Leading Oxford scholars honour former Oxford Jewish student, Isaac Meyers, at Oxford University Chabad Society

Leading Oxford scholars honour former Oxford Jewish student, Isaac Meyers, who tragically died at 28 at Harvard

Oxford University Chabad Society inaugurates the annual Isaac Meyers memorial lecture in Jewish Classics

By Dr. Mark Tilse (Oxon)

The Oxford University Chabad Society was honoured to inaugurate the Isaac Meyers Memorial Lecture in Jewish Classics on Tuesday 2 June 2009 at the David Slager Chabad Jewish student centre to about 70 people. The lecture was held to commemorate the first anniversary of the tragic and untimely passing of former Oxford Classics student Isaac Meyers, who was an active member of the Oxford University Chabad Society while he studied at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish studies in 2003 and St Peter’s College, Oxford. At the time of his passing, he was a 28-year-old graduate student and teaching fellow in the Harvard Classics Department.

As a classics student, the Oxford University Chabad Society chose to memorialise Isaac through an annual high-profile lecture in Jewish classics, the first such lecture in Oxford.

The inaugural lecture was entitled ‘The Origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ and delivered by Professor Geza Vermes to an audience of about 70 students, academics and community members. Professor Vermes is a scholar on religious history and a world renowned expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, having been one of the first scholars to examine the 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 and expanded as The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (2004). He is now Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and teaches at the Oriental Institute in Oxford.

Professor Vermes was introduced by a number of esteemed scholars who attended the evening in the memory of Isaac, including former Camden Professor of Roman History Professor Fergus Millar; President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Dr David Ariel; Prof. Bernard Silverman, Master of St Peter’s College, Oxford; Dr. Paul Joyce, and Head of Theology faculty, Oxford, who was Isaac’s academic advisor. One of Isaac’s poems was read by Harvard graduate student, Daniel Hemel, currently at New College, Oxford.

The event was hosted and chaired by Rabbi Eli Brackman, director of the Oxford University Chabad Society, who knew Isaac Meyers personally and offered some personal reflections about Isaac from his time in Oxford. He explained how Isaac combined both worlds of academia in Greek and Latin Classics and complete devotion to his Jewish identity and heritage.

Professor Vermes spoke for one hour on the controversial history of the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls, emphasising that contrary to other academics, he believed they belonged to the Essenes Qumran community, even if there are some inconsistencies. He also put forward his view that the word Essenes comes from the Aramaic word for healing (Assia).

Questions were taken by Prof. Fergus Millar and closing remarks about Isaac’s short but inspiring life were made by Rabbi Eli Brackman, who used the opportunity to launch a new section of the 3,000 volume Chabad Society Samson Judaica library, namely, the Isaac Meyers library of Jewish classics at the Slager Chabad Jewish student centre of Oxford.

This event complimented events that took place at Harvard in memory of Isaac.

Oxford stduent Denise Leigh, who studies at Wolfson College, commented that it was a "great lecture and looks forward to seeing it on the Oxford Chabad website". Another visiting academic said the event was "very successful".