Lectures hosted at the Oxford University Chabad Society 2024-2025

Recording of 43 lectures hosted at the Oxford University Chabad Society - Academic Year 2024-2025

********

Michaelmas term 2024

*******

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).

To view the lecture, click here.

********

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.

To view the lecture, click here.

********

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.

********

Holocaust Survivor Prof. Raold Hoffman

'As a young Holocaust survivor'

To view the lecture, click here.

********

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.

To view the lecture, click here.

 

 

********

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.

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

High Holidays Seminar - Yom Limmud - Ten Lectures

To view the lectures, click here.

 

 

********

Hilary term 2025

********

Rabbi Moshe Genuth

'Demystifying Jewish Mysticism'

********

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.

Click here to view the lectures.

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

Pre Purim Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud - Six lectures

Click here to view the lecture.

 

 

 

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

*********

​ 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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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

Click here to view the lecture.

Pre-Passover Seminar

********

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. 

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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

Click here to view the lecture.

Pre-Passover seminar

**********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

Pre-Passover seminar

********

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).

Click here to view the lecture.

Pre-Passover seminar

 

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

Pre-Passover seminar

********

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

Summer Term 2025

********

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

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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).

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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

Click here to view the lecture.

********

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. 

Click here to view the lecture.

********

 

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.

Click here to view the lecture.

********

 

 

********