Pre-Passover Seminar in Jewish Studies - Yom Limmud
Exploring the Jewish festival of Passover, and the classic text of the Haggadah with leading scholars from Oxford and around the world, through philosophy, history, liturgy, midrash, piyutim, spirituality, mysticism and manuscripts.

Programme:

18:00 Buffet reception

19:00 Rabbi Eli Brackman (Oxford University Chabad Society)
‘Passover in the drashot of R. Joshua ibn Shuaib (1280-1340) found in Oxford MS. Opp. 722’

19:20 Rabbi Dr Naftali Rothenberg ‘Redemption without illusions: Pesach as a preparation for the future redemption’
Naftali Rothenberg is a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and the Rabbi of Har Adar township, Israel. Rabbi Rothenberg is a visiting associate in the programs of law and religion and love in religion at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. His current research is on the influence of Leone Hebreo, Dialoghi d’amore, supported by the Venice Center for International Jewish Studies and Ca’Foscari University of Venice. He has published numerous articles and 12 books, among them: The Wisdom of Love – Man, Woman & God in Jewish Canonical Literature (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009) and his forthcoming book is: ‘Rabbi Akiva’s Philosophy of Love’ (Palgrave). Naftali Rothenberg is the 2011 laureate of the Liebhaber Prize for the encouragement of religious tolerance in Israel.

19:40 Dr Ros Abramsky ‘Degrees of Separation’
Ros Abramsky is an Oxford researcher who studied Crystallography at Birkbeck, where she taught Science Communication, as well as at Imperial College. She completed her PhD in Information Science from Loughborough University.

20:00 Dr Naftali Loewenthal ‘The Rebbe’s letter on the Four Sons’
Naftali Loewenthal is Associate Professor (Teaching) at the Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL. He is author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago, 1990) and Hasidism beyond Modernity, Studies in Habad Thought and History (Littmann Library).

20:20 Dr Israel Sandman ‘Rabbi Eliezer vs. Rabbi Akiva on the Plagues: negating externals to uncover underlying goodness vs. radical upheaval’
Dr Israel Sandman researches Hebrew manuscripts and premodern Jewish thought. Currently, he is at UCL, cataloguing and researching the Correspondence of Hakham Moses Gaster, Chief Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation one century ago.

20:40 Rabbi Dr Jeremy England ‘The Signs of Moses’
Jeremy England was born in Boston, and became Rhodes Scholar at St John’s College Oxford after graduating from Harvard in 2003. While a physics professor at MIT, he originated the theory of life-like self-organization known as dissipative adaptation. Now an ordained orthodox rabbi, start-up co-founder, and visiting professor of physics at Bar-Ilan University, Jeremy lives in Israel with his family and works in biotech at the intersection of AI and oncology.

21:00 Audrey Royall ‘The City as Monument – Holocaust Representation in Austria’
Audrey Royall is an MSc student in Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Jesus College. She received her BA in Anthropology from Princeton University. Her main research interests are early 20th century Jewish communities and post-World War II Jewish identity.

21:20 Benjamin Scher ‘Drug Policy, Homelessness and the Story of Passover’
Ben is a DPhil student in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation and a member of Wolfson College, Oxford. His doctoral research is funded by the Society for the Study of Addiction and is jointly supervised by Dr Benjamin Chrisinger (University of Oxford) and Dr Gillian Shorter (Queen’s University Belfast). He holds a BA in Combined Social Sciences (Anthropology and Philosophy) from the University of Durham and an MA in Public Issues Anthropology from the University of Waterloo where he was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

RSVP for buffet and handouts in advance: mailto:info@oxfordchabad.org

Join Zoom Meeting: us02web.zoom.us/j/86517585149?pwd=bZmGE5WeadgNK4p0MiaAzzhDkESe3b.1
Meeting ID: 865 1758 5149 / Passcode: 681687
Date: 6 April 2025, 19:00
Venue: Slager Jewish student centre, 61 George St, Oxford OX1 2BQ
Speaker: Various Speakers
Organiser: Oxford Chabad Society
Part of: Oxford Chabad Society
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Belinda Clark