Past Speakers

Past Speakers at the Oxford University Chabad Society 

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Sir Colin Lucas

(Former) Vice Chancellor of Oxford University 

‘Napoleon & the Jews’ 

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Lord Chris Patten

Chancellor of Oxford University, former Governor of Hong Kong and former EU Commisioner.

‘Anti-Semitism in Europe and Policy in the Middle East’

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Dr. Zvi Shtauber

Former Israeli Ambassador to the Court of St James, London

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Lord Robin Butler

Master of University College, Oxford University, Chair of the Butler Inquiry into the use of intelligence in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war. He was Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Edward Heath (1972–74) and Harold Wilson (1974–75), and Principal Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher (1982–85). He was also Cabinet Secretary during the premierships of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair.

"Intelligence behind the war against Iraq"

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Sir Alfred Sherman

Born in Hackney to Jewish immagrants, Sherman was a writer, journalist, political analyst and an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, whose sucess in becoming PM was attributed to him. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century"

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Lord David Young of Graffham

Senior Civil Servant and former secretary of Margaret Thatcher 

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Dan Shaham

Senior Israeli Diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in London. 

Mr. Shacham, who served four years military service in the IDF, is Former Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Israel in the Philippines, served in the Embassy in Bonn, Germany as head of the public relations division and worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem as the desk officer for Germany, the Netherlands and Austria.

"Post-Disengagement"

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The Hourable Mr. Justice Gavin Lightman 

Noted High Court Judge sitting in London, Chairman of the Commonwealth Jewish Council

"Jewish Views From the Bench"

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Dr Peter Collett

Author of The Book of Tells: How To Read People’s Minds From Their Actions; has been a resident psychologist for the UK Channel 4 series, Big Brother; Presented Body Talk on Channel 4, about power, love and sex; former member of Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. 

"What does Jewish Body Language say about the Jews?"

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Famous Playwrite Sir Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker is onsidered one of the key figures in 20th Century drama, and the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings. His plays have been translated into 17 languages, and performed world-wide. 

"Why I Wrote Shylock"

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Gil Locks

Gil Locks, Former Central Park New York Guru. Gil Locks has made an amazing spiritual journey from corporate America to the depths of South India to the holy city of Jerusalem. He has transformed himself from a successful businessman into a long-haired hippy, a mystical guru, a Christian healer, and finally an Old City Jew.

"How the Central Park Guru Became an Old City Jew: Coming Back to Earth" 

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Professor Sir Adam Roberts

Montague Burton Professor of International Relations and Fellow, Balliol College; author of United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations and many other publications on international relations

"United Nations, Israel and the Palestinians" 

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Dr. Ruth Harris

New College, Oxford University 

"The Dreyfus Affair & 19th Century French Anti-Semitism"

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Professor CM Loewenthal

Professor of Psychology, at London University (Royal Holloway); editor of the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture and the author of several books and many articles on the topic of mental health and religion.

"Is Judaism Patriarchal?"

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Rare Bodleian Library Exhibition of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) Manuscripts

Celebrating 900 years since his passing, 1105 CE 

French Wine Reception

Manuscripts on Display: Pentateuch, Onklus and Rashi, early 13th century Germany or France, decorative; Rashi commentary on the Bible, 13th century; Rashi commentary on the Bible, written 1399, in Camereen, Italy in Sephardic script; Rashi commentary on the Bible 1461 in Italian script; Rashi commentary on the Bible late 13th century; super commentary, on Rashi, Oriental Ashkenazic 14th century; Rashi on Talmud without Tosfot; Rashi and Tosfot on Bava Kama

Convocation House, Old Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford

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Professor David Goodman

Department of History and Politics, Oxford University

"Spanish Exodus: Interpreting the Conversion and Expulsion of Spanish Jewry"

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Munich Olympic Survivor Dan Alon

Alon was a member of the Israeli fencing team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. During the Games, Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village with the intention of taking the entire Israeli delegation hostage. Alon was not captured by the terrorists, but eleven Israelis were killed in what has been termed the "Munich Massacre." One of the murdered Israelis was fencing coach (and referee) Andre Spitzer.

'My Experiences At Munich, 1972'

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Holocaust Memorial Lecture 

In conjunction with Oxford University Student Union (OUSU)

Dr. Nicholas Stargardt

Nicholas Stargardt is the son of a German-Jewish father and Australian mother. Born in Melbourne, he has lived in Australia, Japan, England and Germany. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge, and is a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he teaches modern European history. Already hailed as “magnificent . . . some of the best historical writing about the aftermath of the war I have ever read . . . stunning” (The Guardian), his latest book Witnesses of War breaks new ground in its exploration of the lives and the fate of children of all nationalities under the Nazi regime.

"Child survivors of the holocaust" 

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‘Nothingness & narcissism’

Psychoanalyst Dr Joseph Berke

Dr. Joseph is author of Beyond Madness: Psychological interventions in Psychosis; Founder of Arbours Association and Arbours Crisis Centre, London.

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Science & Religion Lecture

Professor Nathan Aviezer

Professor at Bar Ilan University, Israel; World expert on science and religion and dynamic and entertaining speaker; acclaimed author of In the Beginning; Fossils and Faith

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Rabbi Shmuel Lew

Expert on relationships; international speaker; principal of Lubavitch House senior girls school

Dr. Tali Loewenthal 

Lecturer on Jewish Spirituality, University College London.

With a viewing of the books of the Zohar and original Hassidic manuscripts from the Gorman Collection First Time on Display

Reception * Presentation * Exhibition

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Professor Alan Dershowitz

Felix Franfurter Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz is a world famous civil liberties lawyer, best selling author of Chutzpah; The Case for Israel; Shouting fire: civil liberties in a turbulent age; Why terrorism works: understanding the threat; The vanishing American Jew

"Is there a case for Israel?"

Magdalen College auditorium

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Russian Shabbat Dinner

Dr. Harry Shukman

World expert on the Russian Revolution, author of Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1967), Rasputin(1997), The Russian Revolution (1998), Stalin (1999); Emeritus Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford; His book on the conscription of Russian Jewish refugees in Britain in 1917, entitled War or Revolution,will be published in 2006.

"British Jews & the Russian Revolution"

Variety of Vodka served

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Israel Shabbat dinner

Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi

Leone Ginsburg research fellow in Israel studies at the Oxford centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and at the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he teaches Israeli politics and the history of the Israel – Arab conflict; regular writer for the Guardian newspaper.

"Israel after Sharon"

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In Celebration of 100 years since Einstein's revolutionary theory Oxford Chabad Society presents

Sir Roger Penrose 

One of the most exciting mathematicians of our age; Knighted in 1994 for his contribution to science, the extraordinaryscope of Sir Roger's work ranges from quantum physics and theories of human consciousness to relativity theory and observations on the structure of the universe. His primary interest is in a field of geometry called tesselation, the covering of surfaces with tiles of different shapes.

‘The Einsteinian perspective'

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Chinese Shabbat dinner

Professor Jonathan Goldstein

Professor Jonathan Goldstein is a Research Associate of Harvard Univeristy’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research anda Professor of East Asian History at the University of West Georgia. His books include 'The Jews of China' & 'China and Israel.'

‘The Jews of Harbin, China: Ehud Ohlmert’s Ancestral Hometown’

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Chief Rabbi of Israel Israel Meir Lau 

Youngest survivor of buchenwald concentration camp

Rabbi Yisrael (Israel) Meir Lau is currently the Chief Rabbi of the city of Tel Aviv in Israel. He previously served as the Israeli Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi from 1993 to 2003. Rabbi Lau was born in 1937, in the Polish town of Piotrkow. His father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, was the last Chief Rabbi of Piotrków and died in the Treblinka death camp. Lau was freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. There are reports that he was the youngest prisoner liberated from Buchenwald. His entire family was murdered, with the exception of one older brother, Naphtali Lau-Lavie, and an uncle already living in Israel. He and his brother immigrated in July 1945, and he was ordained a rabbi in 1971. He is married to the daughter of the former Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv.

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‘Should Holocaust Denial be Illegal?’

Defamation Lawyer James Libson 

James Libson was a senior memberof Deborah Lipstadt's defence team, together with Anthony Julius and Richard Evans; Partner and head of litigation for Mishcon de Reya law firm, London.

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African cuisine Shabbat dinner 

Professor Josh Silver

‘Changing the vision of one billion poor people in Africa’

Inventor of adaptive vision correction to help the one billion people in the world who need glasses but cannot get them; 2000 Grand Award Winner, Popular Science 'Best of What's New' Awards: Medical Technology; Professor of Experimental Physics, New college, Oxford University

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Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson 

Professor of History at Arizona State University in Tempe AZ; She was born in Kibbutz Afikim, Israel and holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem;

‘Judaism & Nature: Do They Conflict?’

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Debate: Assisted Dying Bill For The Terminally Ill

Lord Joffe

Proposer of the "Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill", which would legalise physician-assited dying

Dr. Evan Harris MP

Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon; former Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Health

Dr. Daniel Hochhauser

Department of Oncology Royal Free and University College Medical School  

Professor David Katz

Professor of Immunopathology, Royal Free and University College London Medical School. Hon Consultant Immunopathologist, UCL Hospitals.

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Mrs. Nadia Cohen, Widow Of Israel's Most Famous Mosad Agent, Eli Cohen Z"L

‘After forty one years it is high time to let my husband go’

Eli Cohen was Israel's most famous Mosad agent, born in Egypt and penetrated the highest levels of the Syrian government before he was caught by the Syrians, brutally tortured and executed 41 years ago, on May 18, 1965.

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‘Out Of The Ordinary’

Shabbat Dinner With Jon Ronson

‘Them And Us’

Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary film maker. His first book, Them: Adventures With Extremists, was an international bestseller. His most recent book is The Men Who Stare At Goats. He has also written the popular "Human Zoo" and "Out of the Ordinary" columns for The Guardian, where he contributes features. He produced the BBC Radio 4 documentary Hotel Auschwitz and made the acclaimed five part series the Secret Rulers of the World.

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‘Life As A City Solicitor - A Jewish Perspective’

Dinner with Sidney Myers, Partner of Allen & Overy LLP

Sidney Myers, a senior partner with International legal practice, Allen & Overy LLP, will join the Jewish students for dinner and talk about life at a major law firm and some of the issues faced by Jewish students thinking about a career in the law. Allen & Overy is an international legal practice with offices in 25 major cities worldwide.

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‘The Ten Commandments Of Stress Management’

Dr. Jonathan Moch

Leading Psychiatrist and founder of the Centre for Stress Related Illnesses at Milpark Hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is author of 'The Brief Exploration of Being Human' (2001) and 'What are the Colours of Apples?' (2006)

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Moroccan Shabbat Dinner with

Mr. Sydney Assor

Chairman, Association of Moroccan Jews in Great Britain, expert on Moroccon Jewry, met personally on a number of occasions the King of Morocco.

‘Morocco & the Jews’

Moroccan Kosher Cuisine Served

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Professor Paul Weindling

‘The Ethical Legacy of the Holocaust & the Nuremberg Medical Trial’

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Professor Velvl Greene

Former Director Of Nasa Life-Science Research Centre; Director Jakabovits Centre for Medical Ethics and Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology, Ben Gurion University.

‘Green Dinosaurs & Martin Microbes: Is the science and religion controversy still an issue?’

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‘Rembrandt & The Jews: The Bible Through Dutch Eyes’

Dr. Alfred Bader

Queen’s University’s (Canada) most generous benefactor, Dr. Bader established the Bader collection of fine arts, which is the best Rembrandt collection in North America. Dr. Bader was among the first Jewish children to escape to Britain via the Kindertransport, became wrongfully imprisoned as an "enemy alien" and uprooted yet again to a prisoner-of-war camp in Canada. Rejected for admission at both U of T and McGill because their Jewish quotas were full, he found acceptance at Queen's University. His Biochemical company, The Aldrich Chemical Company, became the largest in the world.

Celebrating 400 years since the birth of Rembrandt, 1606

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‘Muhammad & The Jews’ 

Muhammad's encounter with the Jews of Arabia and its consequences today

Lucien Gubbay

Lucien Gubbay was born in Buenos Aires and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, after which he served in the Royal Air Force. He is author of " Sunlight and Shadow - The Jewish Experience of Islam "with a foreword by the late Sheikh Badawi, one of the country’s most influential Muslim clerics, co-founder of the Three Faiths Forum and founder of the Muslim College in London.

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Holocaust Memorial Lecture 

By Holocaust Survivor

The Lady Amelie Jakobovits

Holocaust Survivor; Wife of the late Lord Jakobovits, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain; Founder and Life President of the Association of United Synagogue Women; President of the Jewish Marriage Council; Vice-President of the Federation of Women's Zionist Organisations of Great Britain.

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Holocaust Survivor Mr. Ben Helfgott MBE

Born in Piotrkow, Poland, Survivor of Treblinka concentration camp. Ben Helfgott is the only known survivor of a Nazi concentration camp to compete in the Olympic Games. He became British middleweight weightlifting champion and record holder. He captained the British Olympic Weightlifting Teams of 1956 and 1960.

 ‘From Life in Pre-War Piotrkow, Poland, to British weightlifting champion’

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Professor Deborah Lipstadt

Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Author of " Denying the Holocaust: The growing assault on the truth and memory" and "History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving."

"History in Trial" is Lipstadt's account of her successful defense against Holocaust denier, David Irving, who sued her for libel for calling him a denier. Irving suffered a resounding loss. 

‘My Encounter With David Irving’

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Europe's Foremost Graphologist

Mr. Allan Conway

'One of Europe's foremost graphologists' - Harvard Business Magazine - New York. 'Draws gasps of admiration' - The Times . 

"Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Sign Your Name..."

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Tu B'shvat Chocolate Fountain & Film

'An Inconvenient Truth'

Former Vice President Al Gore fronts this award winning documentary on Global Warming. Using scientific facts, personal stories, quotes and animation to explain the threat that we now all face from Global Warming; you can’t help but be moved by Gore’s sincerity and the strength of his argument. This is one of the most important films that you are ever likely to see and an entertaining documentary to boot. This film has the power to change the world forever. 

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Mr. Zvi Regev

Mrs. Malka Goldwasser

Father of Eldad Regev and mother of Ehud Goldwasser, who were captured by the Hizbollah, sparking the 2nd Lebanese war last summer.

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Ethopian's First Rabbi

Rabbi Sharon Shalom

Born in Ethiopia, 1973, he made Aliya to Israel at 9 years old without his parents on board a ship operated by the Mossad. He joined the Israeli army and became an officer in the infantry. He now lectures at Bar Ilan University on the unique lifestyle and history of the Ethiopian community.

‘Trials And Traditions: Ethiopian Jews & The Flasha-Mura’

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Mystical Shabbat Dinner 

With Dr. Eddy Levin

Renowned expert on Eastern Meditation, Mysticism and Kabbalah

‘Kabbalistic Meditation & Eastern Mysticism’

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Capital Punishment Debate 

FOR: Peter Hitchens 

Columnist for the Mail on Sunday, author of 'A Brief History of Crime'.

AGAINST: David Rose 

Writer and investigative journalist for The Observer and Vanity Fair. Author of In the Name of the Law, a widely-praised examination of the British criminal justice system.

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Dr. Ian Goldin 

First Director of Oxford University’s (new) James Martin 21st Century School; Former vice-President of the World Bank; Former advisor to Nelson Mandela; Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa

Author of " Globalisation for Development: Trade, Finance, Aid, Migration and Policy"

'Globalisation For Development: Is It Good For The Future Of The World?'

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Film Night

Salah Shabati

Beautiful comedy of a sefardic family, immigrating to Israel in 1949. B & W 1964.

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Persian Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Iranian Jewish Postgraduate, David Patrikarakos

Postgraduate student researching Iran and nuclear power, Wadham College, Oxford University

‘The Iranian Nuclear Programme’

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Mexican Purim Fiesta & Comedy

One of the world's greatest Jewish comedians

Sol Bernstein 

The legend is that Sol Bernstein escaped the Pogroms in Russia, the Nazis in Germany, and went on to become the World's 1st all-round entertainer. He's a song and dance man, a comedian, a magician, an actor, a Jazz musician.

Sol was rated "BEST TRIANGLE" player in the USA in the 50's by performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Also rated the best impersonator EVER!!

“Comic genius" Edinburgh Evening News; "One part Alf Garnett, two parts Mel Brooks, and three parts like nothing you've ever heard" The Guardian

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Mr. Naim Kattan

‘Can a Jew be an Arab?’

Naim Kattan was born in 1920’s Baghdad in a Jewish community that existed in a rough harmony with their Christian and Muslim neighbours while their children learned Arabic, and came of age in a society where conflict between the religions was breaking out. As a teenager Kattan knew that he wanted to be a writer and Farewell, Babylon is a poignant memoir of how the teenager came to learn about religion, literature and women. Yet, all around the young intellectual and his friends anti-Semitism was on the rise. In the exotic world of Baghdad, among prostitutes and the occasional belly-dancer, Kattan comes to realise that entire cultures and empires are colliding, and their impact is changing the live of the community he was born into, forcing thousands into exile, and in the midst of it all he most wants to fully know, and understanding, the mysteries of women. Iraq continues to dominate news headlines and the sources of its conflicts are evoked by Naim Kattan in a memoir that records the last communities of Jews to live in Baghdad, where they had lived for 2,500 years. Kattan evokes the colonial world of his youth, leaving an unforgettable portrait of an exotic Baghdad being changed by the forces that have shaped the contemporary Arab world. Naim Kattan has been at the forefront of Canadian literature for decades, the author of over thirty books, and he led the Canada Council for 25 years promoting Canadian writing around the world. He has been awarded numerous international awards, including the Legion d’Honneur and the Order of Canada. He is the literary editor of the Montreal newspaper, ‘Le Devoir’.

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Professor Marc Mangel

Professor of Mathematical Biology, University of California Santa Cruz

Author of ten books on ecology. His most recent book is The Theoretical Biologist's Toolbox: Quantitative Methods for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

‘The Ten Plagues & (Statistical) Science as a way of knowing’

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The Honourable Mr. Oleksander Feldman

Jewish Member of Ukrainian Parliament; Vice-president of International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians (ICJP); Founder Jewish Fund of Ukraine; Founder of Corporation "Avec" - the biggest company in Ukraine; Head of International Tolerance Center of Ukraine; Assembly member of Council of Europe.

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American Shabbat Dinner

Professor Ron Bush

Drue Heinz Professor of American Literature, St John's College, Oxford University

‘Philip Roth & Jewish American Identity’

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The Pearl Grunzweig-Amsel Memorial Lecture 

Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada 

The Honourable Professor Irwin Cotler p.c., o.c., m.p.

Professor of Law at McGill University, where he is Director of its Human Rights Programme.

An international human rights lawyer, Professor Cotler served as Counsel to former prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union (Andrei Sakharov), South Africa (Nelson Mandela), Latin America (Jacobo Timmerman), and Asia (Muchtar Pakpahan). He later served as international legal counsel to imprisoned Russian environmentalist Aleksandr Nikitin; Nigerian playwright and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka; the Chilean-Canadian group Vérité et justice in the Pinochet case; and Chinese-Canadian political prisoner, Professor KunLun Zhang. More recently, he served as Counsel to Professor Saad Edin Ibrahim, the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world. A feature article on him in Maclean’s magazine referred to him as “Counsel for the Oppressed”.

‘Hate, Genocide & Human Rights’

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Eyal Ben-Eliyahu

Lecturer of History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

‘The Temple Mount: Between Fiction & History’

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French Shabbat with

Professor Richard A. Cohen

Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Leading expert on French Jewish Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas; author of Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas and Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas. 

‘An introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’

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Festival of Shavuot

Holiday Dinner and Lectures (Tikkun Leyl)

By Rabbi Eli Brackman 

1) Be Fruitful and Multply vs. Birth Control/abortion

2) Is Judaism a sexist religion?

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Professor Ritchie Robertson 

Professor of German, Fellow of St. John's College; Author of Kafka: A very short introduction (OUP) & The 'Jewish Question' in German Literature, 1749-1939 (OUP)

‘Franz Kafka & the Jews’

Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), a middle-class Jew based in Prague, was one of the major German-language writers of the 20th century and amongst the most influential in Western literature.

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‘Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations’

Professor Martin Goodman

Leading expert on Jewish history and literature in the Roman peri; Faculty of Theology, Oxford University; author of The Roman World 44BC-AD 180, Judaism in the Roman World: Collected essays, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (edited) & Rome and Jerusalem: the clash of ancient civilizations, London: Penguin 2007 

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ABORTION DEBATE

Pro-Choice:

Jenny Hoogewerf-McComb

Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) Vice President for Women

Pro-Life:

Paul Tully

SPUC General Secretary Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)

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Syrian Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Dr. Haim Kada

Born in Damascus, Syria, and served as GP to members of the government and Palestinians fugitives before fleeing after 1948.

"Jews in Syria"

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 ‘Libarating Jerusalem in 1967: View of a Soldier"

Prof. Gideon Biger

Prof. Biger was an officer in Batalion 163 of the Jerusalem Brigade in the 6-Day War, which liberated the suburb of Abu-Tor and were the first to enter the Jewish Qurter of the Old city, via the Dung Gate. Prof. Biger was born in Jerusalem in 1945, served in the Israel Defence Force (IDF) 1963-1971, Israeli Air Force (IAF) 1966-1969, and later in the Education Unit, as a Major. He received his Ph.D. in Historical Geography from the Hebrew University, 1979, and from 1980 taught at Tel Aviv University. He participated in the Israel-Syria and Israel-Palestinian peace negotiation as an expert on Boundaries.

