Oxford Jewish Review

When talking about science and religion seriously there is no conflict but more than this the difficulty is not the coexistence of science and religion but science coexisting with atheism. The fact that there is no necessary conflict between science and belief in G-d ought to be obvious, as Peter Higgs may have been an atheist but William Phillips believes in G-d and they both won the Nobel Prize in physics. In fact, over 60% percent were believers in G-d. There is no essential conflict between science and belief in G-d but rather the conflict lies between science and atheism. The case is however being made by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking. Hawking writes in his most recent book The Grand Design with Leonard Mlodinow, “he has no… Read More »

I am very grateful to Rabbi and Rebetzin Brackman for all the work that has made it possible for me to be here. It is humbling to come here to oxford and stand in a place where Isaiah Berlin once stood and be tasked with sharing my own thought about Isaiah Berlin and his legacy and adopting it to us, which is our goal this evening to think about the place of the Jew in contemporary philosophy and theology.

Let me begin this challenge by saying that if our question and the subject is the place of the Jew in contemporary philosophy and theology, then there is no better place to began than here at Oxford with Isaiah Berlin. In many ways we can think of his career that began in Oxford in the 1930s and didn’t end until the 1990s, a span o… Read More »

Seventy years ago to this day there was a young boy - I was standing next to an electric fence at the end of January crying in my heart praying to G-d let me get out of this hell because it is my Bar Mitzvah. I was born in southern Hungary, a family of eleven, from a Chassidic family, and only my brother and I survived. We had a fairly happy childhood and normal life, despite anti-Semitism was a norm in Eastern Europe in the 1930s. My day started at 5 in the morning, learned Hebrew studies, had lunch and then resumed studying. That was my life until March 1944. In 4 months, until July, Hungary found the infrastructure for 400,000 Jews to be sent to their death. It was when Admiral Horthy tried to make peace with the allies, the Germans inva… Read More »

Professor Robert Service - Introduction

It is a great pleasure to have been invited to help to introduce Chief Rabbi of Russia Rabbi Berel Lazar. It is impossible to understand the history of Russia, the USSR and Russia again, without understanding the relation between Russians and Jews, Russians and Ukrainians and Ukrainians and Jews. It was complex and tormented. For most of the 20^th century it was extremely tormented. 

Often we think of the years of the 1930’s as being the nadir of Jewish religious life, Christian religious life, Muslim religious life and all religious life. But in fact, one of the greatest persecutors of religious faith in the USSR was the successor to Stalin, namely Nikita Khrushchev.

In other words, the … Read More »

‘The fabric of reality’ is a world view and my contention is that it should be the basic world view that is implied by our best ideas at present. Not that it’s not going to be improved upon, but it’s my opinion that our best ideas currently aren’t taken seriously enough, and The Fabric of Reality, the title of my first book, is my name for what you get when you do take them seriously.

It starts with the fact that we are human beings and therefore we are fallible: we make mistakes.

The first thing I ever published contained quite a big mistake. It was a review of a book called Advice to a Young Scientist by the biologist Peter Medawar, which I wrote for the Wolfson College magazine when I was a graduate studen… Read More »

Atheism is all the rage.  It sells lots of books, and they are angry books.  It is also close to being the majority creed of the UK.  A recent survey has it that 28% of Brits believe in a personal God.  Another 26% believe in "something," but do not know what (no mean feat). (Maybe it's a toaster.) By contrast, 26% believe in UFOs.  42% think religion is harmful, and I think it's a safe bet almost all of those are atheists. The new sort of atheist is aggressive.  They would like to convert you.  One move they all tend to make is to challenge you to prove God's existence, and claim that you're irrational or stupid to believe in God if you can't provide an argument that does so to their satisfactio… Read More »

First, where I am coming from. I am, as I realised rather late in life, a Jew of the blood. My mother’s Jewish parents came over from Germany and settled in England in the 1880s. They were not ‘observant’; and like most of their contemporaries in that diaspora, they did their best to assimilate to their host society. They gave my mother an upper-class English education; she did the same for me and my siblings; and as a result I have never felt anything but totally British. I only became conscious of my Jewish connections when a sad procession of my mother’s relations sought refuge in England in the 1930s. It did not strike home to me how closely involved I was with their tragic circumstances until I visited Ausc… Read More »

Student: What are the current challenges facing science, and what are the common points, where Torah and science converge?

