Where are the roots of Jewish comedy? What makes a joke Jewish? The Bible has comedy and jokes - not much, but who’s counting? The Talmud and early Rabbinic literature grew a special brand of Jewish humour, as has our experience of Diaspora. Throw in some history, the festival of Purim, struggle, persecution, poverty, Rabbinic … Continue reading The Roots and Branches of Jewish Comedy
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin who laid the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe. Spinoza's magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's … Continue reading A Gentle Introduction to Spinoza: His Life and Times
The catastrophes of the twentieth century, most significantly the Shoah, led to the near destruction of the rich musical heritage of Eastern European and Russian Jews. Composers, performers and their art were either lost forever, or else became dispersed and fragmented, leaving only shadowy echoes of a lost world. Stephen Muir will talk about … Continue reading Jewish Music out of the Shadows: Hidden Archives, Lost Worlds
Polack's House at Clifton College, founded in 1878, was the first Jewish Boarding House in an English public school. The history of the Jewish Boarding House at Clifton is closely connected to one particular family - the Polack family who provided four housemasters, over three generations and 89 years. The House, particularly in the … Continue reading Polack’s House and the Jewish Community at Clifton College
In 1991, the Nation of Islam first published the Secret Relationships between Jews and Blacks charging Jews with controlling the Atlantic Slave trade. The book has been furiously rebutted by academics but its assertions are still circulating unquestioned on a number of popular Black History sites. How significant is this? How is the Jewish role … Continue reading Jews and the Slave Trade
Vivienne Jackson • Jewish Council for Racial Equality • London Race, asylum and immigration are visibly high on the UK political agenda. Europe is witnessing the greatest refugee crisis within its boundaries since the Second World War. Anti-immigration arguments are palpable in sections of the national press, and appear to have lain behind some of … Continue reading Social justice, Jews and the refugee experience in Britain
Yoga is one of at least six Hindu religions as old or older than Judaism. It overlaps through serendipity with the concept of “Adam Kadmon” (original man) in Rabbi Moshe de Leon’s Zohar – published in manuscript form in the late 13th century Castile but attributed by some to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai the 2nd … Continue reading Kabbalah and Yoga
Starting with Theodor Adorno’s much-quoted proposition that ‘After Auschwitz it is barbaric to write poetry’, this talk will explore the tension between confronting the reality of the Holocaust and responding artistically through the medium of poetry to human experience. By focusing on individual poems by survivors such as Paul Celan and Primo Levi and … Continue reading No poetry after Auschwitz
“The novelty of our time that so many individuals have experienced the uprooting and dislocations that have made them expatriate and exiles.” The words of Edward Said encapsulate the widely-held view that exile was emblematic of the modern world. This talk will focus upon three artists featured in the exhibition ‘Out of Chaos’ at the … Continue reading Painting Exile: R. B. Kitaj, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff
Dating back to the time of King Solomon, some of the oldest Jewish communities in the world are to be found in India. In 2016, Sonia Jackson joined a tour of Indian Jewish sites and synagogues organised by Maidenhead Synagogue and led by Ralphy and Yael Jhirad. She will give an illustrated talk about … Continue reading The Jews of India
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