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‘Yiddish Literature: Life in the Shtetl’

Dr. Joseph Sherman

Woolf Corob Fellow in Yiddish Studies, Oxford University; leading world expert on Modern Yiddish literature, especially the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Dovid Bergelson, Israel Joshua Singer, Ayzik-Meyer Dik

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Leading Human Geneticists

Sir Walter Bodmer

Sir Walter was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1936, son of a Jewish doctor. He is former Principal of Hertford College and Head of the Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory in the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. In 2005, he was appointed to lead a £2.3 million project to examine the genetic makeup of the UK.

‘Jewish Genes & People of the British Isles’

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‘Animal Human Embryo Research: Is it ethical?’

The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is the first regulator in the world that has permited the creation of human-animal embryos for research purposes.

Prof. Raanan Gillon

World leading authority on Medical Ethics; Professor of Medical Ethics, Imperial College; Chair of the Institute of Medical Ethics; author of Philosophical Medical Ethics (1981); editor of Family Life and Health Encyclopedia; author of Principles of Health care Ethics

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’Introduction to the Hebrew Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library’

Dr. Piet van Boxel 

Curator of the Hebrew Manuscripts, Bodleian Library

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‘Music & Anti-Semitism: Richard Wagner's impact on German culture & politics’ 

Dr. Gottfried Wagner

Born in Germany, Dr. Wagner is great-grandson of composer Richard Wagner, and author of the "Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's (antisemitic) Legacy", which created world-wide interest and was translated in 7 languages; He is co-author of the book “Our Zero Hour – Germans and Jews after 1945 and author of “Redemption from the Redeemer? Israel and Richard Wagner.”

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‘Spirituality of Womanhod’

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal

Lecturer at University College London; Author of Communicating the Infinite; Founder of Chabad Research Unit

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Sephardic Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

‘Ladino - Judeo Spanish: Its language and uses’

Prof. Ora Schwarzwald

Leading expert on the Ladino language; Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages, Bar Ilan University; author of The Ladino Translations of Pirke Aboth

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Tour of Medieval Jewish Oxford 

Walking tour of Medieval Jewish Oxford with Anglo-Jewish Historian Marcus Roberts, Director of National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail

Followed by a lecture by Prof. John Schad

Professor of Modern Literature, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University; author of Someone called derrida: an Oxford mystery.

‘Jews of Oxford in the 1930's’

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Cooking Master Class

Learn the art of cooking to get you through university with an easy nutritious vegetarian starter, main course and dessert

With Amelia Kaye, Cordon Bleu Chef and former teacher at Prue Lieths.

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Premier of the Movie

‘Ever Again’

Why is violent anti-semitism rising across Europe? Why is there intensified hatred of America and Jews fueled by Muslim extremists and neo-Nazis?

Ever Again follows the life of Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, and examines the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and its connection to the wave of international terrorism currently threatening the world.

Running time 1 hr., 14 mins.

Featuring Guest Speaker: RABBI AARON HIER, Simon Weisenthal Centre

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Egyptian Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Dr. Rami Ginat

Senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University; author of "Egypts’ incomplete revolution" (London, 1997), "Syria and the doctrine of Arab Neutralism", "Gaza and Jericho First: Military and security perspectives" (for the IDF, 2004) 

‘Egypt & the Arab Israeli Conflicts: Past & Present’

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The Joe Leader Collective

A dynamic Show Band comprising the finest UK and international artists. 

Jewish Jazz and Klezemer

Saxophonist Joe Leader and band

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‘The Mascot’

Mark Kurzem

Son of Alex Kurzem, the Nazi Mascot and Author of book and documentary The Mascot. The Extraordinary Story of a Jewish Boy, Alex Kurzam, who was forced to become the youngest Nazi, paraded for propaganda as the Nazi Mascot, part of an SS Extermination Squad, where he witnesses first hand unspeakable crimes and killings. He hid his story and Jewish identity until a few years ago.

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Iraqi Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

with Edwin Shuker

Born in Iraq, Shuker was one of more than 2,000 Jews who fled Iraq after the Six Day War in 1967 and the rise of Saddam Hussein's Baath party in 1968. He lives as an exile in London and became the first Jewish member of the Iraqi National Congress.

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Professor Tamar Frankiel

Dr. Tamar Frankiel received her PhD in History of Religions from the University of Chicago and has taught at Claremont School of Theology, University of Judaism, Stanford and Princeton Universities, and UC Berkeley and Riverside. Dr. Frankiel is the author of The Gift of Kabbalah (2001), The Voice of Sarah: Feminine Spirituality and Traditional Judaism (1990), co-author of Minding the Temple of the Soul and Entering the Temple of Dreams. Her most recent publication is A Brief Introduction to Kabbalah for Christians (Jewish Lights, 2006).

‘Will Women Take Over the World?’

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Dr. Ariel Revel, MD

Dr. Revel is a senior lecturer at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where he is also leading cutting-edge IVF treatment involving the extraordinary method of implanting ovarian tissue and eggs from cancer patients into mice, as an alternative to freezing. He also holds a Fellowship in Reproductive Medicine at University of Toronto.

‘Can Human Infertility be treated? A Jewish & Israeli Perspective’

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Dr. Dana Zohar 

Dana Zohar was born and educated in the United States. She studied Physics and Philosophy at MIT, and then did her postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion & Psychology at Harvard University. She is the author of the best-selling The Quantum Self and The Quantum Society, books which extend the language and principles of quantum physics into a new understanding of human consciousness, psychology and social organization. In 1997 she published Who’s Afraid of Schrodinger’s Cat?, a survey of 20th century scientific ideas. In February 2000 she published SQ: Spiritual Intelligence — The Ultimate Intelligence. She has just completed Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By.

‘Spiritual Intelligence: How the Soul Rewires the Brain’

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Holocaust Memorial Lecture

Eminent War Historian

Professor Sir Michael Howard OM , CH, CBE, MC 

Sir Michael is president emeritus of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He is fellow of the British Academy, was knighted in 1986, appointed to the Order of the Companion of Honour in 2002 and the Order of Merit in 2005. Sir Michael, whose mother was Jewish, fought in the Italian Campaign during the Second-World-War and was twice wounded and won a Military Cross at Salerno. He published his memoir Captain Professor.

‘Reflections on the Holocaust’

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Holocaust Survivor Solly Irving

Solly Irving was born in Riky, Poland and was 9 years old when the war broke out. At 11 years old he was separated from his family and went through several labour camps, including Buchenwald. He was liberated from Trenstadt concentration camp. 

‘Destined to survive’

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Professor Brian Leftow MA, (MA, PhD Yale)

Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University

‘Arguments proving the existence of G‑d’

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President of the World Medical Association and Chairman of the Israel Medical Association

Dr. Yoram Blachar 

The World Medical Association is the umbrella organization of the medical associations worldwide. 84 countries are members representing approximately nine million physicians. The organization was established in 1947, following the horrors of the Second World War, in order to define doctors’ ethical and behavioural codes.

Attorney Leah Wapner

The Secretary General of the Israel Medical Association

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‘Science and Religion: The Dawkins' Delusion’

Professor Steven Prawer 

Professor Prawer, who is visiting professor at Oxford University, is one of Australia's foremost authorities in physics. In 2000 he spearheaded The University of Melbourne’s entry into the world of quantum computing and nanotechnology becoming the inaugural Director of the Melbourne node of the Special Research Center for Quantum Computer Technology. He is also associate director and chair of the Physical Sciences panel of the NANO (Nanostructural Analysis Network Organization) Major National Research Facility and one of the founders of The University of Melbourne Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Steven has a world wide reputation in advanced diamond science and technology with over 20 years of experience and over 200 scientific publications. He is associate editor of the journal diamond and related materials and is a key participant with E6 in the EQUIND consortium leading the work package for the development of single photon sources for free space secure communications. His diamond group enjoys an international reputation for both its academic excellence and world class infrastructure.

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Argentinian Rabbi Israel Kapalushnik 

Director of Beit Chabad, Concordia, Argentina

‘Jewish Gauchos: myth or reality?’

The gaucho is to Argentina what the cowboy is to the United States. Jewish Gauchos is the term used to describe 820 Jews who escaped the pogroms of czarist Russia in 1889 and landed in Argentina aboard the steamship Wesser. Upon arriving in Argentina, these Russian immigrant Jews, Jewish Gauchos, settled in Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, where they founded farming colonies with the aid of European Jewish philanthropist Baron Hirsch.

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Samson Judaica Library Launch

Professor David Deutsch, born in 1953 in Haifa, Israel, is a Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University. He pioneered the field of quantum computers, and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. He is author of The Fabric of Reality.

‘The Fabric of Reality’

Dr. Abigail Green, Historian, Brasenose College, author of Sir Moses Montefiore, the Jews and the birth of human rights, to be published by Harvard university Press, in 2009

‘Montefiore, the Jews and the birth of human rights"

Professor Laurence Dreyfus, FBA,Fellow of Magdalen College, was born in Boston, Mass. (USA), and is a noted interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach, both as a scholar and performer. He lectures at Oxford on Bach, Wagner, and Chamber Music and is a Fellow of the British Academy and honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music.

‘Hermann Levi, Jewish Wagnerian’

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The Second Annual Joseph Graham Memorial Lecture Presents

Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar 

Chief Rabbi Lazar is the foremost leader in rebuilding Jewish life across Russia and the Former Soviet republics. He established the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS with over 450 member communities, serving over a million people. He is chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the World Congress of Russian Jewry and was appointed to Russia's Council for Coordination of Religious Associations.

‘Challenges Facing Russian Jewry: Past and Present’

Guest of Honour and introduction: The Honourable Nathaniel Rothschild

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Portugese Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Mr. Jack White, leading expert on the Portugese Jewish Marranos, has visited and is active amongst the Marrano Jewish community in Porto, in northern Portugal

‘Return of the Marranos to Judaism’

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‘The David Irving Trial & Its Implication’

Dr. Anthony Julius

Prominent libel lawyer at London Law firm, Mishcon de Reya, Dr. Julius successfully defended Deborah Lipstadt, with Richard Rampton QC, against a libel suit brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving. He is also famous for having been selected by Diana, Princess of Wales as her legal representative in her divorce from Prince Charles; author of TS Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form

Mr. Richard Rampton QC 

Leading British libel lawyer, Mr. Rampton QC has been involved in several high profile cases, including successfuly defending Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books against Holocaust denier David Irving, among the most famous. He also successfully represented George Galloway MP against the Daily Telegraph over claims he took £375,000 from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.

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Oxford premier of the film

‘The Legacy of Nazi Hunter Simon Weisenthal: I Have Never Forgotten You’

Narrated by Nicole Kidman 

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Professor Avraham Faust

Prof. Avraham (Avi) Faust is the director of the Institute of Archaeology, Martin (Szusz) department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and is currently Kennedy Leigh fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He participated in a number of excavations and surveys in Israel and abroad, and is currently directing the excavations at Tel Eton (usually identified with Biblical Eglon). He is the author of Israelite Society in the Period of the Monarchy: An Archaeological Perspective (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi) and Israel's Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (London: Equinox), as well as numerous articles, covering various aspects of Israel's archaeology from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, with a special focus on the Israelite society in the Iron Age.

‘Archaeology & Social Justice in Biblical Israel’

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St John’s College Hebrew Manuscript Viewing

St John's holds around 450 different printed works containing Hebrew script, in more than 600 physical volumes. There will be a display of 10 titles from among our c. 50 "proper" early printed Hebraica during the visit.

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Professor Peter Pulzer

Prof. Pulzer is Emeritus Gladstone Professor of Government, Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Honourary Vice-President of the Association for the Study of German Politics, and Chairman of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies. He is author of Jews and the German State 1848-1933: The political history of a minority, 2003.

 ‘German & Israeli Relations’

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‘Where are the Ten Lost Tribes?’

Professor Tudor Parfitt

Tudor Parfitt is Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London. He received his D.Phil from Oxford University and specializes in the history of the Jews in Africa and Asia, Judaizing movements, and Modern Hebrew language and literature. The subject of the 2000 NOVA documentary “Lost Tribes of Israel”, which documented his search for the lost tribes across Africa and the Middle East as he used genetic research to investigate Jewish history, Professor Parfitt’s interests include Jewish life, Jewish diasporas, and DNA analysis for historical purposes. Known as the “British Indiana Jones”, he is the author of several books, including Journey to the Vanished City: The Search for a Lost Tribe of Israel (2000), The Road to Redemption: The Jews of Yemen 1900-1950 (1996), Genetics, Mass Media, and Identity: A Case Study of the Genetic Research on the Lemba and Bene Israel (2005). 

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Robert Lloyd George

Robert Lloyd George,  great-grandson of the former British prime minister David Lloyd George,is Chairman and CEO of Lloyd George Management, which has offices in Hong Kong, London, Singapore, Bombay and Japan. He was educated at Eton College and won an open Exhibition to read English Literature at University College, Oxford.He has published several books including A Guide to Asian Stock Markets, 1989, The East West Pendulum 1991, North South - A Global Emerging Market Handbook, 1994,  ‘David and Winston: How a Friendship Changed History’ and The East West Pendulum Revisited both in 2005. 

"Lloyd George, Churchill & the Jews"

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Professor Robert Service

Professor of Russian History, University of Oxford. He is the biographer of both Lenin & Stalin as well as authoring , among others, The Russian Revolution 1900-1927 ,and A History of Modern Russia. From Nicholas II to Putin. Service's most recent work is Comrades: A World History of Communism.

‘Soviet Russia, Zionism & the Foundation of the State of Israel’

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‘Debating Techniques of the Talmud’

Study and debate the Talmud led by Talmudist,

Rabbi Leibish Heller

Lecturer, Rabbinical College, London

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Haggadot Manuscript Treasures of the Bodleian

Dr. Piet Van Boxel

Curator of Hebraica & Judaica, Bodleian Library

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Philosophy Shabbat Dinner

Please join us to celebrate the retirement of

Professor Gerald "Jerry" Cohen 

Gerald Allan "Jerry" Cohen, born 1941, is a marxist political philosopher, presently the Cichele Professor of Social & Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford. Born into a communist Jewish family in Montreal, Cohen was educated at McGill University, Canada and the University of Oxford where he studied under Sir Isaiah Berlin and Gilbert Ryle. Cohen was formerly lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at UCL, before being appointed to the Chichele chair at Oxford in 1985. Several of his former students, such as Alan Carter, Will Kymlicka, John McMurtry, Michael Otsuka, Seana Shiffrin and Jonathan Wolff have gone on to be important political philosophers in their own right.

Known as a proponent of Analytical Marxism and a founding member of the September Group, Cohen's 1978 work Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence defends an old-fashioned interpretation of Marx's historical materialism. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen offers an extensive moral argument in favour of socialism. In If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? Cohen addresses the question of what egalitarian political principles imply for the personal behavior of those who subscribe to them.

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Kabbalah Book Launch & reception

Inward Bound: A Guide to the Understanding of Kabbalah

Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov

Rabbi of South London Jewish Community, author of seven books on Judaism and authority and teacher of the Kabbalah

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Balliol College Hebrew Manuscript Viewing

Oxford's oldest College, founded in 1262

The viewing will include, amongst others, a rare document of conveyance of land in Hebrew of a land in Gamlingay, a village half way between Oxford and Cambridge, from Merton College to Balliol.

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Israel & the British Media

Daphna Vardi

Journalist for Maariv and Kol Yisrael—Israel Radio 

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Professor Leszek Kolakowski

Leszek Kołakowski, born 1927 in Radom, Poland, is the most distinguished living Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxist thought, especially his acclaimed three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism. The Library of Congress named Kołakowski the first winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities in 2003. In Poland, Kołakowski is revered as an icon for opponents of communism.

"Jewish & Polish relations during the Second World War" 

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Ms. Francis Cairncross

Rector of Exeter College

"Why is it so hard to tackle global warming?"

Frances Cairncross is Rector of Exeter College. Previously, she was on the staff of The Economist for 20 years, most recently as management editor. She was The Economist’s first Environment Editor, and in that capacity published Costing the Earth: The Challenges for Governments, the Opportunities for Business, and Green, Inc. Cairncross was on the staff of The Guardian from 1973 to 1984, and prior to that spent periods on the financial staff of The Times, The Banker and The Observer. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Senior Fellow at the School of Public Policy, UCLA and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). She is athor of The Company of the Future (Harvard Business School Press) and The Death of Distance. In 2004-05, she held the honorary post of High Sheriff of Greater London.

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The Professor Geoffrey Lewis (former Professor of the Turkish Language, Oxford University) Memorial Lecture

Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Do Israelis Speak Hebrew?

Ghil'ad Zuckermann is Australian Research Council Discovery Fellow in Linguistics at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, editorial board member of Journal of Language Contact, & occasional consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary.  He has been Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Studies. 
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Turkish Shabbat Dinner

A memorial tribute to Professor of Turkish Language Geoffrey Lewis

Ambassador of Turkey to the UK HE Mr. Yigit Alpogan 

"Turkish - Israel Relations"

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Professor Antony Flew

Antony Flew was one of the world's most famous atheists for the last 50 years, who taught at the University of Oxford and the University of Aberdeen, and then Professorships at the University of Keele and the University of Reading. 

Among Flew’s most influential works are his essays “Theology and Falsification” (in New Essays in Philosophical Theology) and “The Presumption of Atheism”. He has also published a work on the possibility of an afterlife, first released under the title The Logic of Mortality but now available as Merely Mortal? In 2004, Flew announced in a symposium on science and religion that the discoveries of modern science have led him to accept the existence of God.

Dr. Gerald Schroeder

Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology, has emerged in recent years as one of the most popular and accessible apostles for the melding of science and religion.

His authored works include Genesis and the Big Bang, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, and The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth.

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Shabbat Dinner

Professor Alan Ryan

Master of New College, Oxford University

Dinner dedicated to the legacy of Sir Isaiah Berlin 

‘Isaiah Berlin & Rooted Cosmopolitanism’

Italian cuisine prepared by professional Italian chef, Roberto Ferro

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Professor Niall Ferguson 

‘Jews & The Ascent of Money’

One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World (Time Magazine), Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, & Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. 

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Dr. Isabel Wollaston

Head of Academic Programmes, School of Historical Studies, Birmingham University. Dr. Wollaston is author of ‘Negotiating the Marketplace: The Role(s) of Holocaust Museums Today’, (Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 4:1); ‘“Telling the Tale”: The Self-Representation and Reception of Elie Wiesel’ in Edward Kessler & Melanie Wright (eds) Themes in Jewish-Christian Relations. Orchard Academic (2005); Suffer the Little Children? Reflections on the Cross, Urban Violence and Sacred Space co-edited with Kay Read; Auschwitz and the Politics of Commemoration, Holocaust Educational Trust Research Papers 1:5 (1999-2000); A War against Memory, the Future of Holocaust Remembrance (London: SPCK, 1996).

"Catholic & Jewish Relations During the Holocaust"

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Shabbat Dinner

Olympic Munich Survivor 

Dan Alon

Former Israeli fencing champion, Alon was one of five Israeli athletes who escaped the 1972 massacre of Israel's Olympic team by Palestinian terrorists. He never spoke about his experience for 35 years.

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"Mahmud Ahmadinejad & the Jews"Hamid Sabi

Mr Sabi is a prominent Iranian Jewish lawyer and former head of the Iranian Jewish congress in London. He served as defence lawyer for the nine Jews in Iran who were convicted and emprisoned for espionage for Israel.

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Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman

Director of The Centre for Kohanim (Jewish priests) in Jerusalem, and author of DNA & Tradition: The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews.

 “The DNA Connection - Modern Jews and the Ancient Hebrews”

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 Thanksgiving Shabbat Dinner

"The Impact of the American elections on the Middle East"

Hosting distinguished American professors on the subject of the impact of the American elections.

Chairman: Daniel Hemel

Marshall Scholar, New College, formerly Harvard University and editor of the Harvard Crimson.

Professor Ronald Bush

Drue Heinz Professor of American Literature, Prof. Bush has written widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English and American literature and have published books on Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and modernist primitivism.

Dr. Gareth Davies

Dr Gareth Davies has published on the social policies and political crisis of the United States during the 1960s, on the comparative development of social policy in Canada and the United States, and on the foundation of the New Deal welfare state. He is currently writing a book about American education policy, 19651980, and is also working on the social welfare legacy of the Reagan administration.

Dr. Lawrence Goldman

Dr. Goldman is lecturer in Modern History and Fellow of St Peter's College. He has published on the political and intellectual history of Britain and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and has particular interests in labour history and the history of social science. Since 2004 he has been Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Daniel Zoughbie

Daniel Zoughbie is the founder, CEO, and president of the Global Micro-Clinic Project, which develops disease management and prevention efforts in the West Bank and Jordan as well as Africa and South Asia. He is a Marshall Scholar and is writing a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Politics and International Relations on Christian Zionism in the US. 

Rajaie Batniji

Rajaie Batniji is a research associate at Oxford's Global Economic Governance Programme and the junior dean of University College. He has previously worked as a consultant to the World Health Organization. Born in Gaza, he is a Marshall Scholar is writing a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Politics and International Relations on global cooperation on health.

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"Why I Produced the Film G‑d on Trial in Auschwitz"

Mark Redhead

Producer of the recent "G‑d on Trial", Mark began his career as a Producer at LWT, where his credits included The Trial of Richard III and The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. He moved into drama at Granada, producing The Bare Necessities and My Wonderful Life. Other credits include: This Is Personal: The Hunt For The Yorkshire Ripper, the BAFTA winning Murder of Stephen Lawrence and Bloody Sunday, a winner at both Sundance and Berlin. He joined Hat Trick as Head of Drama in 2001 and executive produced Jeffrey Archer, The Truth, In Denial of Murder, two series of the critically acclaimed Bodies and Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee.

