What can be learned about the fate of minority peoples from the Anti-Jewish Riots in Spain in 1391?

Benjamin Gampel is a specialist in medieval and early modern Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

 

In this talk, Mimi Feigelson casts the funeral as a sacred drama, and challenges us to become the playwright of this drama. She asks us to claim our lives in their totality, in the understanding that, if you know how you want to be buried, you know how you want to live.

Mimi Feigelson is the first female Orthodox rabbi, an international teacher of Chassidut & Spirituality and a storyteller.

In this talk, Miriam Shaviv shows that the idea of an “authentic” Jewish tradition, unbroken and unchanged for 2,000 years, is a myth which stems from our lack of familiarity with the history of Judaism (as opposed to the history of the Jews, which is widely studied). Although we are a people who claim to revere history, we seem to prefer myths.

She examines why this is the case, and argues that Orthodoxy must become much more familiar with and honest about its past, if it wants to secure its future.

Shaviv is a Jewish Chronicle columnist, co-director of an online marketing agency and founding member of the Partnership Minyan

David Aaronovitch’s family were atheists and their faith was Marxism. At the same time, he knew he was “half Jewish”, but he didn’t know what this meant. All in all, he imagined his Jewishness to be like his Irishness – a story of the past, exotic but irrelevant. But in fact, it hasn’t been irrelevant, far from it. In this talk, David explains how, whilst he was happy to cherry-pick from this identity – if there was anything he particularly liked about Jewishness, he would lay claim to it – there was one major problem: he could cherry-pick the Jewishness, but the anti-Semitism picked him.

Aaronovitch is a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle and The Times, and author of three works of non-fiction

“The Uncomfortable Jew” is an invitation to make yourself uneasy: Tim Franks draws on his experience as a journalist based in Jerusalem – and his experience as a practising Jew – to explain why being between a rock and a hard place is a great place to be.

Tim Franks is the presenter of Newshour: the flagship news and current affairs programme on BBC World Service radio.

The Jewish world has got itself into an alarming position. Despite its reputation as a community that cares about learning, it seems to have consigned many of its most important features into the bag marked ‘kids’ stuff’. This is not only a terrible piece of mis-selling, it’s also a woefully poor strategy for the future. Time to grow up! My talk explores how we got here and what we should do about it.

‘I will lie on a cold metal table…’ If you’ve ever wondered what the Chevra Kadisha (Jewish burial society) will do with your body when you die, this talk is for you. Sally Berkovic intersperses reflections on the early deaths of her parents and her own life as a ‘motherless mother’ with the physical rituals undertaken by the Chevra Kadisha as her dead body will be prepared for her burial, six feet under.

Berkovic is the CEO of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe

Examining ‘impostor syndrome’ and how some of our greatest Jewish leaders have been sufferers of it. Each and everyone of us has a unique gift to bring to this world, and it is specifically our outsider and imposter status that makes us uniquely us, and must be brought to bear on Jewish tradition.

Yaffa Epstein is the Director of Education, North America for the Pardes Institute of Jewish

 

Daniel Finkelstein was brought up in Hendon Central. This talk is a call to understand what we have in Britain and to appreciate it.  We are living in one of the most prosperous countries in the world at one of the most prosperous moments in history. If politicians are so bad how is it that we have it so good?

Daniel Finkelstein is Associate Editor, Columnist and Leader Writer for The Times newspaper

A fascinating and honest life story. It starts as a story of a five year old clutching the hand of her nine year old sister, travelling from Vienna on a Kindertransport to escape the Nazis in 1939. Dame Stephanie describes how all that she is stems from that discontinuity in her life and how the trauma remains with her 75 years on. However, this is also a story of how she went on to embrace change and life in the UK, becoming a hugely successful early technology entrepreneur.

Dame Stephanie Shirley, British information technology pioneer, businesswoman and philanthropist.