Rabbi Steinsaltz: The challenges facing science is in biology, which is currently the cutting edge of science. One simple thing that can happen over the next decade is the development of a brain-computer link, which may revolutionise our existence, far more than what has been done before. Imagine having unlimited memory with accessibility to everything. This would present a profound change and it is frightening to think that we are not that far from it.

The novelty that the Torah represents is the ability for a person to say ‘no’ and challenge certain areas of scientific development, which goes contrary to… Read More »

Sixty years on from the Holocaust, the most systematic and sophisticated genocide in human history, we are forced to encounter the ultimate question: has humanity advanced and learnt its lessons from the past? Can genocide reoccur in front of the eyes of the world?

This was the subject of a lecture given by renowned expert on human rights, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Honourable Professor Irwin Cotler MP for the Oxford University Chabad Society.

Professor Irwin Cotler, who is at the forefront of a campaign to prosecute Iran's President Ahmedinejad for incitement to genocide, travelled from Canada to give the Chabad Society's annual Pearl Grunzweig memorial lecture. To give added flavour to the event,… Read More »

Before I delve into that I would like to tell you how refreshing it is to be just one of two speakers at tonight's grand occasion. I say this because just a few weeks ago I was invited to address a Jewish dinner in London, and I was the fourteenth speaker. When the evening began there were perhaps three hundred people in the hall, but as speaker after speaker droned on and on the hall gradually began to empty, so that by the time the eighth speaker went to the microphone there must have been about seventy people left. By the twelfth speaker we were down to twenty. And when I rose to speak — which was well after midnight — there were precisely two people left. But I made my speech. And when I finished I stepped down and a… Read More »

Many years ago, Sir Isaiah Berlin and I started a correspondence that had to do with his ancestry.  In Jewish terms, he came from a very distinguished ancestry.  He was a direct descendant of the founder of the Chabad movement.  In the course of the years, I had the honor and the joy of meeting Sir Isaiah several times, both in England and in Jerusalem.  Isaiah Berlin was one of the last intellectuals in England.  An intellectual is not necessarily a university professor: he can also be a shoemaker.  An intellectual is a person of boundless curiosity, who has the desire and the ability to discuss everything, and the spark that can make something new out of anything.  There are very few people of this kind … Read More »

Passages from Poems, 1920:

from “Gerontion”:

My house is a decayed house

And the Jew squats in the window-sill, the owner,

Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,

Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.

The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;

Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.

The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,

Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.

I am an old man,

A dull head among windy spaces.

from “Burbank with a Baedeker; Bleistein with a Cigar”:

But this or such was Bleistein’s way:

A saggy bending of the knees

And elbows, with the palms turned out,

Chicago Semite Viennese.

A lustreless protrusive eye

Stares from the protozoic slime

At a perspe… Read More »

I wish my talk today could be light-hearted, but the subject we are discussing is no laughing matter.

Which reminds me of a Jewish joke. That’s not quite as paradoxical as it sounds, when you remember that irony, and especially self-mockery, is a staple of Jewish humour. Why, I’m not sure. But I know it’s true, not just because I grew up in a Jewish household but because Freud says so; and he took humour very seriously. In his 1905 treatise Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious he said this about the Jews: “I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own character.”

Be that as it may, the joke of which I am reminded is about Moishe the pedlar. Mois… Read More »

Remembering the First World War 

A hundred years is a very long time indeed. It was a time when there was no electric iron, no fridge. Mother had to go out into the street in the morning with a jug and wait for the milkman to come and fill it up. No refrigerator of course. It was all very, very different. Obviously, no television. Wireless was completely in its infancy and I spent a lot of my time making recoils to get the first communications when the BBC was just starting out. It was quite a job and very interesting. There were of course no washing machines. You had a boiler in the house and there was a mangle (a mechanical laundry aid consisting of two rollers in a sturdy frame, connected by cogs and, in its home version, powered b… Read More »

Good evening ladies and gentleman. Can you hear me? I must start with an apology because I forget things these days. I forget words. I forget incidences.

Recently I entered into the bathroom and I forgot why I came into there. I am 91 years of age and I have lost all my friends. I use super glue.

I think I should give some background where I come from. I am a bit of an idiot..