Frank Cottrell Boyce

Frank Cottrell Boyce, script writer of the film "G‑d on Trial", is one of the most respected screenwriters working in the English film industry. After serving as the television critic for the magazine "Living Marxism," he met Michael Winterbottom and the two collaborated on "Forget About Me" (1990). Winterbottom had made five more films based on Boyce's screenplays, "Butterfly Kiss" (1995), "Welcome to Sarajevo" (1997), "The Claim" (2000), "24 Hour Party People" (2002), "Code 46" (2003), and "A Cock and Bull Story" (2005). Boyce has also collaborated with the directors Danny Boyle "Millions" (2004), Alex Cox's "Revenger's Tragedy" (2002), and Anand Tucker "Hilary and Jackie" (1998). 
In the words of film critic Roger Ebert, whom he interacted online at Ebert's old CompuServe chat group in the early 1990s, Frank Cottrell Boyce is "arguably the most original and versatile screenwriter in [England]."

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Holocaust Survivor & Step-sister of Anne Frank

Eva Schloss

‘Beyond the Holocaust’

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Holocaust Memorial Day - Lectures

Professor David Fraser

David Fraser is Professor of Law and Social Theory at the University of Nottingham. Educated in Canada and the United States, he has taught at universities in those countries as well as in Australia, France and the UK. His research focuses on legal aspects of National Socialism and the Holocaust. His published work includes "Law After Auschwitz: Towards A Jurisprudence of the Holocaust"; "The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law, 1940-1945: 'Quite contrary to the principles of British justice' and most recently "The Fragility of Law: Constitutional Patriotism and the Jews of Belgium, 1940-1945". He is currently completing a study of Australian prosecutions of Nazi war criminals in the 1990s.

‘The Jews of Belgium, 1940-1945’

Dr. David Seymour

Dr. David M. Seymour in a Lecturer in Law at Lancaster University Law School. His research interests are law, antisemitism and the Holocaust, contemporary social and legal theory, law and the arts. His recent work includes "Law, Antisemitism and the Holocaust" (Routledge-Glasshouse, 2007)

"Twenty Years of Critical Reflection on the Holocaust & its Legacies"

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Israeli Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Professor Yossi Mekelberg

Yossi Mekelberg, born in Israel, graduated in Political Science from Tel Aviv University and has taught International Relations at Webster University, Regent's College, London since 1996 and is currently the head of the International Relations department. Between 1994 and 1996 he was a visiting lecturer at King's College, London, and more recently at Buckingham University. His fields of interest are International Relations theory, Middle East politics, US foreign policy and International Relations and revolutions. Yossi Mekelberg is also an associate fellow of the Middle East programme at the Royal institute of international affairs, Chatham House. Among his research interests in the institute are: international politics in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli peace process and the implications of the war in Iraq for the region. He is a regular contributor to the international media on these issues.

"Israel Strategic Challenges on the eve of Election"

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Symposium on Science & Religion 

‘Evolution, Darwin, Dinosaurs, and the Torah’

Professor Nathan Aviezer

Nathan Aviezer is Professor of Physics and former Chairman of the Physics Department of Bar-Ilan University, and a Visiting Professor of Physics at the University of Leeds. Aviezer is the author of more than 100 scientific articles. In recognition of his important research contributions, Aviezer was honored by being elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Research Professor of the Royal Society of London.

In addition to his purely scientific research, Aviezer has a long-standing interest in the relationship between Torah and science and has authored two books, In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (translated into nine languages) and Fossils and Faith: Understanding Torah and Science(translated into three languages). Aviezer teaches a course at Bar-Ilan University on “Torah and Science,” which was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize. Aviezer also organizes an annual Torah and Science Conference at Bar-Ilan University which attracts hundreds of participants from all over Israel. Born in Switzerland, raised in the United States, Professor Aviezer received his doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago, and subsequently held a research position at the IBM Watson Research Center near New York. In 1967, Nathan and his wife Dvora made aliya to Israel. The Aviezers have four children and live in Petach Tikva.

Professor Keith Ward

Keith Ward is a fellow of the British Academy, the Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Oxford, and a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He has lectured at the universities of Glasgow, St. Andrews, Cambridge, and London, where he was professor of history and philosophy of religion, and written more than twenty highly acclaimed books, inlcuding The Big Questions in Science and Religion. Comparative theology and the interplay between science and faith are two of his main topics of interest. He lives in Oxford, England.

‘G‑d after Darwin?’

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Shabbat Dinner & Lecture

Dedicated to the centenary of Sir Isaiah Berlin

Professor Roger Hausheer

‘Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty: Its Relevance Today’

Roger Hausheer is visiting Professor in the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Montenegro in Podgorica and worked under the guidance of Isaiah Berlin and John Plamenatz at Oxford. His interests are in the history of ideas, especially in the German-speaking world, and have published works on Fichte, Schelling and Schleiermacher among others. He was invited to write introductions to Isaiah Berlin's Against the Current and The Proper Study of Mankind. Berlin became a great personal friend and the greatest intellectual influence on his life, and he is currently working on a comprehensive intellectual biography of Berlin. For many years he held academic posts in the Humanities Department of the University of Bradford.

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Celebrating 100 years since the establishment of Tel Aviv

‘The Trouble with Terror’

Professor Tamar Meisels

Tamar Meisels is a senior lecturer at the Political Science Department at Tel-Aviv University. She received her Phd. in political theory at Oxford University in 2001 and her primary research interests are liberal nationalism, territorial rights and the philosophical perspectives on war and terrorism. Her recent publications, in addition to many published articles, include: Territorial Rights (Springer Academic Publishers); and The Trouble with Terror (Cambridge University Press, October 2008).

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Maimonides & Islam

Dr. Anna Akasoy

Dr. Akasoy is Departmental Lecturer in Islamic History and Philosophy at Oxford University and has published widely on Maimonides. Her research interests are on Islamic history and philosophy, 570-1500.

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Shabbat Dinner

With students from across the UK

Ambassador Yehuda Avner

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African Shabbat Dinner

Dedicated to Helen Suzman, the recipient of Ubuntu Award, who over the course of 36 years as a member of Parliament, became South African’s best-known woman politician. She won world recognition for her staunch and ceaseless opposition to the policy of apartheid. According to the Guardian, she single-handedly carried the anti-racism banner in South Africa's apartheid parliament.

Professor William Beinart

William Beinart is professor of race relations, University of Oxford, and chair of the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies. He was formerly director of the African Studies Centre, and is author of Twentieth-Century South Africa and other works on South Africa.

 "Jews in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa"

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‘The Road to Jenin’

With French Jewish Filmmaker Pierre Rehov

Pierre Rehov will be present at the screening and give a talk about the movie.

Pierre Rehov (1952–) is a French Jewish film maker and novelist, most known for his movies which are almost exclusively based on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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‘Jews of Iran’

Break into the new term with a delicious Persian Shabbat dinner with

Iranian Jewish Film Director of Jews of Iran

Ramin Farahani

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French Holocaust survivor Madame Margaret Acher

Madame Margaret Acher was born in 1930 in Poland and grew up in Warsaw. The family was moved to the Ghetto in 1939. Her father, a Polish army officer, escaped to Hungary where he was hidden by friends. The mother managed to get Margaret and her sister outside of the Ghetto and hid them with a Polish family. In the end of the war the family was reunited. Today Margaret lives in Paris.

Madame Acher was the subject of a BBC documentary, entitled "The Family that Defeated Hitler".

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Moroccan cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Guest speaker Mr. Larbi Rmiki

Head of Cultural Department, Moroccan Embassy

Morocco & the Jews

Introduction by Moroccan born Sydney Assor, Chairman, Association of Moroccan Jews in Great Britain

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Viewing of first printed Bible

and other early printed works

The first printed Hebrew Bible (Torah) was published in Soncino, near Cremona, Italy, in 1488, of which nine copies are now known, one of which belongs to Exeter College, Oxford.

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The Isaiah Berlin memorial lecture on Jewish Philosophy

Marking the centenary of Sir Isaiah Berlin

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is a teacher, philosopher, social critic and prolific author who has been hailed by Time magazine as a "once-in-a-millennium scholar." His lifelong work in Jewish education earned him the Israel Prize, his country’s highest honor.

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Shabbat Dinner

with Professor David Clary FRS

President, Magdalen College, Oxford University

‘Magdalen College: the first 550 years and the challenges of the 21st century’

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Professor Sam Frydman

Sam Frydman is Professor and the Head of the Geotechnology and Mineral Engineering at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He teaches, or oversees the teaching of, engineering geology, geomechanics, soil engineering and foundations, stability of retaining walls and slopes, and soil mechanics laboratory.

Dr. Frydman's research interests include constitutive behaviour of soils, geotechnical earthquake engineering, behaviour of piles, slope stability, reinforced soil, behaviour of unsaturated, swelling and collapsing soils, and rock mechanics. 

‘Engineering problems in the Holy land - then and now’

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The inaugural Isaac Meyers Memorial Lecture in Jewish Classics

Professor Geza Vermes MA, DLitt, FBA, FEA

Géza Vermes is a Jewish Hungarian scholar on religious history, particularly Jewish and Christian. He is a world renowned authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and was one of the first scholars to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls after their discovery in 1947. He is the author of the standard translation into English of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 1962, re-issued in London by Penguin Classics, as The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 2004. Vermes is also an authority on the life and religion of Jesus and some describe him as the greatest Jesus scholar of his time. He is now Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford but continues to teach at the Oriental Institute in Oxford.

"The Origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls"

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Medieval Manuscript Viewing at Merton College

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Shabbat Dinner

Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE 

‘The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century’

Baroness Greenfield is Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (the first woman to hold that position) and Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, where she leads a multi-disciplinary team investigating neurodegenerative disorders. In addition she is Director of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, exploring the physical basis of consciousness.

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Shabbat Dinner

Professor Colin Mayer

Professor Colin Mayer is Dean of the Saïd Business School and Professorial Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

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American Shabbat Dinner

Sir Alistair Horne

Sir Alistair Allan Horne is an eminent British historian of modern France. As a boy during World War II, he was sent to live in the United States. He attended Millbrook School, where he befriended William F. Buckley, Jr., who remained a life-long friend until Buckley's death on February 27, 2008. Horne served in the RAF in 1943–44 and with the Coldstream Guards from 1944–1947. He worked as a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from 1952–1955. He is an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

Horne is the biographer of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a work originally published in two volumes. In early June 2008 he finished a soon-to-be-published authorised biography of Henry Kissinger. As a result of the Iraq War, his 1977 book A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 has recently been of interest to American military officers. It was also recommended to U.S. President George W. Bush by former United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

‘Henry Kissinger & the Jews’

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Dr. Stephanie Hare

Stephanie Hare is the Alistair Horne visiting fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. She is writing a book on the career of Maurice Papon, the French civil servant convicted of crimes against humanity in 1998 for his role in the deportation of 1,560 Jews from France. 

Maurice Papon & French responsibility for the Holocaust

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Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman

Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King's College London since 1982, and Vice-Principal since 2003. Before joining King's he held research appointments at Nuffield College Oxford, IISS and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and awarded the CBE in 1996, he was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. He was awarded the KCMG in 2003. He was appointed in June 2009 to serve as a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War. 
Professor Freedman has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the cold war, as well as commentating regularly on contemporary security issues. His most recent book, A Choice of Enemies: America confronts the Middle East, won the 2009 Lionel Gelber Prize and Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature.

‘America's Confrontation with the Middle East’

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Rabbi Prof. Jacob Immanuel Schochet

Jacob Immanuel Schochet is a rabbi and professor specialising on Logic, Epistemology, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion. He is also a renowned authority on the history and philosophy of Hassidism.

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Oxford Brookes Shabbat Dinner

With Dr. Danby Bloch

Danby Bloch is Pro Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and son of one of the founders of Ben Gurion University, responsible for solar energy in Israel, Prof. Moshe Rudolph Bloch.

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Sir Nicholas Winton

Sir Nicholas George Winton, MBE who is 100 years old is a Briton who organised the rescue of 669 Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport.

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Afghan Shabbat Dinner

Pamir Patang

Born in Afghaninstan, Pamir is a political analyst on issues relating to Afghanistan security and history

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Zvi Bielski

Son of Zus Bielski, hero of the Movie DEFIANCE

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Shabbat Dinner

In honour of 400 years since the passing of the Chief Rabbi - Mahara"l - of Prague Rabbi Yehudah Lowe

His Excellency The Ambassador of the Czech Republic

Ambasador Michael Žantovský

Former Czech Ambassador to Israel and the United States. A founding member of the Civic Forum. In January 1990, he became the Head of the Presidential Office’s Press Department and the spokesperson for President Vaclav Havel. In 1996, he was elected to the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, where he served as the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Security.

'Czech and the Jews'

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Moroccan Shabbat Dinner

With leading Israeli anthropologist

Dr. Pnina Motzafi-Haller

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Visiting Prof. Eran Feitelson

Eran Feitelson is a professor at the department of geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

'Does the Current Land Reform in Israel Mark the End of a Zionist Ethos?'

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Holocaust Memorial Lecture

"So Near and Yet so Far: was the world responsible for the Holocaust?"

Gisela Feldman

Survivor of the S.S. St Louis, 1939 

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Global Warming Debate

'After Copenhagen Fiasco: Will the EU Declare Trade War Against Poor Nations'

Hosting

Dr. Benny Peiser

Dr Benny Peiser is the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the editor of CCNet, the world's leading climate policy network. A 10km-wide asteroid, Minor Planet (7107) Peiser, was named in his honour by the International Astronomical Union. Benny is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of Spaceguard UK.

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The Man Who Smuggled Himself into Auschwitz 

Former POW Denis Avey 

When millions would have done anything to get out, one remarkable British soldier POW smuggled himself into Auschwitz to witness the horror so he could tell others the truth.

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Greek Shabbat Dinner

'Josephus & Jewish History in Flavian Rome'

Dr. Gaia Lembi

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Professor Siegbert Salomon Prawer FBA

 ‘Freud’s Jewish Comedy’

Siegbert Salomon Prawer, born 1925 in Cologne, Germany, is Emeritus Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford. He is the author of Caligari's Children: The Film as Tale of Terror (1980) and Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse (1997), among other books.

His most recent book is A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings, (Legenda, Oxford 2009) which is based on an intensive study of the original German text of Freud's writings, letters and journals. S. S. Prawer's new book is the first to make a full and systematic map of Freud's use of English literature the first to make a full and systematic map of Freud's use of English literature.

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Prof. Jerry Cohen Memorial Shabbat Dinner

Dr. Paula Casal

Pula Casal is Reader in Political Theory at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading, and former graduate student of Prof. Jerry Cohen in 1982 at UCL.

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Animal Rights in Israel

The Honourable Member of the Israeli Knesset

Yoel Hasson

Yoel Hasson is a member of the 18th Knesset. He is a rising star in Israeli politics and a prominent up-and-coming leader who is at the forefront of the legislative process.

MK Hasson is a member of the opposition Kadima Party and was first elected to serve as a member of the Knesset as its representative in March 2006 when he was only 33 years old. MK Hasson holds the prestigious position as the Chairman of the State Control Committee. The Committee is one of the most important committees within the legislative body tasked with overseeing and discussing reports issued by the State Comptroller's office, as well as establishing commissions of inquiry to examine the findings put forth from the State Comptroller.

In the 17th Knesset, MK Hasson served as the Chairman of the Coalition, Chairman of the Lobby for the Advancement of Young People in Israel and Chairman of the Lobby for the Protection of Animals. In June 2006, he was nominated as the President of the 35th World Zionist Congress. Prior to serving as an elected official, MK Hasson was an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and was part of his political staff.

Mr. Chanoch Kesselman

Grave Challenges Facing Ritual Slaughter in Europe

Mr. Kesselman is Executive Coordinator of Union of Orthodox Congregations; Vice president for the campaign for protection of Shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter) and on executive board of Shechita UK. He has recently led the campaign in Europe against DIALREL (Dialogue on Religious Slaughter), set up by the European Commission to change current religious laws on slaughter.

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Inauguration of

The Tajtelbaum Jewish Study Hall of Oxford 

Opened by

Former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau

Chief Rabbi Lau is former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Chairman of Yad Vashem Holocaust Foundation, youngest survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp and current Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv 

Honouring Mr. Mendel Tajtelbaum

Distinguished guests:

The Lord Mayor of Oxford Cllr. Mary Clarkson

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Talmud: A Film by Pierre-Henry Salfati

Introduction by the Film Director

Pierre -Henry Salfati

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Israeli Wine Shabbat Dinner

Dr. Abigail Green

Abigail Green is Tutor and Fellow in Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her latest book,  Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero has just been published by Belknap/ Harvard University Press to great acclaim.

'Moses Montefiore & the Founding of Modern Jerusalem'

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Baroness Vivien Stern of Vauxhall CBE

'Human Rights & Judaism'

Vivien Stern is Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) at King’s College, London. She is also Honorary President of Penal Reform International (PRI), a non-governmental organisation promoting penal reform throughout the world which she founded with others in 1989.

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Dr. Avihu Ronen

Avihu Ronen is a senior lecturer at Tel Hai Academic College, and an associate lecturer at Haifa University. His research interests are in the history of ideas and in Holocaust studies. At Oxford he is completing a book that examines the Ghetto Revolt and its impact upon Israeli society during the fifties. He is also working on new research in the framework of the Yad Vashem project on The Survivors and Israeli society, focusing mainly on Holocaust survivors in the Kibbutzim. Ronen has published several books and papers on Jewish youth movements during the Holocaust and on Holocaust education.

'The Impact of Holocaust Survivors on the Kibbutz Movement'

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Walking tour of Medievel Jewish Oxford

By Marcus Roberts, Director of National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail

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Sobibor Victim Esther Jacobs Memorial Lecture

Survivor of the Sobibor Death Camp Uprising 

Thomas Blatt

Thomas "Toivi" Blatt is one of the few survivors who successfully escaped Sobibór extermination camp and took part in the plot that led the 600-prisoner revolt on October 14, 1943. While fleeing the SS he was betrayed by a farmer who was hiding him resulting in a gunshot injury to the jaw. The bullet remains there to this day.

Toivi went on to write From The Ashes of Sobibor about his experience in Sobibór, including his part in the plot that led the 600-prisoner revolt, as well as his life before the war leading up to the German occupation of his village, Izbica.

Blatt also interviewed a former German guard from Sobibór, Karl Frenzel, who was given life in prison for his actions at Sobibór, but after serving 16 years, was released on appeal due to a technicality. Blatt believes his interview was the first time after World War II during which the accused spoke face-to-face with the victim. The award winning 1987 TV movie Escape from Sobibor depicts the events at the death camp Sobibór. Blatt was portrayed in the film as well as revolt leaders Leon Feldhandler and Alexander Pechersky.

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Russian Shabbat Dinner

Mr. Peter Oppenheimer

Senior Fellow of Christ Chrch College, Oxford, former head ofthe Jewish Chronicle and fomer President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish studies. Mr. Oppenheimer is an expert on Russia and speaks fluent Rusian.

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Launch Concert of

Oxford Klezmer Band

A division of the Oxford University Chabad Society

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Oxford University Chabad Society & The Ethox Centre invites you to a Lecture

Jewish Medical Ethics: may humans Play God?

 ‘Cutting edge scientific implementations – stem cell research & PGD: Ethical & Jewish perspectives’

Prof. Abraham Steinberg

Prof. Steinberg is the leading expert on Jewish medical ethics, an Israel Prize Laureate and author of the Encyclopaedia of Jewish Medical Ethics. Steinberg is also senior paediatric neurologist at Shaare Tzedek Hospital, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Introductory remarks by

Charles Foster

The Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, and Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford

Prof. Julian Savulescu

Director of Oxford Uehiro Centre in Practical Ethics

Closing remarks by

Dr. Guy Kahane

Deputy Director of Oxford Uehiro Centre in Practical Ethics

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Shabbat Dinner with

Mr. Speaker of Parliament John Bercow MP

'New Parliament, New Politics?'

John Simon Bercow, born in Edgware, London, is the first Jewish Speaker of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, and has been the Member of Parliament for Buckingham since 1997. Until he became Speaker, he sat in the House as a member of the Conservative Party and served in the Shadow Cabinet under former Conservative leaders Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, who appointed him Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. In 2005, Bercow won the Channel Four/Hansard Society Political Award for 'Opposition MP of the Year'.

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Minister Mr. D. Osvaldo Marsico

Charge d'Affairs at the Argentine Embassy in London

& Carolina Pérez Colman

Pollitical Counsellor at the Argentine Embassy in London

'Challenges Facing Jews of Argentine'

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Shabbat Dinner

With

The Right Honourable Paul Goodman MP

Member of Parliament for Wycombe

'Challenges Facing the British Jewish Community'

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Shabbat Dinner

With renowned historian

Professor Norman Stone

'Turkish & Israel Relations'

Norman Stone is a member of the faculty of the department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara. Former professor at Oxford and lecturer at Cambridge, adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, prize-winning author, and a leading public intellectual in the UK and Europe, Stone is one of the world's foremost historians writing in the English language.

Stone's books of greatest note are The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (1975) which won the Wolfson History Prize. Also, Hitler (1980), and Europe Transformed 1878-1919 (1983), which won the Fontana History of Europe Prize. He is nearing the completion of a general history of the U.S., Russia, and Europe, post-1945.

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Yom Limmud seminar

Professor Irven M. Resnick

'Medieval Jewish & Christian Polemics on Circumcision and Sexuality'

Irven Resnick is Professor and Chair of Excellence, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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Dr. Israel Sandman

'Medieval Jewish Philosophy'

Israel Sandman is Fellow at University College London’s Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies. His areas of research include medieval Jewish thought, and medieval Hebrew manuscripts.

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Dr. Naftali Loewenthal

'Traditional Jewish Responses to Science 18th-21st Centuries'

Naftali Loewenthal is lecturer on Jewish spirituallity at University College London’s Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies, and author of Communicating the Infinite (Chicago University Press)

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Nobel Prize Laureate

Professor Ada Yonath

'Climbing Scientific Everests'

The Martin S. and Helen Kimmel professor of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science; Director of The Helen & Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure & Assembly, and Director of The Joseph & Ceil Mazer Center for Structural Biology.

