Kabbalistic sources of ritual and performative theses in Pico della Mirandola’s 900 Theses and the reception of Judah Abravanel’s work, ‘Dialogues of Love’.
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Dr. Olivier Catel'The Rabbis Performing Miracles - From Exceptional Characters to Sages: A Rabbinisation or Hasidisation Process? (y. Taʿan. 3:4)'
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Dr. Yehudit Barsky
'Anti Semitism in the United States: Before and after 7th October'
Yehudit Barsky is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. Fluent in Arabic and Hebrew, Ms. Barsky is a Middle East counterterrorism specialist with expertise in combating antisemitism. Yehudit conducts research and served as director of the Division on Middle East and International Terrorism at the American Jewish Committee for fourteen years. Ms. Barsky has been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune, amongst others. Ms. Barsky is the author of Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Hizballah: The Party of God, Al-Qaida, Iran and Hizballah: A Continuing Symbiosis, Terrorist Incidents and Attacks Against Jews and Israelis in the US: 1969-2016 and Islamist Antisemitism in the United State.
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Rabbi Professor Adam Ferziger
'The impact of Diaspora Jews on Israeli Judaism: before and after Oct. 7th'
Adam S. Ferziger holds the Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah and Derekh Erez Movement in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University. He is the author or editor of six books including: Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Orthodox Judaism – New Perspectives, edited with Aviezer Ravitzky and Yoseph Salmon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006); Jewish Denominations: Addressing the Challenges of Modernity (Jerusalem: Melton Institute/The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012); and most recently Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), which received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award. His most recent book is Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Society (NY Press, July, 2025).
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Professor Dan Michman
'Dan Pagis' poem on the Shoah: Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car'
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(Tisha B'Av Seminar)
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Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
'The Fascinating and Multifaceted 3,300-year Emergence, Tragic Death and Regen esis of Hebrew'
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann is the author of Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond (OUP, 2020), the seminal bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli – A Beautiful Language; Am Oved, 2008), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan), among other works.
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(Tisha B'Av Seminar)
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Professor David Patterson
'Back to the Beginning: Bereshit'
David Patterson holds the Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Texas, and is a Senior Research Fellow for ISGAP. His books include: Eighteen Words to Sustain a Life (Wipf & Stock); Judaism, Antisemitism, Holocaust: Making the Connections (Cambridge); Shoah and Torah (Routledge); Portraits: Elie Wiesel’s Hasidic Legacy (SUNY), The Holocaust and the Non-Representable (SUNY), Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (Cambridge), and A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (Cambridge).
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(Tisha B'Av Seminar)
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Pre-High Holidays Seminar - Yom Limmud 2025 - 8 lectures
Dr Israel Sandman
‘Experiencing the divine Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in the teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi’
Dr Israel Sandman researches Hebrew manuscripts and premodern Jewish thought. Currently, he is at UCL, cataloguing and researching the Correspondence of Hakham Moses Gaster, Chief Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation one century ago.
Dr. Naftali Lowenthal
'Reflections on the Parable of the "King in the Field"’This parable was presented by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (d.1812) to explain the mystical side of the month of Elul, leading to Rosh Hashana, and has been commented on in intriguing ways by his successors
Naftali Loewenthal is Associate Professor (Teaching) at the Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL. He is author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago, 1990) and Hasidism beyond Modernity, Studies in Habad Thought and History (Littmann Library).
Dr. Ros Abramsky
'Is it the thought that counts?'
Ros Abramsky is an Oxford researcher who studied Crystallography at Birkbeck, where she taught Science Communication, as well as at Imperial College. She completed her PhD in Information Science from Loughborough University.
Boruch Epstein
'Serving G‑d with Love in Maimonides' Manuscripts of the Mishneh Torah'
Boruch is a PhD student with Weatherup Group. He completed his MChem at the University of Manchester, studying Chemistry. His previous research experience is with the Popelier Group and Walton Group, both at Manchester.
Moshe Tzvi Wieder
'Zochreinu L’Chaim (Remember us for life): Assailant to Fixed Prayer?'
Moshe Tzvi Wieder lives in Israel and is author of 'The Siddur from Its Sources' which combs through the history of the Jewish prayer book and evolution, offering intimate access to the source material that is the basis for the modern Jewish prayer book.