I grew up on a farm and was taught to respect all people.

One thing I rejected was bullying. I could use myself those days. Out of 400 boys I never had a single incident of bullying.

I studied in London engineering.

After the termination of studying, the war broke out. Like a silly ass I joined up. I learnt flying … Read More »

The greatest threat facing the Jewish people today is assimilation and lack of Jewish education.

The killing of one’s neighbour is the unfortunate history of the world. The first person who killed in the Torah was Cain who killed his brother Abel in the Book of Genesis. He was jealous of his brother that the sacrifice of Abel was accepted by G‑d and not his own so he arose and killed his brother while out in the field. Cain was cursed by G‑d.

Then there was Esau who wanted to kill his brother Jacob for stealing the blessing that their father Isaac had wanted to bless Esau. Isaac requested Esau to bring him his favourite dish and promised to bless him. Instead, Jacob prepared the food first and when he brought the dis… Read More »

Professor Steinberg, an Israel Prize Laureate and author of the acclaimed Encyclopaedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, spoke on the Jewish perspectives regarding some of the most cutting edge scientific implementations in the field of medicine today, including stem cell research, pre-implantation genetic diagnoses (PGD), gender selection and human enhancement.

In a lecture outlining the scientific process of Stem Cell research, he explained that some of the most controversial issues in medical ethics today hinge on the debate on the definition of beginning of life. He explained that birth is the ultimate and universally accepted definition of the beginning of life. However, there could be numerous possible stages in the development of t… Read More »

The battle against ritual slaughter that has been raging recently in the Netherlands has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Despite a number of isolated incidents, the vast majority of Dutch people are not anti-Semitic.

In relation to the Holocaust, it is necessary to correct the much distorted facts about the Dutch and the Holocaust. The Dutch police were instrumental in the rounding up of Jews on behalf of the Nazis during the Second World War, and any attempt to whitewash this by focusing on the small number of cases in which Dutch people took it upon themselves to hide Jews is serving a grave injustice to a Jewish community that was decimated in the Holocaust, with only 10% surviving.

The Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam is… Read More »

Siegbert Prawer, Taylor Professor of German at Oxford from 1969 to 1987, was a charismatic figure, exceptional for his presence, his range of learning, and his enthusiasm for literature. Born in Cologne in 1925, he arrived in this country in the nick of time in 1939 with little knowledge of English. A few years later he won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, and was then a research student at Christ’s before taking up his first academic post at the University of Birmingham. He was then Professor of German at Westfield College, London, before moving to Oxford, where he was a Fellow of Queen’s, a college to which he remained deeply attached throughout his life.

Siegbert published sixteen books, from 1952 to 2009, … Read More »

“Good Evening Rabbi Brackman, members of the dais, leaders of the Jewish community, the Shear family, ladies and gentlemen.

I was privileged once to meet David Ben Gurion, the architect of the State of Israel. On April 13, 1972, I received a telephone call from Ben Gurion. At the time, he was living in Sde Boker, the desert kibbutz. He was a great admirer of the Tanach, and he called to ask some questions regarding two passages in the Torah which he did not understand. He asked if we could meet up to discuss these issues at Sde Boker, as rheumatism had made it difficult for Ben Gurion to walk.  I considered this a great honour indeed. When we met up, we discussed his questions for several hours, but I had one question of… Read More »

This is a special day for me: the building or opening of a new mikvah joins us spiritually to all our ancestors, keeping the same mitzvah through the ages.Mikvaot have been built from the earliest times in all parts of the world where there were Jewish communities, and in recent years archaeologists have discovered a number of remains.

In the heart of London, in the City, a mikvah was uncovered, and is believed to be 700 yrs old, dating from the 1200s.  The remains are quite clear, showing seven steps, going down into a small pool, and the archaeologist reports that it is finely constructed with great care as if it were something very special.