In 2009, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize out of nine Israeli Nobel laureates, the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

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Dr. Sara Hirschorn

Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn is the new University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. She comes to UK by way of W.Massachusetts, New Haven, Chicago, Jerusalem, and Boston. Her research, teaching, and public engagement activities focus on the Israeli settler movement, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the relationship between Diaspora Jewry and Israel. She is also a regular op-ed columnist for Haaretz and other periodicals, public speaker, and consultant and Israel/Jewish/Middle East related issues. Sara is currently at work on her forthcoming book on American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement since 1967.

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Professor Richard Swinburne FBA

Emeritus Nolloth Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a very influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, andFaith and Reason.

"Arguments for the existence of G‑d"

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Ambassador of Denmark to the Court of St James His Excellency Mr. Claus Grube

Mr. Grube is former Permanent Secretary of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark; Ambassador, Permanent Representative, Permanent Representation of Denmark to the EU, Brussels; and Ambassador, Deputy Permanent Representative, Permanent Representation of Denmark to the EU, Brussels.

"The Rescue of the Jews of Denmark"

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Swedish documentary “Harbour of Hope” (“Hoppets hamn”)

The film follows the life of three of the 30.000 survivors that were rescued from German concentration camps and brought to the peaceful harbour town of Malmö in 1945.

Introduction by the Film’s director Magnus Gertten

Ellen Wettmark, Counsellor for Cultural Affairs / Kulturråd, Embassy of Sweden

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Andy Thompson 

Former Principal of Cherwell College and Founder of Oxford Sixth Form Solutions

"Milton, Man and Maker"

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Rachel Furst

Rachel Furst is a PhD candidate in medieval Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting Polonsky Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies. She teaches Jewish history and rabbinic literature in Israel and the United States.

'G‑d of Whose Fathers? Forming Jewish Identity Through Prayer'

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Danish Holocaust Survivor George Blackman 

Born in Denmark, George Blackman survived the Holocaust by being transported by fellow Danes on the fateful boats to Sweden

'How a Nazi saved my life'

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Professor Todd Endelman

Todd M. Endelman is the William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Michigan. He specializes in the social history of Jews in Western Europe and in Anglo-Jewish history. He is the author of The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society(1979), Radical Assimilation in Anglo-Jewish History, 1656-1945 (1990), and The Jews of Britain, 1656-2000 (2002).

"Britain - Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?"

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Professor Charles Small

Dr. Charles Asher Small is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). He is also the Koret Distinguished Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Charles received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, and a Doctorate of Philosophy (D.Phil), St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. Charles was the founding Director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), the first interdisciplinary research center on antisemitism at a North American university.

"The Challenge of Contemporary Global Antisemitism in a time of Denial"

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Professor Jeremy England

‘Scientific reasoning as a path to knowledge & Judaism’

Jeremy England joined the MIT Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in September 2011. Born in Boston, Jeremy grew up in a small college town near the New Hampshire seacoast. After earning a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Harvard in 2003, he began his graduate studies at the University of Oxford, and subsequently completed his doctorate in physics at Stanford in 2009. Before coming to MIT, he spent two years as a lecturer and research fellow at Princeton University.

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Holocaust Survivor John Izbicki

John Izbicki is the Telegraph’s long serving former education correspondent who witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht on November 8, 1938 – his eighth birthday, forcing his parents to flee Germany to England never to return. John permanently damaged his vocal chords by his terrified screaming at the Nazis on Kristallnacht while they smashed his father's successful shop in Berlin. John Izbicki's memoir "Life Between the Lines: A Memoir" was published to much acclaim in 2013.

"From Nazi Germany to Fleet Street – the story of a Holocaust survivor"

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Professor Derek Penslar

Derek Jonathan Penslar, FRSC is a Canadian historian. He was raised in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University for his first degree, and then took his graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, where his advisors were Richard Webster, Amos Funkenstein and Gerald Feldman. Penslar taught at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1987 to 1998, when he moved to Toronto to assume the Samuel J. Zacks Chair in Jewish History at the University of Toronto (U of T). Between 2002 and 2008 he directed U of T's Centre for Jewish Studies. In 2011, it was announced that he was to become the first Stanley Lewis professor of Israel studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, following a £3m donation. He has become a fellow of St Anne's College.

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Jackie Mason

Once in a generation, a performer emerges who is so extraordinary, so brilliant, that he or she become the standard to whom all others are compared. Jackie Mason is such a performer, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest stand--‐up comics of all time. Now more popular than ever, Mason combines pungent political satire, insightful observations on the foibles of modern life and impeccable timing to create material that leaves audiences laughing until they cry and critics raving show after show.

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Lord Douglas Hurd

Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC is former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and 1995. He is author of "Disraeli or The Two Lives".

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Rabbi Joseph Mendelevich

‘Unbroken Spirit’

Mendelevitch, born in Riga, was a well-known Jewish refusenik from the former Soviet Union, also known as a "Prisoner of Zion", famous for being one of the participants of the Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking affair, recounted in his 2012 memoir Unbroken Spirit, attempting to escape from the Soviet Union to Israel. As punishment, he was sent to the Gulag for eleven years. In 1981 he was released and immigrated to Israel. He served in Soviet prisons with famous Jewish dissident Natan Sharansky. In Sharansky's memoir Fear No Evil he describes innovative ways Mendelevitch used to communicate with Sharansky. There have been many articles, books and documentaries about his life.

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Holocaust Survivor Manfred Goldberg

'Memories of a child Holocaust survivor'

Manfred Goldberg was born in Germany, spent four years in the camps, 1941-45, including the Riga ghetto, Stutthof concentration camp among others.

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Dr. Haim Sperber

Haim Sperber is senior Lecturer at the Western Galilee College in Israel and chairs the Interdepartmental Studies department at the College. 

'Chained Jewish Women in the 19th Century and its Modern Challenge'

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The Right Honourable Sir Bernard Rix

‘The problems of judging’

Sir Bernard Rix recently retired from the Court of Appeal after twenty years as first a High Court Judge and then a Lord Justice of Appeal. He now practises as an arbitrator and accredited mediator. Since his retirement, he has been appointed to positions as a member of the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal and a Professor of International Commercial Law at Queen Mary, University of London. He was educated at New College Oxford, of which he is an honorary fellow, and at Harvard Law School, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He is President of the Harvard Law School Alumni Association of the UK. He has spoken at international conferences in St Petersburg, Paris, Doha, Florence, Washington, Barcelona and Jerusalem, as well as in London. Other positions held have been or are: Chairman of COMBAR, Treasurer of the Inner Temple, President of BILA, Trustee of BIICL, Chairman of the Advisory Council of CCLS at QMUL, and a director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also participated in a performance of Der Rosenkavalier at the ENO.

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Rabbi Dr. Shimon Cowen

‘A journey from the citadels of academia and government to Jewish tradition’

Shimon Cowen is son of former Governor General of Australia and Provost of Oriel College, Sir Zelman Cowen, and Founding Director of Institute for Judaism and Civilization.

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The Sir Zelman Cowen Memorial International Seminar 2014

‘Psychiatry and the Soul: Putting ‘soul’ into psychiatry’

 Emeritus Professor Andrew Sims, Former President of the Royal College Psychiatrists, UK

“The human soul as an objective reality: historical agreements of religion and psychiatry”

Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen, Director, Institute for Judaism and Civilization, Melbourne, Australia

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Professor Jonathan Wolff

'G.A. Cohen's "Montreal Jewish Communist Childhood" and its influence on his Philosophical Career'

Jonathan Wolff is Dean of Arts & Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at University College London. Wolff earned his MPhil from UCL under the direction of G.A. Cohen. He was formerly the secretary of the British Philosophical Association and has been Editor of the Aristotelian Society. As a scholar on the topic of Marxism, Wolff published Marx and Exploitation, an article about Marxist thinking and has also published a critique of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia called Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State, a short book on Karl Marx, Why Read Marx Today?, and An Introduction to Political Philosophy. He currently writes a monthly column for The Guardian and is in the process of editing the unpublished works of GA Cohen, inlcuding a memoir for the British Academy. He is currently a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. He has been a member of two of the Council’s Working Parties; on the ethics of animal research, and the ethics of personalised healthcare.

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Mr. Patrick Pascal

First Secretary of the French Embassy in London

'France and the Middle East'

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Dr. Alison Salvesen

Alison Salvesen is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford since 1989, working in the field of early translations and interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, both Jewish and Christian.

'St Jerome, Jews, and Jewish learning’

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Professor Paul Weindling - Wellcome Trust Research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University, and an internationally renowned expert on the history of eugenics, public health organizations, and twentieth century disease patterns.

'Jews of Oxford in the 1930's'

Dr. Michael Jolles - Council Member of Jewish Historical Society of England and author of several books on Anglo Jewish history

'Aspects of Anglo-Jewish History'

Harold Pollins - expert on Anglo Jewish history for 25 years and has published many articles on the subject

'19th century Oxford Jewry'

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Raoul Wallenberg Survivor Judit Brody

Dr. Ruvi Ziegler

'Israel & Scotland: What can Israel learn from the Scottish Referendum?'

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Professor Michael Inwood

Mr. Inwood is a Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Trinity College, University of Oxford and author of ‘Truth and Untruth in Plato and Heidegger’ (Northwestern University Press, 2005); Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, a revised translation with an introduction and commentary (OUP, 2007) and Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction(OUP)

'Heidegger & Nazism'

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Auschwitz Survivor Iby Knill

'The woman without a number: An Auschwitz promise'

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Introduction to the Talmud

Professor Sacha Stern

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Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA

'Strategy and the Bible'

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Dr. Ilia Rodov

Dr. Rodov is Head of Department of Jewish Art, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Bimah as Altar in Medieval Ashkenazi Synagogues

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Venture Capitalist Kenneth Abramowitz

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Leo Melamed

Leo Melamed was born Leibel Melamdovich in Bialystok, Poland, in 1932. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, the family fled to Lithuania after capture by the Nazis. In 1940, the Japanese consul general to Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, issued his family a life-saving transit visa, and they made the long trek across Siberia to safe haven in Japan. They crossed the Pacific to the US in the spring of 1941 and the family settled in Chicago. Melamed became chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1969. In 1972, under his leadership, the CME created the International Monetary Market (IMM), the world's first financial futures exchange, and launched currency futures. In 1987, Melamed spearheaded the creation and introduction of Globex, the world's first electronic trading system, and became its founding chairman. Throughout the next three decades and into the 21st Century, Melamed held many CME titles including: Special Counsel to the Board; Chairman of the Executive Committee; and Senior Policy Advisor, but remained the acknowledged leader of the CME.

Introduction by

Political Minister of the Japanese Embassy of the United Kingdom Mr. Yo OSUMI

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Ambassador of Tunisia His Excellency Mr. Nabil Ammar

'Tunisian and Jewish Relations'

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Isaac Rosenberg Memorial Lecture

Andy Thompson

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‘Family Law in Israel & The Future of the Jewish State'

Dr. Sharon Shakargy 

Dr. Sharon Shakargy is a post-doctoral researcher at the Law Faculty at Oxford. Sharon is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she gained degrees both in law and liberal arts. Prior to coming to Oxford Sharon had spent time researching at Harvard Law School and at the University of Michigan School of Law. Sharon had taught various areas of private law, and had spent a few years working for courts in Israel. Sharon's research focuses on private international law, family law and comparative law.

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Former Mayor of Sderot 

David Bouskila

David Bouskila was Mayor of Sderot for 15 years from 1989-1998, and a former Member of the Knesset. He was elected Mayor of Sderot a second time in 2008-2013, affording him the responsibility to serve as Mayor of Sderot during both Gaza

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US Congressman Louis Gomert 

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Charles Philip Tajtelbaum, MA in philosophy and religion from Hythrope College London

'Maimonides & Theodicy'

Professor Joanna Weinberg, Catherine Lewis Fellow in Rabbinic Literature; James Mew Lecturer in Rabbinic Hebrew, University of Oxford

Dr. Peter Hunter, Dr. Peter Hunter teaches philosophy at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. He studied mathematics in Cambridge, and philosophy and theology at Oxford, before obtaining a doctrorate in philosophy from King's College, London. His current interests include the relationship between science and religion.

‘Thomas Aquinas and Maimonides'

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Isaac Meyers memorial lecture

Professor Simon Goldhill 

Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at Cambridge where he also is the director of CRASSH, the university interdisciplinary research centre. He is also the John Harvard Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Cambridge, in which capacity he is running a five-year programme on the Middle East. His book on Jerusalem ("Jerusalem, City of Longing") won the Gold Medal for History from the Independent Publishers Association of America, and his most recent book "Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy" won the prestigious Runciman Prize for the best book on a Greek topic, ancient or modern. He has published very widely on Greek literature and Culture and on Jerusalem. He has lectured all over the world, and is a regular contributor to radio and TV.

‘The Treachery of Jews who speak Greek: How Victorian historians understood Jewish history’

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The Perl Grunweig Holocaust Memorial Lecture

Auschwitz Holocaust Survivor Ivor Perl

'Remember: Holocaust Survivor Recalls Winter Months in Auschwitz after seventy years since its liberation'

February, 1945 would have been the perfect time for 13-year-old Ivor Perl’s bar mitzvah but instead the barely in his teens lad stood under the cold snow hungry and desperate in one sorry Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz...

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Professor Richard Carwardine 

Richard Carwardine FBA FRHistS FLSW is President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and was formerly Rhodes Professor of American History at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Before this he was Professor of American History at the University of Sheffield. He specialises in the early years of the American Republic and the American Civil War. His best-known work is the 2004 book Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, a political biography which particularly focuses on how Abraham Lincoln mobilised evangelical Protestants to gain support for the Union and emancipation; this book won the Lincoln Prize. Carwardine is a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

'Abraham Lincoln'

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Professor Derek Penslar

Derek Jonathan Penslar, FRSC is a Canadian historian. He was raised in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University for his first degree, and then took his graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, where his advisors were Richard Webster, Amos Funkenstein and Gerald Feldman. Penslar taught at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1987 to 1998, when he moved to Toronto to assume the Samuel J. Zacks Chair in Jewish History at the University of Toronto (U of T). Between 2002 and 2008 he directed U of T's Centre for Jewish Studies. In 2011, it was announced that he was to become the first Stanley Lewis professor of Israel studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, following a £3m donation. He has become a fellow of St Anne's College.

‘The Origins of Zionist Diplomacy: Theodor Herzl on the World Stage’

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The Sir Isaiah Berlin Lecture

Dr. Yoram Hazony

'The Place of the Jew in Contemporary Philosophy and Theology' 

Yoram Hazony is founder and former Provost of the Shalem College, President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and Director of the John Templeton Foundation‘s project in Jewish Philosophical Theology. He is also a member of the Israel Council for Higher Education’s commission reviewing the General Studies and Liberal Arts programs in all of Israel’s universities and colleges.

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Her Excellency Ambassador Asta Skaisgirytė-Liauškienė

Ambassador of Lithuania to the Court of St James

'Lithuanian & Israel relations' 

HE Asta Skaisgiryte-Liauskiene is Lithuania's Ambassador to the United Kingdom and former Ambassador to the State of Israel, the French Republic and Republic of South Africa. She is also Non-resident Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman and the Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

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Professor Alon Harel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Alon Harel is a prominent law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds the Phillip P. Mizock & Estelle Mizock Chair in Administrative and Criminal Law. He has published extensively on law, including his latest book 'Why Law Matters' (Oxford University Press, 2014).

'Why Law Matters'

Yoseph Citron, University College London

Yoseph Citron is Masters Student studying Jewish Studies at UCL applying to do a PHD about the Shelah and its impact on Jewish thought. He did his Undergraduate degree in History at Manchester University Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh. 

'The 16th century Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz's educational vision' 

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Simon Corney

Owner and Chairman of Oldham Football Club

'Anti-Semitism and ethics in Football' 

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Indian Shabat Dinner

The High Commissioner for India in the United Kingdom

His Excellency Mr. Ranjan Mathai 

'Jews of India and Indian Jewish Relations' 

Mr. Ranjan Mathai joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1974. During his nearly 40-year long diplomatic career, he has held positions in the Indian Missions in Vienna, Colombo, Washington, Tehran and Brussels. He served as the Deputy High Commissioner of India in London during 2005-2007. Mr Mathai has served as the Ambassador of India in Israel, Qatar and France. In the Ministry of External Affairs of India, he has held several key positions, including as Head (Joint Secretary) of the Division responsible for India’s relations with Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives. He was Foreign Secretary of India (August 2011 – July 2013) before taking up his assignment as the High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom.

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Professor Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University. A former atheist, he converted to Christianity while a student at Oxford. He holds three Oxford doctorates in the fields of molecular biophysics, Christian theology, and science and religion. He has a particular interest in the ideas of the "New Atheism", especially its appeal to science in support of its standpoint. He is the author of many books, including his highly acclaimed biography C. S. Lewis - A Life (2013), published to mark the 50th anniversary of Lewis's death.

'Albert Einstein & the G‑d Dilemma'

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Award winning Jewish comedian Mark Maier

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Professor Annalise Acorn

“Resentment and punishment: This hurts me more than it hurts you”

Professor Annalise Acorn is presently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford where she is working on a book on resentment and responsibility. She is the author of Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004). In 2009 she was an H.L.A. Hart Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Ethics and Legal Philosophy, University College, Oxford. She has been a Visiting Professor at University of Michigan Law School, University of Siena Department of Economic Law, and University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law. She is a frequent visitor at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. Professor Acorn's main area of research interest is the theory of the emotions in the context of conflict and justice.

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US Congressman Marsha Blackburn

Congressman Marsha Blackburn represents Tennessee's 7th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Republican Party. She grew up in Laurel, Mississippi, attended Mississippi State University and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1973.

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Professor Mallory Factor

Mallory Factor is the John C. West Professor of International Politics and American Government at The Citadel and is a FoxNews Contributor. He is currently the Senior Visiting Mellon Fellow in the Department of History and a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Mallory is the co-founder of The New York Meeting, a nationally-recognized gathering of elected officials, journalists, business leaders and conservative authors in New York City. He hosts a similar meeting, The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, South Carolina. Mallory is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as Vice-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Terrorism Financing. Mallory is senior fellow at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was previously senior fellow to the House Republican Study Committee from 2007 to 2011. Mallory Factor is the best-selling author of Shadowbosses, the exposé of government employee union power in America today. Mallory’s latest book, Big Tent, released in April 2014, is also a New York Times bestseller and serves as an intellectual history of the American conservative movement.

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Rob Watson 

Rob Watson is a political correspondent for the BBC World Service.

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Dr. Khayke Beruriah Wiegand

Woolf Corob Lector in Yiddish at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies

‘Jewish-Polish Relations in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Works’

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Dr. Netanel Dagan

'Redemption Song: Retributive Accounts of Release from Prison'

Dr. Netanel Dagan is an Academic visitor in the centre for criminology, Oxford. He has a BA in Criminology, LLB, LLM, and PhD in Law from Bar-Ilan University in Israel (graduating summa cum laude).Netanel’s master thesis was quoted in an Israeli Supreme Court decision regarding the role of plea bargain in parole decision making. Netanel's research focuses on penal theory, parole and sentencing jurisprudence, and theoretical criminology (both in modern and Jewish-Talmudic context)

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Russian Jewish AUSCHWITZ LIBERATOR Moisey Malkis 

Moisey Malkis, 91 years old, was born in Odessa, 35 July 1924. When his hometown was invaded by the Nazis in September 1941, he moved to Kazakhstan. He served with distinction in the Red Army from 1942 to 1946. In a 1943 battle near Leningrad, he survived being shot twice in the head by Nazi fire. Malkis recovered and continued to fight for two more years. On January 27, 1945, shortly after liberating Belarus, he and his unit arrived at Auschwitz where he took part in its liberation. Malkis made aliya - emigrated to Israel - with his wife and two children 25 years ago.

The lecture is an exclusive live lecture via video conference from his home in Hadera, Israel, with a professional translator, and introduction by his son, Felix Malkis.

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Shabbat Dinner

Professor John Finnis FBA 

'Equality and Differences'

In honour of the late Chichele Professor of Political Theory G.A. (Jerry) Cohen

John Finnis was born in South Australia in 1940, studied Law at the University of Adelaide, and went to Oxford in 1962 as Rhodes Scholar for South Australia. His D.Phil. under the supervision of HLA Hart was on Judicial Power. He taught in the Law School at Berkeley, California, in 1965-6, and from 1966 to 2010 was a Law Fellow at University College, Oxford, and from 1967 to 2010 a teaching member of the Faculty of Law in the University of Oxford, Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy from 1987. In 1990 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. From 1976 to 1978 he was seconded from Oxford to be the Professor of Law in the University of Malawi. From 1995 to date he has been the Biolchini Family Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He practiced at the English Bar from 1979 to 1994, advised several State governments in Australia, and was the adviser to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Patriation of the Canadian Constitution 1980-81. His books include Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980, 2011), Fundamentals of Ethics (1983), Nuclear Deterrence, Morality & Realism, with Joseph Boyle and Germain Grisez (1987), Moral Absolutes (1991), Aquinas: Moral, Political & Legal Thought (1998), and five volumes of his Collected Essays (2011). He and his wife were guests at the inauguration in July 2013 of the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

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Dr. Jacob (Kobi) Shapira

‘Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State’

Kobi Shapira is a lecturer for Jewish Law and Constitutional Law in the Law faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in the Law faculty at Bar Ilan University. I am also a Director in the Jewish Law Department in the Ministry of Justice and I served as the senior assistant to the attorney General of the state of Israel Mr. Elyakim Rubinstein - who is now Justice in the Supreme Court.