Dr. Lea Cohen
'The High Holidays Sephardic Piyyut: 'im ofes rova ha-kein' (If the nest is empty) by R. Efraim Ben Yitzchak Chazak of Regensburg'
Dr. Lea Cohen is a postdoctoral researcher in the university of Oxford
Dr. Roee Goldschmidt
Roee is a fellow at The Open University of Israel, The Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies
Avi Blumgart
'Teshuva in our generation in Chabad thought'
Former student at St John's College, University of Oxford, currently studying at a Kolel in Jerusalem
To view the eight lectures, click here.
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Rabbi Rony Greenberg
Rabbi Rony Greenberg is the former Jewish Studies teacher and Ridgeway housemaster at Carmel College (1983-94) - founded in 1948 as a British, Jewish boarding school for boys, modelled on British public schools - in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. Rony, originally from Natanya in Israel, was a 27-year-old Chabad emissary when he arrived at Carmel College in 1983. Over the next 12 years, in addition to preparing pupils for their Jewish Studies GCSEs, ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels, he and his wife Chana regularly gave lectures, hosted countless kiddush and farbrengens in their Carmel Terrace home, and provided important spiritual care and the warmth of their open house to hundreds of Carmel pupils.
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Michaelmas term 2024
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Sir Vernon Bogdanor CBE
'Modern Antisemitism'
Vernon Bogdanor CBE, FBA is a research professor at the Centre for British Politics and Government. He was formerly Professor of Government at Oxford University, and Senior Tutor and Vice-Principal at Brasenose College. He has written widely on government and politics, including books The People and the Party System, Monarchy and the Constitution, and Power and the People: A Guide to Constitutional Reform. Most recently, he has edited a book on The British Constitution in the Twentieth Century and written on The New British Constitution. He has been an adviser to government and parliamentary bodies on many occasions, and in 1998 was awarded the CBE for services to constitutional history. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
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Nobel Prize winner Prof. Raold Hoffman
'Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Religious Tradition'
Roald Hoffmann is a Polish-American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus at Cornell University. Hoffmann (b. 1937) was born in Złoczów, Poland, which is now Zolochiv, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. As a small child he survived the Holocaust by hiding for 18 months with family members in the attic and storeroom of a local schoolhouse. He came to the United States in 1949, studied chemistry at Columbia University, and earned his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 1962. Three years later he went to Cornell University, where he eventually became the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters. Hoffmann is also well known for his role in the creation of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. For his contribution to this work Hoffmann received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (shared with Kenichi Fukui, a chemist working in Japan, who developed a different way of analyzing chemical interactions that could explain the same chemical changes).
To view the lecture, click here.
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Holocaust Survivor Prof. Raold Hoffman
'As a young Holocaust survivor'
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Eylon Levy
Eylon Levy is a former Israeli Government Spokesman, who became one of the most globally recognized voices for Israel in the October 7 War with Hamas. He previously served as international spokesman to President Isaac Herzog after a career as a television news anchor. He holds degrees from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and served in the Israel Defense Forces after immigrating to Israel from the UK. He now heads the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons' Office and hosts the State of a Nation show on YouTube and podcast platforms.
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Professor Reuven Kimelman
'Why is the Aleinu leshabeach prayer so central to the High Holidays liturgy?'
Reuven Kimelman is the former rabbi of Beth Abraham, the Sephardic Congregation of New England in Brookline, MA., and Professor of Classical Judaica at Brandeis University. His Ph. D. is from Yale University. He is the author of the Hebrew book, The Mystical Meaning of ‘Lekhah Dodi’ and Kabbalat Shabbat, published by The Hebrew University, and the forthcoming The Rhetoric of Jewish Prayer: A Historical and Literary Commentary of the Prayer Book, published by Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. His audio course books are The Hidden Poetry of the Jewish Prayer Book, and The Moral Meaning of the Bible.
To view the lecture, click here.
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Rabbi Dr. Samuel Landau
'A Jew in the public Square'
Rabbi Dr Samuel Landau, is a fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS), the Rabbi of Barnet United Synagogue and a clinical psychologist in the NHS and private practice. He is the founding director of Someone Else’s Eyes and an honorary lecturer at UCL He recently worked with the British Army’s “Desert Rats” on cultural and behavioral change.
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High Holidays Seminar - Yom Limmud - 2024 - Ten Lectures
To view the lectures, click here.