IJS Events
- A Language in Search of Its Author: The Early Modern Beginnings of Modern Hebrew
- BOOK LAUNCH: Sport and British Jewry, 1890-1970
- Simon Wiesenthal Memorial Lecture - Perpetrators, Collaborators, Resisters, Bystanders: The Shoah in Greater Bulgaria, 1943
- We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust
- Identity through Difference: Rabbinic Judaism and Christian Narrative
- Fighting a Specter in Times of War: Soviet Jewry and the Heroization of Bogdan Khmelnitsky
- Summer Conference 2013
- Summer Lecture
- Marc Michael Epstein Lecture
- Kenneth Sacks Lecture
- Institute of Jewish Studies Summer Concert
- An Extraordinary Archive: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Warsaw Ghetto
- Jewish Identity and Israeli Foreign Policy
- Sephardim, Holocaust and Diasporic Memory: the Jews from the Island of Rhodes
- Rescue during the Holocaust: Sources and Causes
- David to Nehemiah: new fragments from Kenyon’s Jerusalem
- Book Launch: Ruta's Closet
- The Amazing Adventures of a Hebrew Manuscript from Medieval England
- My Father the Good Nazi: Reflections on an Encounter
- First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938-1946
- Ukrainians, Jews and Poles: The Ukrainian Triangle in Historical Perspective
- Bringing the Dark to Light – Memory of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe
- Blair, Labour and Palestine: Conflicting Views on Middle East Peace After 9/11
- Jews and the Making of the Modern Cultural Industry
- Vision 2020: Leading British Jewry into the Future
- Redcliffe Salaman, President of the Jewish Historical Society of England
- From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel
- The Postwar Quest for Justice: Jewish Honor Courts in Poland and in the Displaced Persons’ Camps
- What's Jewish About Jewish Folklore?
- Can Judaism restore the ‘Human’ to Human Rights?
- Christóbal Méndez alias Abraham Franco Silveyra: The Puzzling Saga of a 17th Century Converso
- Jewish Women Writers in Victorian England
- Defining Jewish Medicine
- The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews
- How Jesus celebrated Passover –Early Modern Views of the Last Supper
- "...And Thereafter: the impact of World War One on the Jews and their Europe"
- Empires, Nationalisms and the First World War
- Hunt for the Jews: the Case of Occupied Poland, 1942-1945
- The Man who never threw anything away: Moses Gaster and his World
- Jewish and Christian Tombstones from ancient Zoara/Zoora
- Royal Jews: Jewish Life in Berkshire from the Readmission Till Today
- The Jews in Congress Poland: At The Dynamic Centre of Political, Economic and Cultural Change
- What Exactly was the Goal of the Nazi anti-Jewish Enterprise?
- From Elephantine to Jerusalem and Back
- Maimonides and Contemporary Tort Theory: Law, Religion, Economics and Morality
- The Grammar of the Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew Tale
- Do Jews Believe in Saints? A Medieval Rabbi and his Posthumous Travels
- Jewish Women and Books in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
- Ephemeral Metropolis? The History of Jewish Warsaw
- Depicting Jewish Thought
- The European Jewish Experience of Migration: Early Modern and Modern Perspectives
- Archaeologists, Collectors, and Museums: Redressing the Ethical Divide in the face of Modern Conflict
- "In the footsteps of King Billy": The Origins of the Jewish Community in Dublin in the Context of Irish History
- The Rediscovery of Josephus and Modern Jewish Identity
- Zodiac Calendars and Angels in the Dead Sea Scrolls
- Moses’ Jewish Problem
- The Biblical Ishmael as seen by Medieval and Modern Jews
- PIANO CONCERT
- Jewish Writing in Poland
- The Popes and the Jews in 16th Italy: a convoluted encounter
- Brothers-in-arms with Nazi Germans: Jews in Finland during World War II
- The future of the past: Reflecting on Jewish history under the signs of shadow and hope
- Jewish Languages
- Domesticating Techniques in the First Hebrew Shakespeare Translations
- The Epistle of the Number by Ibn al-Ahdab. The Transmission of Arabic mathematics to Hebrew circles in Medieval Sicily
- Theodor Herzl: From Jewish Politics to Geo-Politics
- The Zohar: Reception and Impact
- Wandering Jews in England’s Green and Pleasant Land
- A New Approach to Mapping Jewish History
- Persuasion or Coercion? Approaches to the Law in early Jewish and Christian thought
- Digitalising Hebrew Manuscripts
- “An Even More Unexpected Find” – the Synagogue of Dura-Europos and its Place in Local Society
- Naphtali Franks FRS (1715-1796) – Musician, Synagogue Warden and Communal Eminence
- Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism and the Left in Britain
- Writing Jewish History in Eastern Europe
- The Book of Jonah: a Paraphonous Polemic
- Jacob Harris: an early Jewish (triple) Murderer in England
- Is there such a thing as Medicine in the Bible?