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American Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Professor Mallory Factor

'Freakshow: The Modern Conservative Movement in American Politics' 

Mallory Factor is the John C. West Professor of International Politics and American Government at The Citadel and is a FoxNews Contributor. He is currently the Senior Visiting Mellon Fellow in the Department of History and a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Mallory is the co-founder of The New York Meeting, a nationally-recognized gathering of elected officials, journalists, business leaders and conservative authors in New York City. He hosts a similar meeting, The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, South Carolina. Mallory is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as Vice-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Terrorism Financing. Mallory is senior fellow at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was previously senior fellow to the House Republican Study Committee from 2007 to 2011. Mallory Factor is the best-selling author of Shadowbosses, the exposé of government employee union power in America today. Mallory’s latest book, Big Tent, released in April 2014, is also a New York Times bestseller and serves as an intellectual history of the American conservative movement.

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Dr. Jacob Shapira 

Kobi Shapira is a lecturer for Jewish Law and Constitutional Law in the Law faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in the Law faculty at Bar Ilan University. I am also a Director in the Jewish Law Department in the Ministry of Justice and I served as the senior assistant to the attorney General of the state of Israel Mr. Elyakim Rubinstein - who is now Justice in the Supreme Court. 

‘Can the Halacha be Expressed through a Literary Narrative as Opposed to Normative Ruling?'

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Dr. Sharon Shakargy

‘Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God": Family and Immigration in Israeli Law’ 

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Dr. Netanel Dagan

‘Ten Commandments and still counting? Notes on the limits of the Jewish law’

‪In the talk we will discuss the concept of 613 Mitzvot and the different approaches in the medieval Talmudic commentators regarding the concept of counting the commandments as well as possible meaning to the general jurisprudence.

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Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

‘Unconditional Love: A response to Naomi Wolf’

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Professor Joshua Getzler

Josh Getzler is Professor of Law and Legal History at the University of Oxford and author of A History of Water Rights at Common Law (OUP).

‘How can one believe in the First Commandment?’

Is there something unique about the first commandment, ‘I am the Lord your G‑d'? Is it possible to command the existence of a true fact, or command as an act of volition a belief? And how can one be commanded to believe in the existence of the commander, as the potency of the command presupposes the source of the commandment as already existing? These philosophical conundra exercised Rambam and his critics, in a fascinating debate we shall uncover, and hopefully, resolve.

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Professor Jan Joosten

The New Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Oxford

'The Septuagint as a product of Hellenistic Judaism'

Jan Joosten (born 1959 in Ekeren, Belgium) studied theology in Brussels and Princeton, and Semitic languages in Jerusalem. He earned a PhD in Semitic languages at the Hebrew University in 1989, a ThD at the Protestant Faculty in Brussels in 1994, and a HDR (Habilitation à diriger des recherches) in Strasbourg in 1994. From 1994 to 2014 he taught at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Strasbourg, first as professor of Biblical Languages, and from 2004 as professor of Old Testament. Since 2014 he is Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Oxford. Editor-in-chief of Vetus Testamentum since 2010. President of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies since 2012. Editor, together with Eberhard Bons, of the Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint, to be published by Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen. He is married with four children.

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Dr. Yuval Yekutieli

‘The origins of the Hebrew Alphabet’

Yuval Yekutieli is a senior lecturer at the Department of Bible, Archaeology and the Ancient Near East at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and currently a visiting scholar at Oxford's Wolfson College. His research is focused on the archaeology of southern Israel and its neighboring regions: the Negev, Sinai, and the Arava - Dead Sea rift valley during the Southern Levantine Bronze Ages (3,600 – 1,200 BCE). His fieldwork includes among other things the study of the Early Bronze Age activity around the Dead Sea; research of the miners' social landscape at the Timna copper mines during the late New Kingdom period (ca. 1,400 – 1,100 BCE); and currently he runs an excavation project at the Early Bronze Age Town of Tel Erani (in collaboration with the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland).

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Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

'Marks of Genius: A glimpse of the editorial development of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah'

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Dr. Orit Yekutieli, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

 ‘A view from the edge of the West - study and perceptions of Moroccan Jewry in Morocco’

Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli is a researcher from Sapir College, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, currently a visiting scholar at St Antony's College, Oxford. Her research is focused on modern Morocco, including history of labour and modernity in Morocco; the historiography about Moroccan Jewry and aspects of the Vichy period in Morocco.

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Daniel Herskowitz

Daniel Herskowitz has a degree in Philosophy and History from the Open University of Israel, graduated Cum Laude. Obtained a Masters degree in Philosophy from Hebrew University, graduated Cum Laude. Worked as the educational and academic director of the second year program in Ein Prat, an educational institute in Israel and lectured there on Philosophy and on Bible.

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Dr Hugh Doherty

 Lecturer in Medieval History, University of East Anglia

'Magna Carta and the Jewish Community of Twelfth-Century England'

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Shabbat Dinner  

Judge Ram Winograd

'Jewish Law and Israeli Law: Can the two walk together?'

Ram Winograd resides as a Judge at the Jerusalem District Court. He was ordinated as a Rabbi (by the Chief Rabbis of Israel) in 1992, earned his LLB degree (Bachelor of Law) at the Hebrew University in 1994 and his BCL degree in Oxford in 1996. In between he served as a clerk to the Justice E. Goldberg of the Israeli Supreme Court and was accepted to the Bar. He then worked as an attorney at law at a law firm and as an assistant lecturer at the Hebrew University and Ramat-Gan College. He was nominated for a Judge of the Jerusalem Trial Court on 2003 and was appointed as a Judge of the Jerusalem District Court in 2011.

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Dr. David Sclar

'Sir Paul Rycaut's Account of Sabbatai Tsevi and Jewish Messianism in the 1660s'

David Sclar is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. He earned his PhD in History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and researches Jewish life and culture in the early modern period. He is working on a monograph on the Italian kabbalist and poet, Moses Hayim Luzzatto (1707-1746), and is presently participating in a seminar on Jewish Books in Amsterdam convened by the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies.

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Provost of Worcester College Professor Jonathan Bate   

‘Shakespeare & the Jews’

Biographer, critic, broadcaster and scholar Jonathan Bate is Provost of Worcester College and Professor of English Literature at Oxford. His many books include acclaimed works on Shakespeare, The Genius of Shakespeare and Soul of the Age, and a biography of the poet John Clare that won Britain’s two oldest literary awards, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Prize. In the 2015 New Years Honours list, he was knighted for his services to literature. His new book, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life, will be published globally by HarperCollins in October.

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Rob Watson

Rob Watson is a political correspondent for the BBC World Service.

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Professor Paul Brand FBA

Emeritus Fellow All Souls College, Oxford

‘Jews and the law in England 1190-1290' 

Paul Brand is Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College and Professor of English Legal History in the University of Oxford. His main Publications include: The Origins of the English Legal Profession, 1992; The Making of the Common Law, 1992; The Earliest English Law Reports, vols. I, II, 1996 and vols. III and IV, 2005 and 2007 ; Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England, 2003.

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Prof William Brustein 

'Leftist Origins of Modern Antisemitism’

Prof. Brustein is Vice Provost for Global Strategies and International Affairs and Professor of Sociology, Political Science and History at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He has written a book Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 2003 and his most recent book isThe Socialism of Fools?: Leftist Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 2015.

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Sir Adam Roberts

‘The Fate of the Arab Spring’

Adam Roberts is former President of the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for International Studies in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations. He is also Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics & Political Science, and of St Antony's College Oxford. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by King's College London (2010), Aberdeen University (2012), Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo (2012), and Bath University (2014). He is a Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011- ), and a Member of the American Philosophical Society (2013- ). He was a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2002-8); and member of the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board (2003-15). His co-dited upcoming book isCivil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters, which Oxford University Press is publishing in January.

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Rabbi Chaim Rapoport

"The Talmud and Maimonides on Martyrdom and Self Preservation".

This course will focus on the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 74a-bff) and Maimonides' Mishneh Torah (Yesodei HaTorah ch. 5). This course will explore the Rabbinic approach to this complex and multi-faceted subject from the earliest canons of Jewish law up to and including Holocaust and Post - Holocaust rabbinic literature. Rabbi Rapoport is a leading educator, lecturer and expert Judaic scholar. He is former Rabbi of the Birmingham Central Synagogue.

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Holocaust Memorial Lecture 

Dr. Ben Helfgott MBE

Ben Helfgott, born in Lodz, Poland, 1929, is a Holocaust survivor of Buchenwald and Theresienstadt and former champion weightlifter. He won the UK's 11-stone championship in 1954, and was lightweight champion in 1955, 1956, and 1958. He represented Great Britain at weightlifting in the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia and was the captain of the British weightlifting teams at the Olympics in 1956 (Melbourne) and 1960 (Rome).

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Dr. Sharman Kadish

Dr Sharman Kadish is Director of Jewish Heritage UK. She was born in London and educated at the Universities of London, Oxford and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has taught at the Universities of London and Manchester and is author of a number of books on Anglo-Jewish history and heritage, including Bolsheviks and British Jews (1992), A Good Jew and a Good Englishman: The Jewish Lads´ and Girls´ Brigade 1895-1995 (1995);Building Jerusalem: Jewish Architecture in Britain (ed. 1996); companion architectural guides Jewish Heritage in England (2006) and Jewish Heritage in Gibraltar (2007). Her new book The Synagogues of Britain and Ireland: An Architectural and Social History (Yale) has just been published.

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Prof. Derek Penslar  

'In Search of the 'Smoking Gun:' Historians, Archives, and the Origin of War'

Derek Jonathan Penslar, FRSC is a Canadian historian. He was raised in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University for his first degree, and then took his graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, where his advisors were Richard Webster, Amos Funkenstein and Gerald Feldman. Penslar taught at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1987 to 1998, when he moved to Toronto to assume the Samuel J. Zacks Chair in Jewish History at the University of Toronto (U of T). Between 2002 and 2008 he directed U of T's Centre for Jewish Studies. In 2011, it was announced that he was to become the first Stanley Lewis professor of Israel studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, following a £3m donation. He has become a fellow of St Anne's College.

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Professor Don Seeman 

Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University

Professor Seeman received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1997. His research interests include medical anthropology, anthropology of experience, Ethiopian-Israelis, anthropological approaches to Hebrew Bible, Judaism and Hasidism, and violence and extremism in Israel. He has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His publications include: "'Where is Sarah Your Wife': Cultural Poetics of Gender and Nationhood in the Hebrew Bible," in Harvard Theological Review 91:2 (1998); "'One People, One Blood': Public Health, Political Violence, and HIV in an Ethiopian-Israeli Setting," in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 23 (1999); "Bodies and Narratives: The Question of Kinship in the Beta Israel - European Encounter (1860-1920)," in Journal of Religion in Africa 30:1 (2000) and One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2009).

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Rabbi David Eliezri

Rabbi Eliezrie is the president of the Rabbinical Council of Orange County and Long Beach. He serves on the board of the Jewish Federation of Orange County.

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John Bowers QC 

'Does European Human Rights Law adequately protect religious groups?'

John Bowers QC is the new Principal of Brasenose College, University of Oxford, and a leading human rights and employment lawyer with particular focus on matters of equal pay, discrimination, minimum wage and unfair dismissal. He sits as a Deputy High Court Judge. He is an approved counsel for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and has written numerous books on human rights and employment law, including standard texts on whistleblowing and industrial action.

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Sir Isaiah Berlin Lecture

Professor Lenn Goodman 

'Judaism and Natural Law'

Introduction by the Berlin Family

Lenn Goodman is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. A well known author and speaker, he is an active contributor to Jewish philosophy, a Herzl Templeton Fellow, and a past recipient of the Baumgardt Prize of the American Philosophical Association, the Gratz Centennial Prize (for God of Abraham, Oxford University Press, 1996), and the Sutherland Prize of his own Vanderbilt University. Goodman is the author of fifteen books including On Justice: An Essay in Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values, In Defense of Truth: A Pluralist Approach, andReligious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere. In Creation and Evolutionhe wrote on the harmony of science and religion, as he did, with a co-author, inComing to Mind: The Soul and its Body, exploring the vitality of the idea of the soul in the light of today’s advances in brain science. His Gifford Lectures were published by Oxford University Press under the title Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself. Since the 1970s Goodman has been deeply engaged with the philosophy of Maimonides and is now at work with a colleague on the first new English translation in over half a century of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed.

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Yom Limmud 

Sofia Locatelli, University of Bologna  

'A study of a private collection of italian ketubbot'

Sofia Locatelli graduated in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna in 2014. She wrote her MA dissertation on an unpublished private collection of Italian Ketubbot, where she analyzed both their textual and artistic aspects. This thesis was published in April 2015 by La Giuntina press, Florence, with the title: “Le ketubbot italiane della collezione Fornasa.

Elena Lolli, University of Bologna

'Jewish life and culture in Lugo di Romagna, Italy: A careful examination of the Pinqas ha-nifṭarim Qahal Qadosh Lugo between 1658 and 1825'

Elena Lolli graduated in Historical, Artistic and Musical Heritage (BA 2011) as well as History and Conservation of Works of Art (MA 2013) at the University of Bologna, Ravenna campus. At present she is working on her PhD research project under the supervision of Prof. Mauro Perani (University of Bologna, Ravenna campus); her thesis will deepen the study of Jewish life and culture in Lugo di Romagna thanks to a careful examination of the Pinqas ha-nifṭarim Qahal Qadosh Lugo, a source of great importance compiled in Hebrew between 1658 and 1825 and currently stored in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Ms. n. 3960) in New York.

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London

Naftali Loewenthal is adjunct lecturer in Jewish Spirituality at University College London’s Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department. He is the author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990) and many articles, both academic and popular.

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.

Dr. Lior Weizman, Oxford University

'The Defeat of the Amalekites and Parshet Zachor'

Dr. Lior Weizman is a Post-Doc at the MRI research facility of Oxford University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Computer Science and Engineering School at the Hebrew University, carried out in collaboration with Stanford University. He holds M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Ben-Gurion University. Has is also affiliated with the Technion, and has been awarded with the UK-Technion fellowship for research in Oxford. His current research focuses on the physics of MRI, aiming at improving the scanning experience for the patient.

Professor Miriam Frenkel, Head, The Dinur Center for the Research of Jewish History, The Department for Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

‘ India as metaphor and reality in medieval Jewish thought and practice’

Prof. Miriam Frenkel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Jewish History and the School of History at the Hebrew University. She completed a PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main fields of research include Geniza studies, cultural and social history of Medieval Judaism in the lands of Islam, medieval cultural encounters between Judaism and Islam.

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Viewing of Hebraica Collection at St John's College

The viewing will include: 12/13^th century manuscript of Joshua, Judges, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Early printed Hebrew works by Bomberg’s Venetian press, a 17^th c. Zohar, several editions of Munster’s Hebrew dictionary, an 18^th century Midrash with Hebrew provenance inscriptions, among other items.

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Isaac Meyers Memorial Lecture

Dr. Nadia Valman

'Good Jews and Bad Jews in Victorian Culture'

Dr Nadia Valman is Reader in English Literature at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author ofThe Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and the editor of anthologies and essay collections on Jews and British literature, most recently Amy Levy: Critical Essays (2010), Nineteenth Century Jewish Literature: A Reader (2013) and British Jewish Women Writers(2014). She is currently researching the literature of the East End of London and has created a mobile app based on the work of the Anglo-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill.

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Professor John Lennox

'Cosmic Chemistry - Do Science and G‑d mix? 

John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy and religion. He regularly teaches at many academic institutions including the Said Business School, Wycliffe Hall and the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, as well as also being a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. He has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science and Christianity and he has also participated in a number of televised debates with some of the world’s leading atheist thinkers.

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Professor Marcus du Sautoy

Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

"What We Cannot Understand"  

Marcus du Sautoy OBE is the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Formerly a Fellow ofAll Souls College, and Wadham College, he is now a Fellow ofNew College. He is President of the Mathematical Association. He was previously an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow and a Royal Society University Research Fellow. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory. In October 2008, he was appointed to the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science, succeeding the inaugural holder Richard Dawkins.

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Seventh Night of Passover Festival Dinner

David Goldman

'The Jewish Concept of Freedom'

David Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. According to the Claremont Review of Books, the "Spengler" columns in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions. Goldman concealed his identity under the "Spengler" pseudonym until 2009, when he revealed his identity. As "Spengler", Goldman wrote about a wide range of topics, varying from music theory to culture and religion (Goldman himself is an Modern Orthodox Jew), but his main focus was geo-economic and geo-political issues. In his 2011 book How Civilizations Die Goldman revealed his worldview at length, inspired by Franz Rosenzweig and his "The Star of Redemption".

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American Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Professor Sir Mallory Factor   

'Freakshow or Big Tent Revisited: The changing American Conservative Circus'

Introduction by Rob Watson, BBC World Service Correspondent   

Darin Gardner, former Chief of Staff for US Congresswoman Kay Granger

Mallory Factor is the John C. West Professor of International Politics and American Government at The Citadel and is a Fox News Contributor. He is currently the Senior Visiting Mellon Fellow in the Department of History and a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Mallory is the co-founder of The New York Meeting, a nationally-recognized gathering of elected officials, journalists, business leaders and conservative authors in New York City. He hosts a similar meeting, The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, South Carolina. Mallory is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as Vice-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Terrorism Financing. Mallory is senior fellow at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was previously senior fellow to the House Republican Study Committee from 2007 to 2011. Mallory Factor is the best-selling author of Shadowbosses, the exposé of government employee union power in America today. Mallory’s latest book, Big Tent, released in April 2014, is also a New York Times bestseller and serves as an intellectual history of the American conservative movement.

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Holocaust Remembrance Day

Holocaust Survivor Harry Spiro

Harry Spiro was born in Piotrkow Trybunalski Poland on 21st November 1929. Before the war he lived with his parents and younger sister Gita. Harry worked in a glass factory in the ghetto and, due to his mother’s premonition, he evaded being sent with his family to Treblinka gas chambers as she pushed him out of the house against his will saying: “Let one of us survive!” His mother, father and younger sister were killed in Treblinka. In August 1945 Harry had the opportunity to come to England with The Boys. He was looked after in Windermere and then started a new life in London where he worked in menswear creating a successful career.

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Larry Sanders

Older brother and inspiration to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders   

'How I inspired Bernie Sanders' Radical Politics'

Lawrence "Larry" Sanders, born in Brooklyn, NY, is theelder brother and political inspiration to the United States Senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Larry is the Health Spokesperson of the Green Party of England and Wales. He studied at Brooklyn College, Harvard Law School and Oxford University. Larry Sanders was born to Jewish parents Dorothy (née Glassberg) and Eli Sanders. Sanders' father was a Jewish immigrant from Slopnice, Poland, whose family was killed in the Holocaust, while his mother was born in New York City, to Jewish immigrant parents.

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Dr. Sarah Hirschhorn 

Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies; University Research Lecturer, in Israel Studies, University of Oxford; Junior Research Fellow, Wolfson College Modern Israeli and Middle East History.

Celebrating Israel's 68th Birthday

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Professor Marcus du Sautoy OBE

Marcus du Sautoy holds Oxford University's prestigious Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins, and is also a professor of Mathematics 

"What We Cannot Know"

Marcus du Sautoy holds Oxford University's prestigious Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins, and is also a professor of Mathematics. He has presented numerous programmes on television and radio, including the internationally acclaimed BBC series The Story of Maths and the comedy maths show The School of Hard Sums with Dara Ó Briain. He writes extensively for the Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and has written and performed a new play called X&Y which has been staged in London's Science Museum and Glastonbury Festival. He received an OBE for services to science in the 2010 New Year's Honours List. His latest book The Number Mysteries is his manifesto for a new curriculum in mathematics.

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Gerald A. Cohen Memorial Lecture

Professor Peter Hacker   

'Wittgenstein’s contribution to philosophy’

Peter Hacker is the leading Wittgenstein scholar at Oxford. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at The Queen's College, Oxford from 1960–63. In 1963–65 he was senior Scholar at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he began graduate work under the supervision of Professor H. L. A. Hart. His D.Phil thesis "Rules and Duties" was completed in 1966 during a Junior Research Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. Since 1966 Peter Hacker has been a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford University philosophy faculty. Hacker is Emeritus Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford and is presently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kent.

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JEWISH FAIR ON BROAD STREET

Celebrating the Jewish Holiday of Lag B'omer

Thursday, 26th May, 1pm-5pm

* SHE'KOYOKH Klezmer Band - "amongst the finest klezmer ensembles on the planet" - The Australian

* 'Tapuchei Zemer' Klezmer Band of Oxford

* Talented Harpist Fien Barnett-Neefs

* Kosher Hotdogs, Shawarma, Falafel, Hummus and bagel

* Oxford Jewish History Exhibition - from Medieval times to modern era

* Jewish & Israeli Book Stand – Steimatzky and Joseph’s bookshop

* Jewish Posters from Israel

* Jewish Crafts - Write your name in Hebrew beads - Create a pretty bead bracelet with your name in Hebrew letters

* Rabbi Shimeon’s Shooting Range - Come and try your hand with a “bow and arrow” to hide your studies away.

* Challah Baking

* Authentic Jewish Scribal 'Sofer' Stand

*** PONY RIDES ***

Grand Opening of Fair with city and university dignitaries: 3pm

All are welcome!

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Yom Limmud Seminar in Jewish Studies

Professor Galit Hasan-Rokem, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

"Is the Star of David a Jewish symbol?"

Galit Hasan-Rokem is the Max and Margarethe Grunwald Professor of Folklore and Professor of Hebrew Literature (emerita), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London's Department for Hebrew and Jewish Studies

"On the Image of the Author of the Kabbalah, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai"

Rabbi Eli Brackman

'Berachiah of Lincoln'   

Professor Tal Ilan

Tal Ilan is an Israeli-born historian, notably of women's history in Judaism, and lexicographer. She is the initiator and director of The Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud (FCBT). She is currently professor of Jewish Studies at the Freie University in Berlin.

