Chabad Society hosts retirement Shabbat dinner for Oxford's greatest Jewish philosopher

Oxford University Chabad Society hosts retirement Shabbat dinner for Oxford's greatest Jewish philosopher

Oxford University Chabad Society hosted a special retirement Shabbat dinner for leading Marxist Oxford Jewish philosopher, Cichele Professor of Social & Political Theory, Professor Gerald (Jerry) Cohen.

Professor Cohen is successor and former student of Sir Isaiah Berlin and one of the most famous and entertaining philosophers in Oxford. The Shabbat dinner was sponsored by the Whisky Shop in Oxford and attended by about 150 philosophers, students and community.

Professor Cohen was born into a communist family in Montreal and studied at McGill, before coming to Oxford, as a graduate student, where he studied under Gilbert Ryle and Sir Isaiah Berlin. Although he first published a defence of Marxism, he said at the dinner, it was mainly written out of respect for his parents and he changed his views as soon he had 'let it out of his system' and began thinking on his own.

The evening ended with a moving rendition by the 68 year-old professor of the first Yiddish poem oifen pripichek that he learnt in his communist cheder. Jerry explained that although taught in a communist Jewish school, the poem ironically describes the most traditional ideas of Judaism how the Torah is the life and tears of Jewish history.

Many leading Oxford philosophers and academics attended the Shabbat dinner, which lasted until after midnight, with students lining up to meet the retiring philosopher, who they had only met through their reading lists for their course.

The evening was chaired and led by Rabbi Eli Brackman, director of the Oxford University Chabad Society, who is friends with Jerry and took the initiative to invite him to celebrate this transitional stage in his life with the Jewish students and community. Rabbi Brackman explained that as successor to Sir Isaiah Berlin Jerry's retirement also marks a transitional period in the annals of Jewish history of Oxford.