- Jewish Physicians from Galicia: Trailblazers and Rebels
- Women, Voice, and Music in British Synagogues
- Jews in Medieval England – What can we learn from a European comparison?
- Moses Gaster and the Samaritans
- Judith Montefiore discovers the Holy Land
- Jewish Education in Eastern Europe
- The Collective Biography of British Jews
- The Yiddish poetry of Avrom Sutzkever
- Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East
- Ernest Bloch in Britain
- CANCELLED_New Insights on Bar Kokhba from his Coins
- Life of a Finnish-Polish family during the Holocaust
- Defending the Indefensible: The Board of Deputies of British Jews and Communal Defence
- New Insights on Bar Kokhba from his Coins
- IJS Summer Conference 2018
- Reflections on Writing a History of Judaism
- Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1884–1914
- Bilingual Rabbis: Mapping the use of languages in the Talmud Yerushalmi
- The Jewish calendar controversy of 921/2: when Palestinians and Babylonians celebrated the festivals on different dates
- The House and the Book: sanctuary and scripture in late antique Judaism and Christianity, and early Islam
- Food and Alcohol in Iron Age Israel and Judah: Archaeological Perspectives
- 125th Anniversary Event-Back to the Future
- Poland and Hungary: Jewish Realities Compared
Highlights
Please see our IJS Spring Programme for our next events.
Watch this space, and if you are not on our mailing list please email s.benisaac@ucl.ac.uk so that we can keep you fully informed.
Poland and Hungary: Jewish Realities Compared
A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY: POLIN 31
Tuesday 29th January 2019 from 9.30 to 5.30 pm.
For further information please click here
Can Judaism restore the ‘Human’ to Human Rights?
Start: Mar 26, 2014 07:15 PM
Devorah Wainer, The University of Sydney
Wednesday March 26th
Devorah Wainer has had vast experience with asylum-seeking refugees and will offer insights from 'Torah', Jewish philosophers and 'Midrash' for stimulating thinking about the vexed topic of refugees.
As the global discourse concerning the treatment of people who seek asylum continues to be framed by politics and legal conventions, it seems that the ‘human’ in the concept ‘human rights’ is increasingly being lost. Terms such as displaced people, refugees, asylum-seekers, economic or climate refugee belong to international conventions and law, and mean nothing to the person fleeing from persecution, torture and death. They are ordinary people seeking life—the most primal instinct of all living beings—who, mostly, have become objects of derision and are unwanted. There is a huge divide between ethics and law and people are being lost in the abyss.
When researching the passage of refugees through the borderlands desert of Mexico and Arizona, USA, Devorah Wainer was struck by the profoundly ordinary, and individual, human aspects of those fleeing their homelands. Likewise after visiting and advocating for asylum-seekers in Australian detention centres she was deeply disturbed by the demise of ordinary people, including children, during their incarceration. She witnessed people being effectively de-humanised.
In this lecture she will briefly describe a few scenarios from these experiences. She will then deconstruct some terms and concepts from the 'Torah' explaining why mere translation from Hebrew to English is inadequate to develop the meaning and practical implications for us today. The thoughts of Jewish philosophers and scholars are woven throughout this lecture as Devorah re-inserts the 'neshama' (soul) to people who are mostly unknown, unseen and unheard.
Dr Devorah Wainer is an Honorary Associate in the School of Social And Political Sciences at the University of Sydney in Australia.
She was born in South Africa during the apartheid regime. Grappling with the ethical nature of the serious issues confronting her, she concluded that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ and participated in peace-making initiatives for dismantling that regime.
In Australia Dr Wainer again acted, gaining release for those who had been detained for 3 – 5 years.
Her doctoral thesis, 'Beyond the Wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood' is a study of Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy as an ethical foundation for asylum seeker policy, and develops a new qualitative research methodology—'Midrash Methodology'.
Devorah Wainer lectures on Refugee Studies, Levinas's philosophy and 'Midrash' methodology.
Lecture 7.15pm Pearson lecture theatre, G22 Pearson building (NE entrance)
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For more events, see our Lectures Programme for Spring 2014.
Page last modified on 25 mar 14 15:36