"Are Women Included in the Rabbinic Perception of a Jewish Person?"

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Exclusive Hebrew Manuscript Viewing at Merton College

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Hamid Sabi

Chairman of the Iranian Jewish Community in Londo 

"The Iranian Consul & the Jews during the Second World War"

Honouring the achievement of Abdol Hussein Sardari, Iranian Consul in Paris during Nazi occupation, who was responsible for saving many Jews from the Holocaust.

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Peter Bergamin

DPhil Student in Oriental Studies at University of Oxford

'Abba Ahimeir: the Fascist Revolutionary'

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Professor David Deutsch

David Deutsch, FRS is an Israeli-born British physicist at the University of Oxford and the widely recognised father of Quantum Computers. He is a Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford.

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Shavuot Cheesecake & Blintzes Buffet & Lectures

Tikun Leil Programme:

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London

Adam Gradel, St Anthony's College, University of Oxford

'Joseph and Potiphar's Wife through Jewish and Islamic Texts'

Dr. Lior Weizmann, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford

'Laws of Repentance by the Rambam'

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

The Kabbalah:

Jonathan Hunter, Oriental Studies, University of Oxford 

'Colonel Albert Goldsmid, history's Deronda: A case study in the meaning of Jewishness' 

Joshua Blachorsksy, Wolfson College, University of Oxford

'Cain and Abel in early Jewish interpretation?' 

Rabbi Mendy Loewenthal, Medical School, University of Toronto

'Physician assisted dying - a halachic perspective or a Talmudic perspective'

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Arthur Asseraf

Arthur Asseraf BA, MA, MSc. is an Examination Fellow at All Souls College since 2012. His research spans French, Middle Eastern and global history. He is currently completing a DPhil on the history of international news in colonial Algeria.

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Hebraic Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library

Introduction by Dr. Cesar Merchan Hamann, Curator, Bodleian Library

The Bodleian’s Hebraica collection dates from the earliest years of the Library’s history and the accession of several key collections in the 19^th century, such as the Oppenheimer Library and fragments from the Cairo Genizah, has rendered it one of the most important collections of Hebrew manuscripts in the world. The Library also has a very important collection of early Yiddish printed books, in many cases holding the only surviving copy.

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Director General of the European Commission Jonathan Faull

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John Mann MP

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Jozef Kosc

Green Templeton College, Nato

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Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford Professor Louise Richardson 

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Elazar Stern MK

Elazar Stern is an Israeli politician and former soldier. He served as a Major General in the Israel Defense Forces and as Head of the Manpower Directorate. In 2013, he became a member of the Knesset for Hatnuah, and currently serves as an MK for Yesh Atid.

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Auschwitz Holocaust survivor Anita Laskar Wallfisch

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, born in 1925, Breslau, Germany, is a cellist, and a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra in Auschwitz. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list 2016.

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Hebrew Coin Viewing at the Ashmolean Musuem

Coins on display will include Late Hellenistic / early Roman Provincial Jewish coins, coins from the two Jewish Wars and Roman Imperial coins relating to the Jews e.g. Nerva abolishing the Fiscus Judaicus or Vespasian and his sons celebrating victory in the First Jewish War.

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Professor Lisa Leff

‘The Archive Thief: the Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust’

Lisa Moses Leff is Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. (USA). She is author of Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in 19th Century France (Stanford University Press, 2006) as well as the book upon which the present talk is based, The Archive Thief (Oxford University Press, 2015). The Archive Thief was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and the winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She is spending the current academic year (2016-17) as a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. 

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Professor Bo Rothstein

'Social Justice, Ethnic Diversity and Trust' 

Bo Rothstein is the new Professor of Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College. Before coming to Oxford he held the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at University of Gothenburg in Sweden where he was co-founder and head of the Quality of Government (QoG) Institute. He took his PhD in Political Science at Lund University and before coming to Gothenburg he was assistant and associate professor at Uppsala University. His book Corruption and the Opposite of Corruption will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. His recent books English are The Quality of Government: Corruption, Inequality and Social Trust in International Perspective (University of Chicago Press 2011 and the co-edited volume Good Government: The Relevance of Political Science (Edward Elgar 2012). Bo a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

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Yom Limmud - Seminar in Jewish Studies

Professor Laura Leibman 

‘The material of race: how emancipation transformed early American Jews’ 

Laura Arnold Leibman is an American Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (2012) won a number of awards. She is currently completing a book entitled The Material of Race: How Emancipation Transformed American Jews. 

Professor Matthew Silver

'From the Ostjuden to the Ma'abarot: Building a Jewish Nation Divided between the Traditional East and the Modern West'

Matthew Silver received his BA from Cornell University and his MA and Ph.D in Modern Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel's Founding Story (2010), and In the Service of the West: A New Look at Modern Jewish History [Hebrew, 2014]. His 2013 volume, Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. He is a Professor in the General Studies Department at the Max Stern College of Emek Yezreel.

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

'The 12th century Haggadah of Corpus Christi College'

Lindsay Alissa King

'Jews of the Viennese Press and the Ideal Male Aesthete, 1837-1848'

Lindsay King is a PhD candidate at the University of California in Los Angeles and currently a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Her research focuses on Jewish involvement in Viennese literary and theater criticism and political journalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Her work looks at the gender politics of this writing, anxiety about the appearance of women in liberal professions and political organizations, and the relationship between these developments and the emergence of the so-called "Jewish journalist." She hold a master's degree from the Hebrew University. 

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal

‘Chassidic Teachings for a Russian Nobleman, 1825 - a chink in the wall of the cultural ghetto?’

Naftali Loewenthal lectures in Jewish Spirituality at University College London’s Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department. He is the author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (University of Chicago Press). 

Dr. Israel Sandman

'Human and Divine Freedom Within Divine Monism - from the thought of the Lubavitcher Rebbe'

Israel Sandman is a Fellow at the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London and an expert on medieval Jewish philosophy and manuscripts. 

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Prof. Malachi Haim Hacohen

'Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishmael: The Future of Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim Relations'

Malachi Haim Hacohen (PhD, Columbia) is Bass Fellow and Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Duke University, and Director of the Council for European Studies and of the Religions and Public Life Initiative at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.  His research focuses on Jewish European history, and he has published on the Central European Jewish intelligentsia, Cold War liberalism, nation and empire in Austrian history, and cosmopolitanism and Jewish Identity. His book Karl Popper – The Formative Years:  Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the AHA and the Victor Adler State Prize.

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Former Israeli Ambassador Mr. Avi Benjamin 

‘The Roles of an Israeli Ambassador’

Born in the UK. Read Modern Languages at St Peter's, Oxford. Emigrated to Israel in 1968 on graduating from Oxford, joined the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1974. Retired in 2008 after serving as Ambassador to the Baltic States and subsequently to Angola. Also served as Minister in Bonn and Moscow, and Director of the Churches Division and the Central European Division in the Ministry. Married with three children.

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Professor Laurence Brockliss  

'Jewish Exiles at Oxford in the 1930s and 1940s' 

L.W.B. Brockliss, Fellow and Tutor in History Magdalen College and Professor of Early-Modern French History, University of Oxford. Professor L.W.B. Brockliss is a historian of education, science, and medicine with a particular interest in early-modern France and England. His doctoral thesis was on the University of Paris and his first book was a study of French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1987). More recently, he has been the editor and co-author of Magdalen College, Oxford: A History (2008). He is author of University of Oxford: A History (OUP, 2016), a single-volume history of the University of Oxford from its beginnings in the late eleventh century to the present day.

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Rami Sherman 

'Entebbe 40 years: A personal recollection by a commando' 

Rami Sherman grew up on kibbutz Lehavot Habashan in the north of Israel and was educated by the kibbutz movement educational system. During his army service, he served in the IDF's Navy Seal unit from which he was honourably discharged with the rank of Major. In 1976, during the "Entebbe Operation", Rami served as Yoni Netanyahu’s Operations Officer, who led the backup force.

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Pre-Purim Persian Shabbat Dinner

Renowned booze correspondent 

Henry Jeffreys

'Empire of Booze' 

Henry Jeffreys is a renowned booze correspondent and author of 'Empire of Booze: A history of the British Empire told through drink' (Penguin 2016). Henry studied English and Classical Literature at the University of Leeds. He is a wine columnist for the Lady magazine and contributor to the Spectator and Guardian on booze-related matters. Henry has worked as a freelance journalist. Under the name Henry Castiglione, he reviewed books for the Telegraph and thefirstpost.co.uk, and wrote a regular column for travel website momondo.com. Under the name Blake Pudding he was a founder member of the London Review of Breakfasts website as well as a contributor to the Breakfast Bible (Bloomsbury, 2013). In 2010 he started a blog about wine called Henry’s World of Booze which is currently in the top ten UK alcohol blogs according to Cision. 

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Dr. Mitchell Bard

Mitchell Bard is an American foreign policy analyst, editor and author who specializes in U.S.–Middle East policy. He is the Executive Director of the non-profit American–Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, the world's most comprehensive online encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture. Bard holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and a master's degree in public policy from Berkeley. Dr. Bard's work has been published in academic journals, magazines and major newspapers. He has written and edited 22 books, including Will Israel Survive?, Myths And Facts: A Guide to the Arab Israeli Conflict and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict. In 2013, he was placed on the Algemeiner's list of the Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life for his work.

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Kindertransport Refugee Lord Alf Dubs

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Prof. Goodwin Gill

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Prof. Frances Stewart

‘Why we should be concerned about Horizontal Inequalities’

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Dr. Ilona Steinman

Ilona Steimann is a post-doctoral fellow in Jewish culture and history at the Department of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich 

'Christian Owners hip of Jewish Books: Medieval Jewish Attitudes'

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Prof David S. Oderberg

‘Conscientious objection in health care’ 

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Professor Martin Goodman, FBA, President, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford

'Tikkun Leyl Shavuot in first-century Egypt' 

Dr. Donald T. Ariel, Head of the Coin Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority 

Ros Abramsky, Birkbeck College/Oxford

'Akdomus Milin: a liturgical poem (piyyut) recited on Shavuot by Ashkenazi Jews written in Aramaic' 

Dr. Nechama Hadari, PhD, Manchester University, author of The Kosher Get: A Halakhic Story of Divorce 

Atar Hadari, author of Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik (Syracuse University Press)

'The Role of the Posek (Halachic Decisor) in the Modern Era'

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Professor Kenneth Rogoff

Thomas D. Cabot Professor at Harvard University 

“The Case for Reducing Cash in Advanced Countries, Demonetization in India, and the Contributions of Robert Eisler”

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Orde Levinson

'Shakespeare's heroic Jew: reinterpretation of the merchant of Venice?'

Orde Levinson studied for a DPhil at Magdalen College, Oxford, and is currently an artist, writer, art historian, playwright, and director of Song publishing and gallery.

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The Isaac Meyers Memorial Lecture

Emeritus Professor Glenda Abramson

'Judaism and Modernity in the work of SY Agnon'

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Rabbi Ofer Livnat 

Ofer Livnat is a rabbinical judge (Dayan) and fellow at the Eretz Hemdah Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and lecturer at Montefiore College in London - a Dayanut program for community rabbis in Eastern Europe and North America. He also lectures at the Jerusalem College. 

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Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud

Exploring Jewish philosophy, history, law, Biblical exegesis, mysticism and manuscripts  

Jeremy Lieberman, Oriental Studies, University of Oxford

‘The Causes of the Bar Kokhba War Revisited’

Jeremy Lieberman is a graduate student at the University of Oxford currently working towards his MSt in Jewish Studies. Prior to Oxford, he grew up in Hong Kong and completed a BA (Hons) in History at McGill University. Jeremy is particularly interested in Jewish history during Greco-Roman period.

Dr. Judah Galinsky, Department of Talmud, Bar-Ilan University

'The Simple Shepherd and the Rabbi: Intention and Action in the Thought of R. Isaac of Corbeil'

Judah Galinsky is Lecturer in the Department of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University. His research interests include Jewish law and thought in medieval Europe. He published “On Popular Halakhic Literature and the Emergence of a Reading Audience in Fourteenth-Century Spain” (2008); and “The Significance of Form: R. Moses of Coucy’s Reading Audience and his Sefer ha-Mizvot” (2011). At the Center, Galinsky studies thirteenth-century halakhic literature in northern France and Christian Spain. 

Dr. Hallel Baitner, Department of Talmud, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

‘Behind Midrash: The Biblical Exegesis of the Rabbis’

Hallel Baitner is a fellow at the department of Talmud, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His dissertation (under the supervision of Prof. Menahem Kahana) deals with the tannaitic midrash 'Sifre Zuta' to the book of Numbers. The main issue is the relationship between mishna and midrash (law and interpretation) in the halakhic Midrashim, both as a question of the history of rabbinic law and of the development of rabbinic literary genres. 

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

'Esther & commentary manuscripts at the Bodleian Library'

Dr. Maria Sokolskaya, University of Bern

'The Legend of the Seventy Translators' 

Maria Sokolskaya completed her PhD in Jewish Studies at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland in 2017 and is currently preparing her doctoral thesis "Philo and the Septuagint: The framework of his exegesis" for print. She received her M.A. in Classical Philology from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, and taught Greek and Latin in several colleges in Moscow.  

Dr. Israel Sandman, Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London

'The culture of manuscript copies of Hasidic discourses'

Israel Sandman is a Fellow at the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London and an expert on medieval Jewish philosophy and manuscripts. 

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Refusenik Yosef Mendelevich

Yosef Mendelevich was a Jewish refusenik in the former Soviet Union who spent 12 years in prison together with fellow Refusenik and 'prisoner of Zion' Natan Sharansky. Being repeatably refused the right to immigration, he became one of the leaders of the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair. In 1981, after a worldwide struggle, he was released and immigrated to Israel. He is author of Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage and Survival. His latest book is 'A hero of Jewish freedom'. 

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Lunch & Learn

Chief Judge Honorable Patti B. Saris

Patti B. Saris is Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts since January 1, 2013. She served as Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2017 and previously held a number of public appointments, including staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Civil Division for the District of Massachusetts,  U.S. Magistrate, and Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court. She was appointed a U.S. Federal Judge in 1993. She was President of the Harvard Board of Overseers in 2006 and has served in visiting committees at Harvard University for the Law School, Education School, and the Kennedy School of Government. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.

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Emeritus Professor Kate Miriam Loewenthal

‘Anti-semitism and its mental health effects’  

CM 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.

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Israeli Ambassador HE Mark Regev

'Challenges Facing Israel at Seventy' 

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Rabbi Professor Abraham Steinberg

Jewish Medical Ethics 

Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD, is an associate clinical professor of medical ethics at the Hebrew University–Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. He is the author of The Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, for which he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1999. Professor Steinberg is a senior pediatric neurologist at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. He directs the Medical Ethics Unit at Shaare Zedek. Head of the editorial board of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, he is also director of Yad Harav Herzog, and a member of national and international societies of child neurology, medical ethics, and Jewish medical ethics. In Israel, Professor Steinberg is the co-chairman of the National Bioethics Council, chairman of the National Committee in accordance with the Dying Patient Act, a member of the National Committee in accordance with the Brain-Death Act, a member of the National Committee for Inspection on Mohalim, a member of the Institutional Review Board (“Helsinki Committee”) of Shaare Zedek, and a member of the Ethics Committee of Shaare Zedek. 

Dr. Charles Foster

'Who am I? Questions of identity in medical ethics' 

Personality appears to change with time and life events. Dementia, for instance, appears to replace person A with person B. Traumatic brain injury, medication, and techniques such as deep brain stimulation can produce similarly tectonic changes. How should medical ethicists and lawyers deal with these problems?'

Charles Foster is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.. Recent books include Identity, Personhood and the law, Depression: Law and Ethics, Being a Beast, Altruism, Welfare and the Law, Dementia: Law and Ethics, Medical Law: A Very Short Introduction, In the hot unconscious: An Indian Journey, Human dignity in bioethics and law, The Selfless Gene, and Tracking the Ark of the Covenant. Being a Beast will be the subject of a feature film from Sovereign Films. 

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Professor Lewis Glinert 

'The Story of Hebrew'

Lewis Glinert is professor of Hebrew studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated with the program in linguistics. His books include The Grammar of Modern Hebrew and, most recently, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton).

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Oxford Jewish Fair On Broad Street

Celebrating the Jewish Holiday of Lag B'omer

** SHE'KOYOKH Klezmer Band - "amongst the finest klezmer ensembles on the planet" - The Australian

** Sephardic Cantor Chazan Eliot Alderman

** Matthew Faulk Yiddish folk music

** Kosher Hotdogs, shawarma, Falafel, Hummus and bagels

** NEW History of Jews of England Exhibition

** Jewish Book Stand – Aisenthal 

** Art: Posters from Israel and Hebrew manuscripts

** Crafts & Activities – Flags and symbols, Challah baking, 

** Amazing ‘Pavitra’ raw honey stand

** Authentic Jewish Scribal stand - Sofer

** Western Wall - take a picture and offer a prayer for peace

Supporters: Oxford City Council, Chabad of Oxford, FLAGGS college store, Oxford Jewish Congregation, Heritage Lottery Fund, Oxford Jewish Chaplaincy, JTrails, CST, Douglas Abraham, Orde, Bernard Morris Charitable trust.

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Professor Peter Pulzer

‘Before and after the Anschlus: Growing up in 1930s Austria’

Peter Pulzer was educated at King’s College, Cambridge (MA, PhD in History) and the University of London (BSc in Economics and Political Science). From 1957 to 1996 he taught Politics, International Relations and Modern History at the University of Oxford, from 1984 onwards as Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow of All Souls’ College. He has held numerous visiting professorships, e.g. at the School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, UCLA, Geschwister-Scholl-Institut at Munich University and Humboldt University, Berlin, and lectured at many public and private institutions in North America, Western Europe, the former Soviet bloc and the Middle East. Until 1999 he was employed as Western Europe region head by the international consultancy Oxford Analytica Ltd. His main interests lie in the history and political development of Europe in the last two centuries, with special emphasis on central Europe, including Germany and Austria, and political and ideological movements, especially those of the extreme Right and Left. He has made a special study of Jewish history and anti-Semitism. His books include The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria; Political Representation and Elections in Britain; German Politics 1945-1995.

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Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud

Exploring Jewish philosophy, history, law and mysticism and manuscripts in connection with the Jewish Festival of Shavuot.

Programme: 

Dr. Israel Sandman, University College London

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London

Dr. David Manheim, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

More to be confirmed

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

All are welcome!

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Worcester College Hebraica viewing

Rare Books Room, Worcester College, Walton Street

All are welcome!

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Professor Norman Davies

'Poland and the Holocaust'

Professor Norman Davies CMG, FBA, FLSW, FRSL, FRHistS etc has been an Honorary Fellow of St. Antony's since 2011. He is a Professor Emeritus of UCL-SSEES, an honorary fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge and a life member of Peterhouse. Until 2012, he was UNESCO Professor at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He has received many honorary doctorates, is an honorary citizen of four Polish cities, and in 2012 was granted Poland's highest award, membership of the Order of the White Eagle. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford (MA), the University of Sussex (MA) and UJ Krakow (PhD). Earlier publications in English include: White Eagle, Red Star: the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20 (1972), God' Playground: a History of Poland (OUP, 1981), Heart of Europe: the Past in Poland's Present (OUP, 1984), Europe: a History, (the Oxford History of Europe, OUP, 1996), The Isles: a History (1999), Microcosm: Portrait of a Central Europe City, on Wroclaw/Breslau in conjunction with Roger Moorhouse (2000), Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw, (2003), Europe East and West: Collected Essays (2006), Europe at War, 1939-45 (2006), published in the USA as No Simple Victory (2007), and Vanished Kingdoms: the History of Half-forgotten Europe (2013).

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Tikkun Leyl Shavuot Lecture Programme:

Jerusalem District Court Judge Ram Winograd

'The principles of freedom, justice, integrity and peace of the Jewish Law and the Israel Heritage’ (Israeli Fundamentals Basis of Law Act, art. 1): How should that phrase be interpreted?'

Judge Winograd serves at the Jerusalem District Court. He served in an elite unit in the IDF, completed his legal education at the Hebrew University's law school with honors in 1994 and interned with Justice Eliezer Goldberg of the Supreme Court. He was certified as a lawyer in 1995 and appointed a judge at the Jerusalem Magistrates' Court in 2003, later going on to the city's district court.

Dr. Ros Abramsky, Birkbeck College/Oxford

‘How pious is enough? purity, danger and the outside world’

Prof. Martin Goodman

 ‘Themes in the History of Judaism’

Martin Goodman is President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford, Professor of Jewish Studies, Faculty of Oriental Studies and Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He is the author of a number of books on the Jewish revolts against Rome and the rabbis in the Roman world, and most recently The History of Judaism.  

Sergei Bogdanov, English Faculty, University of Oxford

 ‘Torah for Torah's Sake in the Works of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi and Hayyim of Volozhin’

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

 ‘The tradition to eat dairy on Shavuot in light of a controversial legal ruling of 13th century Rabbi Moses of Oxford’ 

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Pre High Holiday Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud 

Exploring the Jewish High Holidays with leading scholars through history, philosophy, mysticism, liturgy and manuscripts   

Programme: 

Dr. Stefano Salemi

Dr. Salemi is a visiting fellow at Oxford the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Tutor in Biblical Studies and Theology, Oxford University 

'Ezekiel: Divine comforting presence during Exile, a pattern for Jewish resilience'

Rebecca Blumenfeld, Oxford

'Teshuvah - Returning to G‑d or Why Yom Kippur is the Happiest Day of the Year' 

Sarah Montagu, Oxford

'Alphabetical Prayers in the High Holiday Liturgy'

Dr. Ros Abramsky, Oxford

‘Confession is good for the soul’ 

 Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society 

'The development of Kol Nidrei according to Hebrew Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library'

Sergei Bogdanov 

Sergei is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford with expertise in Classical Philology, English Literature.