Mikvaot have also been unearthed in Bath, and in Bristol, and I remember not long ago… Read More »

It is a privilege to be asked to speak in honour of Jerry Cohen, here with you in the Chabad Society tonight.  I last saw him to speak to, by chance, shortly before he died; before that our main occasions for meeting had been in the supervision of the doctoral studies (on Thomas Aquinas on friendship) of a young scholar now teaching political philosophy in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  But Jerry Cohen remains one of the very, very few people I have met in over 50 years in Oxford who has said to me, and more than once, on a casual Oxford social occasion, in friendly conversational terms and tones, something substantive about the reality that matters most.  I hold him in great esteem for that.  I regret that… Read More »

It is humbling to come here to Oxford and stand in a place where Isaiah Berlin once stood and be tasked with sharing my own thoughts about Isaiah Berlin and his legacy and to think about the place of the Jew in contemporary philosophy and theology.

Let me begin this challenge by saying that if our question and the subject is the place of the Jew in contemporary philosophy and theology, then there is no better place to begin than here at Oxford with Isaiah Berlin. In many ways we can think of his career that began in Oxford in the 1930s and didn’t end until the 1990s, a span of 60 years, a career in which when he first entered there was almost no question whether there should be Jews as Jews contributing to philosophy … Read More »

It’s really a pleasure to talk here tonight because after all this is the Slager Chabad centre and my son David Slager is named after my father who perished during the Holocaust in Auschwitz, so it’s very appropriate that I’m talking about my experiences during the Holocaust here.

I am from Amsterdam, Holland. As I’m sure you know, Holland was neutral during the First World War and General Henri Winkelman in 1940 didn’t expect Holland to get involved during the Second World War and hoped that it would stay neutral. Unfortunately, the Germans had other ideas, and invaded Holland on 10^th May, 1940, which is when the trouble started. A very important aspect of the occupation was that it was done very calm… Read More »

Ofra Magidor, the new distinguished Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford, was invited to address the Oxford University Chabad Society at a Shabbat dinner in honour of her new appointment. Ofra completed her studies in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Computer Science in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and received a BPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford. Her main areas of research are Philosophy of Logic and Language, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. The Waynflete Professorship of Metaphysical Philosophy is the oldest of the four professorial fellowships at the University of Oxford endowed by Magdalen College in honour of the college founder William of Waynflete in 1857. Ofra is the second… Read More »

I should begin by saying that Heidegger’s Nazism would be of little interest if he weren’t a significant philosopher. As a nazi he was very small fry. But his reputation as a philosopher is such that his supporters want to exonerate him and, at the very least dissociate his philosophy from his political behaviour, while his opponents are happy to say ‘We told you so, didn’t we?’ Nevertheless, I will mainly talk about his life, turning to his philosophy only when it seems relevant to his politics. He was born of poor Catholic peasants in Messkirch, a small town in the Black Forest, and because of his brilliance was educated by the Church with a view to the priesthood. He was always deeply attached to the rugged … Read More »

I just got back from Israel. We visited Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and I received an honorary degree from Ben Gurion. Then we went down to Sede Baker in the desert where BGU has a desert research institute. We visited Ben Gurion’s grave, which is stunning because it overlooks the Zin valley and I mentioned him in my speech at BGU - because before BGU was built, he was quoted as saying that we will build Oxford on the Zin, so he actually referred to Oxford as the vision for BGU. He visited Oxford often and was apparently a very great devotee of Blackwell’s – he would buy up Blackwell’s every time he came to Oxford.

How does the work of Chabad at Oxford University align with the mission and goals of t… Read More »

Some twenty years ago  Professor Andrew Sims in his valedictory speech as President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the United Kingdom spoke of taboos in his own profession (which reflect, I suppose those of wider society, though in a heightened form):

The great taboo at the end of the start of this [the twentieth] century was sex, but it is now the last resort of the burnt out comedian. The unspeakable in the middle of the century was death, and now teaching about bereavement has come back into undergraduate medical education. What is unmentionable at the end of the century is personal experience of religious faith.

Because, many years ago, I had seen this passage quoted, I sought out Professor Andre… Read More »

Yosef Mendelevich is one of the heroes of the movement for Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union during the 1970’s and 1980’s.  I thought it might be interesting for those who’re having dinner at Chabad this evening to find out something about the way in which we in the West helped Soviet Jews to get exit visas.

As Yosef will, I am sure, explain, it was both difficult and dangerous for Jews in the Soviet Union to apply for permission to emigrate.  Difficult, because one had to jump through a number of hoops even to make an application – get an invitation from a member of one’s family in Israel, ask permission from relatives in the Soviet Union, and so on.  Dangerous, because the simple… Read More »