'Inscribed or inscribed and sealed: The Rosh Hashana Greeting Controversy'

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal

Dr. Loewenthal lectures in Jewish spirituality at University College London's Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department. He is author ofCommunicating the Infinite: The emergence of the Habad School (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990), and many articles, both academic and popular. His forthcoming book is Hasidism Beyond Modernity: Studies in Habad thought and history, to be published by the Littman Library.

'Jewish Orthodox Perspectives on the Theory of Evolution'

Dr. Israel Sandman

Dr Israel Sandman is a research fellow at University College London’s Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies. His areas of research include medieval Jewish thought, medieval Jewish literature, and medieval Hebrew manuscripts. He is currently cataloguing the Chabad Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, Manchester.

'History and Theology: the Lubavitcher Rebbe on the "Great Shofar" (Isaiah 27:13)'

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Professor Ritchie Robertson

'Isaiah Berlin: the Enlightenment and the Dilemmas of Liberalism' 

Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature, Fellow of The Queen’s College. He is interested in a wide range of authors and topics in the period from 1750 onwards, notably Kafka; Heine; Schiller; Austrian literature; and the Enlightenment as an international movement.  He is co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre and of the Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment. He is author of Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (Clarendon Press, 1985), Heine (Peter Halban, 1988), A History of Austrian Literature 1918-2000(Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006)- Editor, with Katrin Kohl, The "Jewish Question" in German Literature, 1749-1939 (Oxford: OUP, 1999), The German-Jewish Dialogue: an anthology of literary texts, 1749-1993, (World's Classics) (Oxford: OUP, 1999) - translator, Kafka: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)(Oxford: OUP, 2004), Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine (Oxford: OUP, 2009).

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Russian Cuisine Shabbat Dinner

Professor Andrei Zorin

'Soviet Jewish Intelligentsia and the Mythology of Russian Golden Age'

Andrei Zorin is Professor of Russian, Fellow of New College, University of Oxford. His area of research is Russian Literature and Cultural History of XVIII early XIX centuries in European Context. Russian Literature and Ideology. Cultural History of Emotions. Late Soviet and Post Soviet Literature.

Friday, 25 May, 7.30pm 

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

All are welcome!

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Professor Benjamin G. Wright

“The Manuscripts of Ben Sira and What They Tell Us about the Ancient Text”

Benjamin Wright is University Distinguished Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA USA). He holds a BA from Ursinus College, an M.Div. from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He works on Judaism in the Second Temple period, specializing in ancient translations and wisdom literature. His most recent book is a commentary on the Letter of Aristeas (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), and he is currently working on a commentary on the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira.

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Dr. Anthony Ellis 

“Expurgating Josephus in the High Middle Ages? Exploring a Case of Medieval French Censorship”

Anthony Ellis is a postdoc at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and a visiting fellow in Oxford for Trinity Term on the LXX project currently running; He did his undergraduate (2004-8) and PhD degree (2013) in Classics at the University of Edinburgh, where he also taught, and did a masters in Oxford at St Hilda’s (2008-9). In the mean time he worked briefly at the Warburg Institute. He works on the idea of envy/jealousy in ancient Greek and Hebrew literature and its reception.

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Launch of New Exhibition 

'The Jews of South East England' 

Marcus Roberts

Founder and Director of JTrails - Anglo-Jewish Trails and Jewish History in the UK

Wed, 6 June, 7pm

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

Supported by Heritage Lottery Fund and JTrails

All are welcome!

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The Oxford Union & Oxford University Chabad Society invites you to

Holocaust Survivor Eva Schloss

Eva Schloss is the step-sister of Anne Frank who wrote the book “The Diary of Anne Frank”

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Professor Mark Klamberg

'Lemkin’s coining of the word genocide and his struggle to include protection of culture' 

Dr Mark Klamberg holds the Stockholm Centre Oxford Fellowship 2018/2019 at the Institute for European and Comparative Law. He is affiliated with Christ Church. Mark Klamberg obtained his Ph.D. from Stockholm University in April 2012 and is since 2015 an Associate Professor and Senior lecturer in Public International Law at the Stockholm University. He is the author of several publications, including ‘Evidence in International Criminal Trials: Confronting Legal Gaps and the Reconstruction of Disputed Events’ (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2013) and ‘Power and Law in the International Society - International Relations as the Sociology of International Law’ (Routledge, 2015). He is the chief editor of the ‘Commentary on the Law of the ICC’ ( CLICC).

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Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

'From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country: How the Hebrew revival can help Aboriginal Australia'

This talk will feature the journey of an Israeli linguist, who moved to Australia to apply lessons from the revival of Hebrew in Israel to the reclamation and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and cultures.  

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann (D.Phil., Oxon.) is Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is the author of the seminal bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli – A Beautiful Language; Am Oved, 2008), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), three chapters of the Israeli Tingo (Keren, 2011), Engaging – A Guide to Interacting Respectfully and Reciprocally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their Arts Practices and Intellectual Property (2015) and the first online Dictionary of the Barngarla Aboriginal Language (2016). He is President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies (AAJS) and was President of AustraLex in 2013-2015, Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in 2007–2011, and Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College Cambridge in 2000-2004.

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Shabbat lunch

President of the Board of Deputies Marie van der Zyl

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‘Talmud: Whose Life is it Anyway?’

Rabbi Chaim Rapoport

Rabbi Chaim Rapoport is a leading expert on the Talmud and Jewish law and author of numerous rabbinic works. He is former Rabbi of the Birmingham Central Synagogue, and served as a member of the Chief Rabbi's Cabinet advising former Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks on issues of Jewish medical ethics.

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Prof. Avi Lifschitz

'Between civic improvement and religious freedom: languages of toleration in Prussia, c. 1780-1800’

Avi Lifschitz joined the History Faculty and Magdalen College in 2017 after a decade of teaching European History at UCL (University College London). He teaches undergraduate and postgraduate modules, offer research supervision, co-convene the Enlightenment Workshop research seminar (with Professor Nicholas Cronk of the Voltaire Foundation), and serve on the editorial board of the book series Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. Research fellowships have included the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Clark Library at UCLA, the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at the University of Göttingen, and the Enlightenment Research Centre at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (IZEA). In summer 2018 be shall deliver at Cambridge the annual Quentin Skinner Lecture in Modern Intellectual History. 

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Walking Tour of Medieval Jewish Oxford

Special Guided View of the Entrance to the Medieval Tunnel belonging to a medieval Oxford Jew.

Many of the historic sites in Oxford are connected with the Jewish medieval history in Oxford. Join this 90 min walking tour and get to see the Jewish quarter, the site of the medieval cemetery, synagogue, the oldest College that was bought from a Jewish property owner, the route of the Jewish funeral processions (Dead Man's Walk), and much more.

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Professor Hindy Najman

'Dead Sea Scrolls at 70'

Hindy Najman is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oriel College, University of Oxford.  Her research interests encompass Composition and Author Function; Construction and Imitation of Biblical Figures; Practices of Pseudepigraphy and Pseudonymous Attribution; Revelation, Divine Encounter and Prophecy; Idealized Sage and Perfectionism; Philology and Philological Practices; Diaspora and Exile; Authority and Tradition; Allegorical Interpretation and Midrash; Destruction and Recovery; Collection and Canon; the History of Biblical Interpretation; and Scholarly Practices of Reading the Bible and Biblical Traditions.  She has written on the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinic Literature and Pseudepigrapha.  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.” She is currently working on a new book entitled: Reading Practices and the Vitality of Scripture (Oxford University Press). 

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Shabbat Dinner

Sheriff of Oxford Craig Simmons

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Dr. Peter Bergamin

Peter Bergamin completed his DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2016, with a thesis that traced the ideological development of the pro-Fascist, Revisionist Zionist ideologue, Abba Ahimeir.  His research focuses on Maximalist-Revisionist Zionism, and Jewish anti-British resistance during the period of the Mandate for Palestine.  In addition, he is a tutor for the Visiting Student Programme at Mansfield College, Oxford.

'Antisemitism in Britain: 100 years on from Balfour’

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Thanksgiving Shabbat Dinner

President of Magdalen College

Professor Sir David Clary FRS

“Magdalen: a proudly independent college in a rapidly changing world”

Professor Sir David Clary FRS has been President of Magdalen College since September 2005. He also directs a research group in the Chemistry Department at Oxford University working on quantum chemistry. Before coming to Magdalen he was Head of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at St John’s College. He has held previous faculty positions at Manchester, Cambridge and UCL. He was the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Foreign Office from 2009-13 and before that was President of the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was knighted in the 2016 Queen’s birthday honours for services to international science.

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Yom Limmud Seminar in Jewish Studies

'The Great Scriptures: 500 years since the publishing of the Great Scriptures – Mikraot Gadolot'

Dr. Daniel Crowther, Theology, Oxford

'The Impact of the Printing on the Hebrew Bible: before and after'

Daniel J. Crowther completed a PhD in Masoretic Studies at the University of Bristol in 2015. Since then he has worked in Oxford first for the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies and then Worcester College. His current research interests include the Book of Psalms, Masoretic Studies, medieval manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, the Qur'an and new religious movements emerging in Muslim communities. 

Dr. Thea Gomelauri, Theology, Oxford

'King David in the Great Scriptures v. Modern Biblical Scholarship'

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

'The Biblical commentator Rashi through manuscripts at the Bodleian Library'

Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, London

'The Lubavitcher Rebbe's Super-Commentary on Rashi'

Dr. Israel Sandman, University College London

'Rashi's meta-narrative in his Bible commentary' 

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Middle Eastern Shabbat Dinner 

Professor Yaacov Yadgar

Professor Yadgar, Oxford’s Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, is a Fellow of St. Anne’s College. His scholarship is multidisciplinary, encompassing Jewish political, cultural, religious, and media studies, and focusing on Israeli socio-politics. His recent book is, Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). 

'Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People?'

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Israeli German playright and best selling author

Tuvia Tenenbom

‘The World As I See It’

Tuvia Tenenbom   is the author of three Spiegel bestsellers, a journalist, dramatist, and the founder of the Jewish Theater of New York. Tuvia studied for his doctorate in English literature at St. John's University, and earned his MFA in playwriting at CUNY-Brooklyn. Tuvia is the author of Allein unter Deutschen (I Sleep in Hitler's Room in English), Allein unter Juden / (Catch the Jew!), Allein unter Amerikanern (The Lies They Tell), Fett wie ein Turnschuh, and Allein unter Flüchtlingen (Hello, Refugees!). In 2003 Germany's prestigious newspaper Die Zeit voted Tuvia Tenenbom and Prof. Harold Bloom “the best minds” in America. Tuvia was named "founder of a new form of Jewish theater" by the French Le Monde, "founder of The Theater of Catastrophe" by the German Die Zeit, "a New Jew" by the Israeli Maariv, "free artist who fights for truth and tolerance" by the Belgian Le Vif L'Express, and "one of the most iconoclastic and innovative of contemporary dramatists" by the Italian Corriere Della Sera.

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Lena Emelyn Zlock

Reading the Talmud in El Dorado: Locating Jewish Sources in Voltaire's Working Library

Lena Zlock is the Principal Investigator of the Voltaire Library Project and inaugural visiting researcher at the Voltaire Foundation’s Voltaire Lab at the University of Oxford. She currently also studies at Stanford University, double-majoring in History and French. Her research is supported by a Chappell Lougee Scholarship, a Major Grant, and a Conference Grant from the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. She is a recipient of the Oxford University Press Prize.

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Holocaust survivor Henry Glanz

'The Last Train: How I survived the Holocaust'

Harry Glanz, 94, was born in 1924 in Poland, and moved to Keil in Germany in 1926. In 1938, he received a visa to Palestine but due to the The White Paper on Palestine, issued by the British Government in May 1939, restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine just as Jews sought to flee Nazi persecution in Europe, he was rejected. He received however a visa to arrive in Britain with the last Kindertransport, ten hours after the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. His father, mother and younger brother died in Auschwitz.

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Deputy State Secretary of Hungary 

Mr. Vince Szalay-Bobrovniczky

'The Government of Hungary and the Jews'

Mr. Vince Szalay-Bobrovniczky currently serves as Deputy State Secretary responsible for civil and major society issues in the Prime Minister’s Office of Hungary. Since 1999 he has hold several positions in public service. After graduating in Budapest and Munich as a historian and EU expert, he began his career as rapporteur in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary and consultant in the National Assembly. After his first posting in Munich as Consul and moving forward on the career ladder, he became Director of Department regarding European bilateral issues, and served two times as Ambassador of Hungary to Austria and Finland. He also served earlier as Deputy State Secretary for European and US bilateral issues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and later Deputy State Secretary for EU affairs in the Prime Minister’s Office. He speaks German and English fluently, also familiar with Spanish language on advanced level. Mr. Szalay-Bobrovniczky is married and father of four children.

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Manfred Deselaers

'Ideology and conscience of a perpetrator. The example of Rudolf Hoess, the commander of Auschwitz'

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Dr. Neta Bodner

'Architecture and Halakha: The Use of Ground Water for Medieval Mikvaot'

Neta Bodner is a Rothschild (Yad ha Nadiv) post-doctoral fellow. She received her PhD in 2016 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in architectural history, focusing on medieval architecture. In 2016-2018 she was a post-doctoral fellow in the European Research Council project ‘Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe’ headed by Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten where she studied Jewish ritual baths. Her current project is a comparative analysis of Jewish and Christian spaces for ritual immersion from the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. 

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Friday Night Shabbat Dinner

Professor Lawrence Goldman

Senior Research Fellow, St. Peter's College, University of Oxford

'Disraeli's Letters: Ambition, Politics and Jewish Identity in Victorian Britain'

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Yom Limmud Seminar in Jewish Studies

The TALMUD: 500 Years since the printing of the Bomberg Talmud

Professor Joshua Getzler, Law Department, University of Oxford

‘The law of judicial majorities in Roman & Jewish Law’

Joshua Getzler joined the Oxford Law Faculty in 1993 and became a professor in 2011. His first degrees in law and history were taken at the Australian National University in Canberra, and his doctorate in Oxford, as a member of Balliol and Nuffield Colleges. He has taught and researched at the Australian National University, the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Chicago. 

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

‘Henry VIII and the Talmud’

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London

‘Talmudic Aggada and the Mystical Tradition’

Dr. Loewenthal lectures in Jewish spirituality at University College London's Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department. He is author ofCommunicating the Infinite: The emergence of the Habad School (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990), and many articles, both academic and popular. His forthcoming book is Hasidism Beyond Modernity: Studies in Habad thought and history, to be published by the Littman Library. 

Dr. Israel Sandman, University College London

Dr Israel Sandman is a research fellow at University College London’s Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies. His areas of research include medieval Jewish thought, medieval Jewish literature, and medieval Hebrew manuscripts. He is currently cataloguing the Chabad Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, Manchester.

Meir Wachs, Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford

Sergei Bogdanov, University of Oxford

'Variations in the text of the Talmud and their legal significance'

Sergei is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford with expertise in Classical Philology, English Literature. 

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Professor Mary Fulbrook

‘The continuing presence of the Nazi past: judicial reckonings, personal legacies, and inter-generational transmission’

Mary Fulbrook, FBA, is Professor of German History at UCL. Her latest book is entitled Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (OUP, 2018). She has published widely on German history, including broad overviews as well as detailed studies of both the Third Reich and the GDR. Recent books include the Fraenkel Prize-winning A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (OUP 2012), and Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships (OUP,  2011; two volumes in paperback, 2017). She is currently running an AHRC-funded collaborative research project on perpetration and complicity under Nazism. Among other professional commitments, Mary Fulbrook serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Foundation for the former Nazi Concentration Camps at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora. She has previously served as Chair of the Modern History Section of the British Academy, Chair of the German History Society, and she was Founding Joint Editor of German History.

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'The Time Of Singing Has Come’

Inspirational Jewish songs composed by Alexander Massey.

Performed by Alexander Massey and Matthew Faulk.

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Professor David Aberbach

'Judah Hanasi as Educational Revolutionary'

Marking the 1800th anniversary of Rabbi Judah Hanasi's death (estimated to be around 219 CE)'

David Aberbach is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Studies at McGill University, Montreal and has visiting positions at Harvard (Kennedy Center for International Development) and the LSE (International Development) as well as Oxford and UCL.  Among his books are Revolutionary Hebrew, Empire and Crisis;  Major Turning Points in Jewish Intellectual History; and The European Jews, Patriotism and the Liberal State. His most recent books are Nationalism, War, and Jewish Education, and Nationalism, War, and Jewish Education.

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Award winning author

Professor Bart van Es

'The Cut Out Girl: A story of war and family, lost and found' 

Bart van Es is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Catherine's College. He is most recently the author of 'The Cut Out Girl: A story of War and Family, Lost and Found (Fig Tree),' which follows the story of a Dutch Jewish girl who was taken in by the author's grandparents before her own parents were sent to Auschwitz. The book won the Costa Prize for literature in 2018. He is also the author of Spenser's Forms of History (2002), A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies (2006), and Shakespeare in Company (2013). In addition to his work on Spenser and Shakespeare he has published articles on Daniel, Drayton, Renaissance historiography, and pastoral poetry. Essays by him appear in various Oxford Handbooks, including that on Holinshed's Chronicles and that on English Prose, 1500-1640. He is a contributor to Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents and has chapters forthcoming in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 2, and Moving Shakespeare Indoors.

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Professor Peter Frankopan

‘The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - A Jewish perspective’

In conversation with 

Professor Abigail Green

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is also Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He works on the history of the Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Persia/Iran, Central Asia and beyond, and on relations between Christianity and Islam. He also specializes in medieval Greek literature and translated The Alexiad for Penguin Classics (2009). Peter often writes for the international press, including The New York Times, Financial Times Guardian, and has a regular column in the London Evening Standard. Silk Roads was named The Daily Telegraph's History Book of the Year 2015. It went to Number One in the Sunday Times Non-Fiction charts, remaining in the Top 10 for nine months in a row, as well as being #1 in China, India, the UAE, Ireland and many other countries around the world. Peter has been described in The New Statesman as 'the history rock star du jour'. In December 2018, The Silk Roads was chosen as one of the 25 most influential books translated into Chinese in the last 40 years.

Abigail Green is Professor of Modern European History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her first book was Fatherlands: state-building and nationhood in 19th century Germany (2001), followed by her biography of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), the preeminent Jewish figure of the 19th century. She has most recently been awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship to work on a new project, a book on liberalism and the Jews tentatively entitled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights. 

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Isaac Meyers Memorial Lecture 

Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger is the new President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. She studied Hebrew as well as Semitic and Ancient Near Eastern Languages in Paris, and obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge on Karaite marriage documents from the Cairo Genizah, and was a member of St. John's College. Between 1995 and 1998, she was a Mary Ewart Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.  In 1999, she was appointed a senior researcher in Hebrew Palaeography section of the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (CNRS), and, in 2002, she joined the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, as a Professor in Hebrew Palaeography and Manuscript Studies. In 2010-2014, she was President of the European Association for Jewish Studies.  Her main publications include Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine (1998), Les manuscrits hébreux dans l’Angleterre médiévale (2003), Hebrew and Hebrew-Latin Documents from Medieval England: a Diplomatic and Palaeographical Study (2015).  

Tuesday, 14 May, 8pm

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

All are welcome! 

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Emeritus Professor John Broome

Professor Broome is Emeritus White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. He works on normativity, rationality and reasoning, and also on the ethics of climate change. He was Lead Author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is author of Rationality Through Reasoning, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, Counting the Cost of Global Warming, among other works.

‘Ethics of Climate Change’

Thursday, 16 May, 8pm

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

All are welcome! 

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Friday Night Shabbat Dinner

Dr. Nadav Berman Shifman

Dr. Nadav Berman Shifman is a Postdoctoral Associate in Jewish Thought at the Department of Philosophy andJudaic Studies, Yale University. His PhD dissertation (Hebrew University, 2018) is entitled “20th Century Jewish Thought and Classical American Pragmatism: New Perspectives on Hayyim Hirschensohn, Mordecai M. Kaplan and Eliezer Berkovits”. He currently works on certain connections and applications of this research to some other Jewish thinkers, topics, and concepts. 

Friday, 17 May, 7.30pm

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

All are welcome! 

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Week 4

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Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud

Exploring Jewish philosophy, history, law and mysticism and manuscripts in connection with the Jewish Festival of Shavuot.

Sunday, 19 May, 1pm-5pm

Programme: 

12pm Lunch 

1pm Micah MacKay, English Language and Literature Department, MedievalStudies, University of Oxford 

‘Acyrred fram Criste’: Representations of the Jews across the Norman Conquest'

Micah Mackay is a graduate student studying for a Masters of Philosophy in English Studies (Medieval Period) in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Most recently she has presented her research on Jewish-Christian relations at the 54^th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is currently working on representations of the Jew in the contract-making scene of the Theophilus legend under the supervision of Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger and Professor Anna Sapir Abulafia.

1.45pm Elad Uzan, Ph.D. candidate in International Law & Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University's Buchmann Faculty of Law

'The Ethics of War's Ending'

This talk will address the framework of just war theory, its contemporary importance, and examples of the meaning of milchemet reshut (optional war) in our days.

2.30pm  Rabbi Eli Brackman,  Oxford University Chabad Society 

'A dispute between medieval Rabbis Berachia of Lincoln and Elijah of London and the principle of non-discrimination in Jewish law' 

3pm Coffee

3.15pm Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London 

'From the Zohar to Hasidic Teachings'

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.  

4pm Dr. Israel Sandman, University College London

'Between the sacred and the profane: the ambiguities of Tanya chapter 8' 

Israel Sandman is a Fellow at the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London and an expert on medieval Jewish philosophy and manuscripts. More to be confirmed

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

All are welcome!

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We are delighted to invite you to the sixth annual

OXFORD JEWISH FAIR 

Celebrating the Jewish Holiday of Lag B'omer

Thursday, 23rd May, 12pm-5pm

** 'SHIR' BAND - the UK's “complete” Jewish music group playing Klezmer, Israeli, Yiddish, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ladino and Simcha music... 

** Sephardic Cantor Chazan Eliot Alderman

** Matthew Faulk and Alexander Massey

** Kosher Hotdogs, shawarma, Falafel, Hummus and bagels

** NEW History of Jews of England Exhibition

** Jewish Book Stand – Aisenthal 

** Art: Posters from Israel and Hebrew manuscripts

** Crafts & Activities – Flags and symbols, Challah baking, 

** Amazing ‘Pavitra’ raw honey stand

** Authentic Jewish Scribal stand - Sofer

** Western Wall - take a picture and offer a prayer for peace

** Caricaturist

And much more 

Supporters: Oxford City Council, Chabad of Oxford, Oxford Jewish Chaplaincy, OxfordIsrael Forum, FLAGGS college store, Oxford Jewish Congregation, Heritage Lottery Fund, JTrails, CST, Douglas Abraham, Orde.

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Holocaust Survivor Mala Tribich MBA

Mala was born Mala Helfgott in 1930 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Mala’s family fled eastwards. When they returned, Mala’s family had to move into the ghetto which was established in her hometown, the first in Poland. When the ghetto was liquidated, Mala became a slave labourer until November 1944, when the remaining Jews were deported. Mala was separated from her father and brother and was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After about 10 weeks they were transported in cattle trucks to Bergen-Belsen until the liberation by the British army. 

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Lecture in honour of 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport

Professor Paul Weindling

‘The children who came and the children left behind: The Kindertransport to Britain 1938-1939’

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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Festive Shavuot Dinner and Tikkun Leyl Lectures

Cheesecake and blintzes buffet   

Tikkun Leyl Programme:

Prof. Joshua Getzler

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.

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

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Dr. David Sclar

'R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's conception of Creation and his belief in societal perfection'

David Sclar is a scholar of Jewish history and culture in the early modern period. He earned his doctorate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and has held fellowships at Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Oxford, the University of Toronto, New York University, and the Center for Jewish History. His work explores Jewish intellectual, social, and religious currents in northern Italy and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

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Dr Dirk van Miert 

Dirk van Miert is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Cultural History at the University of Utrecht and specializes in the history of knowledge. He is currently principal investigator and project leader of the ERC funded project ‘Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks – The Republic of Letters as a Pan-European Knowledge Society’ (SKILLNET). 

'The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590-1670'

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Shabbat Dinner

Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge

Professor Matthew Kramer

'GA Cohen: Why I am Zionist?'

Matthew Kramer is Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is Director of the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy, and he has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2014.  He is the author of sixteen books and the co-editor of four further books.  His work covers many areas of moral, political, and legal philosophy."

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Professor Alan Silman

'What do our genes tell us about our Jewish ancestry?'

Alan is currently Professor of Musculoskeletal Health in the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedic and Senior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College. 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 round the world.

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Holocaust Survivor Kenneth Appel

'Kindertransport: A journey to Life'

Kenneth Appel, 92, grew up in Nazi Germany, was expelled from school when the Nazis rose to power, suffered at the hands of his former school friends, until he fled with the Kindertransport to Britain. Having arrived in Britain, he witnessed the London Blitz in 1940 and eventually put himself through university and began research at a laboratory that was working to develop penicillin. He currently lives in London.

Culham Centre for Fusion Energy), son of Holocaust survivor Kenneth Appel

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Jewish Fair - Lag B'omer Celebration 

Tuesday, 12 May, 2-5pm 

2pm – Grand Opening: Lord Mayor of Oxford Cllr. Craig Simmons

2.05pm - Chazan Eliot Alderman – former director of Music, Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London 

2.15pm – Klezmer musicians Susi Evans (clarinet) & Szilvia Csaranko (accordion & piano) - Klezmer from the New World

2.30pm - Klezmer fiddle player Ilana Cravitz

2.45pm – Israeli Musicians – Prof. Michael and Menashe Lukin - Meron tunes 

3pm – Linda Dangoor, Author of Flavours of Babylon - Iraqi Jewish Dessert - Demo

3.30pm - Oxford Klezmer musicians - Leo, Tabitha and Rachel Appel 

3.45pm – Members of Shir Klezmer Band – Simcha music

4pm - Oxford Klzmer Musician Matthew Faulk

4.15pm - Susi Evans & Szilvia Csaranko - Klezmer from the New World

4.30pm – Expert Jewish scribe Sofer - Arieh Freeman – Demo

4.45pm – Closing: Members of Shir Klezmer Band - Simcha music 

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Rt Hon Dame Margaret Hodge MP

‘Where next for Labour?’

Margaret became the Labour Member of Parliament for Barking in June 1994. She has served in government, holding portfolios across education, work and pensions, business and culture. In 2010, Margaret also became the first elected Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and was also its first female Chair. Today, Margaret is the Chair of the APPG on Responsible Tax as well as the Chair for organisations in the arts and higher education.

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Dr. Benjamin Outhwaite 

Dr Ben Outhwaite hs been Head of the Genizah Research Unit in Cambridge University Library since 2006, having worked for the previous seven years as a Genizah researcher.

Dr Outhwaite received a B.A. in Hebrew Studies and an M.Phil. in Medieval Hebrew literature from Christ's College, Cambridge. His Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, on the grammatical description of Hebrew letters in the Genizah, was completed under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Khan.

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'UNORTHODOX' 

Q & A with Rivky Slonim   

Self proclaimed Chassidic feminist and Rebbetzin at Binghampton University, NY 

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Dr. Norman Lebrecht

'Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947'

Norman Lebrecht is a historian, cultural commentator, broadcaster and award-winning novelist. His 12  books about music have been translated into 17 languages. Among the best-selling titles are The Maestro Myth, Who Killed Classical Music and Why Mahler Norman Lebrecht’s first novel The Song of Names won a Whitbread (now Costa) Award in 2003. It was filmed in 2018-19 with Tim Roth and Clive Owen in the leading roles. His latest non-fiction work, Genius and Anxty: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947, is published by Oneworld (UK) and Scribner in the US.

In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the way we see the world. Many of them are well known Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in ouraily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth. What do these visionaries have in common? They all have Jewish origins. They all have a gift for thinking outside the box and all of them think fast. In 1847 the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world s population, and yet they saw what others could not. How?

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Festival of Shavuot - Tikkun Leyl Shavuot Programme

Commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai 3315 years ago

Tikkun Leyl Lecture Programme:

Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, University College London

'The concept of Torah from Heaven' 

Naftali Loewenthal lectures in Jewish Spirituality at University College London’s Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies. He is author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990) and his forthcoming book is Hasidism beyond Modernity, Studies in Habad Thought and History, to be published by the Littman Library.

Dr. Peter Bergamin, University of Oxford

Peter Bergamin is currently Visiting Scholar of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and Tutor at Mansfield College. He completed his DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2016. His research focuses on Maximalist-Revisionist Zionism, and Jewish anti-British resistance during the period of the Mandate for Palestine. A monograph based on his doctoral thesis (The Makings of a Zionist Revolutionary: Abba Ahimeir’s Ideological Genesis, 1921-1934), was published by I.B. Tauris, in 2019. 

Dr. Israel Sandman, University College London

Israel Sandman is a Fellow at the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London and an expert on medieval Jewish philosophy and manuscripts. 

Dr. Ros Abramsky, Birkbeck College/Oxford

‘The hiding of the light’

Rabbi Eli Brackman, Oxford University Chabad Society

'What exactly did Moses recieve at Sinai?'

Zara Bomberg

Zara studied Physiotherapy at Oxford Brookes University, works as a Childrens Physiotherapist at Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust and most recently, during the outbreak of COVID, as a health care assistant on an ICU COVID ward at Watford General Hospital NHS in London. 

Professor Joshua Getzler, University of Oxford

'Regime Change and Torah'

Joshua Getzler is Professor of Law and Legal History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. He completed his first degrees in law and history at the Australian National University in Canberra, and his doctorate in Oxford, as a member of Balliol and Nuffield Colleges. He serves on the editorial board of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Equity and is co-editor of the new OUP monograph series Oxford Legal History. 

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Rabbi Mendy Chitrik

'Challenges facing Jews of Turkey'

Rabbi Chitrik serves as rabbi of the Istanbul Ashkenazic community since 2003 and the Chabad representative for Turkey.

The history of the Jews in Turkey covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey. There have been Jewish communities in Anatolia since at least the fifth century BCE and many Spanish and Portuguese Jews expelled from Spain by the Alhambra Decree were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire in the late 15th century, including regions now part of Turkey, centuries later, forming the bulk of the Ottoman Jews. Today, the vast majority of Turkish Jews live in Israel, while modern-day Turkey continues to host a modest Jewish population.

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Lecture in honour of 75 Years since VE Day

Michael Kushner

'Bletchley Park and the Jewish Contribution'

Miriam Rorigues Pierera Mendes

Ms. Pierera Mendes is a Jewish Ex-serviceman who served Bletchley Park transcribing German communications during the war.

Michael Kushner is a lecturer of Signals Intelligence & Bletchley Park, the British government's World War Two ultra top secret code breaking establishment in north Buckinghamshire. Prior to volunteering at Bletchley park, Michael worked for 20 years for Thorn EMI  in the consumer electronics industry. He became a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain and has a keen interest in historic military communications. In 1992 the Bletchley Park trust was formed.  Michael was living close by and wanted to get involved. He then studied the history of code breaking, as more of the Top Secret information was now being released. In 2004 he trained as a volunteer guide at Bletchley Park. Michael also holds a gold award from the Association of Speakers Clubs. As a competent public speaker he is now  giving  lectures of  World War Two signals intelligence onboard  Cunard and P & O ships, also across the country for many societies and organisations.

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Professor Abigail Green 

‘Jews and Muslims in the History of Europe – reading the continent against the grain’ 

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Elia Meghnagi

'Escape from Benghazi: The story of Libyan Jewry'

Elia Meghnagi was raised in Benghazi, Libya, where he attended an Italian Catholic school run by friars. At the age of 17 he left his home and family to take up a scholarship for a pre-university year in Cambridge, UK. Having been warned not to return to Libya, he then spent two years at Gateshead Yeshiva before moving to London to obtain a degree in Telecommunications and Electronics. During these years he managed to bring his parents, two brothers and a sister to join him. His work in telecoms took him to many parts of the world before he joined his brothers in 1988 to become a director of Snowcrest, a kosher manufacturing company. He has devoted much of his time to Jewish education, and is also a director of the Simon Weisenthal Centre, UK. Now semi-retired, he and his wife enjoy spending time with their five children and a generous number of grand-children (most of whom live in Israel). He also  writes and gives talks about outstanding Jewish personalities, Jewish practice, and the Libyan Jewish community.

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Professor Joachim Behar

'Digital biomarkers for COVID-19 monitoring'

Joachim is heading the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Laboratory ( AIMLab.) at the Technion faculty of Biomedical Engineering in Israel. The lab focuses on the usage of AI in medicine within the context of physiological time series analysis with a specific focus in sleep medicine and fetal monitoring. Joachim is twice winner of the MIT-PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology competition. He has authored and co-authored over 33 journal papers in leading engineering, physiology and medical journals and contributed many open access databases of physiological waveform and open source code (e.g. PhysioZoo, fecgsyn). He is editor for the journal Physiological Measurement and has been on the program committee of the Computing in Cardiology international conference since 2013. Joachim holds a PhD in biosignals processing and machine learning from the university of Oxford which was completed under the supervision of Prof. Gari D. Clifford and Dr. Julien Oster. Joachim holds a MEng from l'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne in France in General Engineering. He completed his postdoctoral study in computational physiology under Prof. Yael Yaniv at the Technion where he worked on mathematical modelling of sinoatrial node cells. 

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Vice Chancellor of Oxford University

Professor Louise Richardson

'Oxford in 2020'

Professor Louise Richardson became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford on 1 January 2016, having previously served as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, for seven years. A political scientist by training, Professor Richardson received a BA in History from Trinity College Dublin in her native Ireland. She then studied in the USA, graduating with an MA in Political Science from UCLA, and subsequently an MA and PhD in Government from Harvard University. Professor Richardson’s research specialises in international security with a particular emphasis on terrorist movements. She has written widely on international terrorism, British foreign and defence policy, security institutions, and international relations. Her publications include Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past (2007), What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006), The Roots of Terrorism (2006), and When Allies Differ (1996).

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Professor of Medicine Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Professor  Alan Jatkowitz

‘Jewish ethical approach to end of life care and triage during Covid’

Alan Jotkowitz graduated from Yeshiva University and received his M.D. from Yale School of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital and prior to moving to Israel in 2001 was an attending physician and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Currently he is a Professor of Medicine, Director of the Jakobovits Center for Jewish Medical Ethics, Associate Director for Academic Affairs Medical School for International Health and Medicine, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a Senior Physician at Soroka University Medical Center, both in Beer-Sheva, Israel. His main academic interest is in the field of medical ethics and has published more than a 100 peer reviewed papers in such prestigious journals as the American Journal of Medicine, The European Journal of Medicine, The Journal of Medical Ethics, The American Journal of Bioethics and others. He also serves as the Associate Editor of The European Journal of Internal Medicine. 

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Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Robert Aumann

Robert John Aumann is an Israeli-American mathematician, who shared the 2005 Nobel Prize for Economics with Thomas C. Schelling, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Aumann’s primary contribution to economics involved the analysis of repeated noncooperative encounters, a subject in the mathematical discipline of game theory. He is a professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

‘Modern Economic Theory in the Talmud’

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Professor Shimon Glick MD

'Bioethics: historic roots and current directions'

Professor Shimon Glick was born in Brooklyn in 1932 and received his medical training in the United States, specializing in internal medicine and endocrinology. He immigrated to Israel in 1974 to become a founding member of the FOHS, as well as head of the Internal Medicine Department at Soroka Medical Center. He then became chair of Israel's first Internal Medicine Division. Professor Glick served as Dean of the FOHS between 1986 and 1990. During his tenure, he played a key role in formulating the admissions process for medical students - a process based not only on achievements but also the candidates’ character. Professor Glick headed the Prywes Center for Medical Education and the Jakobovits Center for Jewish Medical Ethics, two domains that were assigned a central role in the professional education of students in the Faculty. He was also instrumental in the instruction on doctor-patient communications for first year medical students. In addition, Professor Glick has served as ombudsman for Israel's Ministry of Health. He is widely recognized as an expert in medical ethics, with a particular focus on Jewish medical ethics, and is at the forefront of the efforts to bring a Jewish perspective to bear on the most important issues of modern bioethics.

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Former President of Latvia

Dr. Vaira Vike-Freiberga 

'Human Rights and Holocaust Memory'

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is a Latvian politician who served as the sixth President of Latvia from 1999 to 2007. She is the first woman to hold the post. Dr. Vike-Freiberga was born in 1937 in Riga, Latvia. In order to escape the Soviet occupation, her family fled the country in 1945 and became refugees. She began her schooling in refugee camps in Germany and continued in French Morocco. After arriving in Canada in 1954, she worked for a year in a bank, and then entered the University of Toronto, obtaining a B.A. (1958) and an M.A. (1960) in Psychology. Resuming her education at McGill University in Montreal, she earned a doctorate in experimental psychology in 1965. From 1965 to 1998 Dr. Vike-Freiberga pursued a professorial career at the Department of Psychology of the University of Montreal, writing seven books and about 160 articles, essays or book chapters. On returning to Latvia in 1998, Dr. Vike-Freiberga was appointed Director of the newly founded Latvian Institute, an organization devoted to promoting Latvian awareness abroad. A year later, in June 1999, she was elected President of Latvia. Since the end of her presidency, Dr. Vike-Freiberga has remained active in the international arena and continues to speak up in defence of liberty, equality and social justice. She was the only female candidate for the first President of the European Council and between 2008 and 2010 she was Vice Chair of the European Council’s Reflection Group on the Future of Europe 2020-2030. In 2009 Dr. Vike-Freiberga chaired the European Commission’s European Research Council Review Panel, and is currently a member of the Commission’s European Research Council Taskforce on the ERC’s Future. A Founding Member of the Club de Madrid, Dr. Vike-Freiberga was Mission Leader of the Club’s 2008 high-level mission to Uganda and its 2009 high-level mission to Colombia. She joined the Club de Madrid’s Assessment mission to Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and was a Member of the Club’s Taskforce on Political Leadership for Democratic Transition in Kyrgyzstan. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga has been a Member of the Global Leadership Foundation since 2010.

Introduction by

Professor George Schwab

George D. Schwab is a Holocaust survivor from Latvia and founder and president of the non-partisan think tank National Committee on American Foreign Policy. For the past thirty seven years he has been the editor of American Foreign Policy Interests, and in 2001 the National Committee received a private endowment designed to honor the work of Professor Schwab which led to the creation of the George D. Schwab Foreign Policy Briefings. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Schwab received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in May 1998. In 2002 he received the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia’s highest honor, in a ceremony held in Riga. 

Dr. Ilana Tahan OBE

Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections - The British Library

'Hebrew Manuscripts at the British Library: Journeys of the Written Word'

Journey beyond the Bible to discover the history, culture and traditions of Jewish people from all corners of the world through the ages. Through rarely-seen treasures from as far back as the 10th century, this exhibition takes you from Europe and North Africa, through to the Middle East and China to explore the relationships between Jews and their neighbours in the communities that they lived in. How much knowledge and culture was exchanged between these groups? Fascinating works displayed on music, science and philosophy by famous Jewish scholars suggest there was more than we might think. Witness both the high points and the lows of these relationships. An Italian rabbi’s reply to Henry VIII, who sought advice on divorcing his first wife. A 13th-century Anglo-Jewish charter showing the passing of property between people of different faiths. And the signs of conflict as we encounter Christian censorship in Jewish texts. Along the way, meet the sages versed in magic, Kabbalah and alchemy, and even learn a love potion or two, as we discover the power of the written word

Dr. Daisy Dunn

'Not Far from Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars' 

Dr Daisy Dunn is a classicist, art historian, and cultural critic. She read Classics at the University of Oxford, before winning a scholarship for an MA in Art History at the Courtauld, and completing a doctorate in Classics and Renaissance Italian Art History at University College London, in affiliation with the Warburg Institute. Her first two books, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, and the Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, were published by William Collins (and Harper Press in the US) in 2016. The same year, Daisy was named in the Guardian as one of the leading female historians. In the shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, was published by William Collins in May 2019 and by Norton in the US in December. In 2019 Daisy also published Homer: A Ladybird Expert Book (The Ladybird Expert Series, Penguin) and of gods and men: 100 stories from ancient Greece and Rome (Head of Zeus).Her next two books are under contract with Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Daisy writes for a variety of newspapers and magazines and is editor of the Greek culture journal ARGO. She has contributed to the BBC World Service, LBC and TalkRadio, presented two short films on antiquity for BBC Ideas, and participated in the University Challenge Christmas Special on BBC 2. She has been awarded the Gay Clifford Award for Outstanding Women Scholars, an Italian Cultural Association scholarship, an AHRC doctoral award, and in 2015 she was longlisted for the international Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize and in 2020 was awarded the Classical Association Prize.

Rebecca Abrams

'Made in Medieval England:  the Church, the Jews and the Forging of English Antisemitism'

Abrams is the author of eight works or fiction and non-fiction including Licoricia of Winchester: Power and Prejudice in Medieval England (forthcoming May 2022), and The Jewish Journey: 4000 Years in 22 Objects from the Ashmolean Museum. She teaches on the Masters in Creative Writing at Oxford University and is a regular literary critic for the Financial Times. Writer and journalist Rebecca Abrams looks at the unique and long overlooked role of medieval England in forging the darkest and most entrenched elements of modern antisemitism and explains why we need to own and confront this dangerous legacy. The first country to make Jews wear an identifying badge, the first to execute Jews on ritual murder charges and the first to expel its entire Jewish population, England in the 12th and 13th centuries pioneered a state-wide hostile environment towards its Jewish community.  The historic Oxford Synod of 1222, which enshrined anti-Jewish measures in English canon law for the first time, ushered in a century of virulent hostility marked by massacres, pogroms and, ultimately, mass expulsion. This unholy alliance of Church and Crown was not only catastrophic for England’s medieval Jews, it created a deadly blueprint for anti-Jewish persecution that spread throughout Europe for the next eight centuries.  What and who drove this shameful conduct towards a previously tolerated minority? Why is it still so little known? And how is it relevant to our understanding of religious and racial intolerance today? On the 800th anniversary of the Oxford Synod, Abrams brings this vital but overlooked history back to life and explains why we cannot afford to ignore it a moment longer.

Dr. Raphael Dascalu

'Glimpses into the Lost World of Late Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Thought and Literature'

A native of Sydney, Raphael Dascalu pursued graduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem alongside yeshiva studies, and completed his PhD at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history of philosophy and mysticism, particularly among Jews in the medieval Islamic world. He is an Adjunct Research Associate at Monash University, and coordinator of the Jewish-Muslim Forum at Monash. He is in Oxford for Trinity Term, during which he is co-coordinating the Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies with Prof. Paul Fenton.

'Ukraine: Putin, Nuremberg, and International Law'

Jim Friedberg is Posten Professor of Law, West Virginia University. He received a J.D. from Harvard in 1975 and a Diplôme in International Human Rights from Strasbourg in 1989. He founded and for fifteen years directed the West Virginia University College of Law Immigration Law Clinic.Articles in the Columbian European Law Journal, the Duke Journal of International and Comparative Law, the WVU Law Review, the Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution, and the University of Pittsburgh Law Review reflect research into political and legal change on the European continent. His most recent publications have focused on democratic transition and human rights.

Dr. Oleg Kozerod