Dec 15 2024
Virtual Meetings 2023
This was a joint event presented by B’nai B’rith UK, Jewish Renaissance magazine and the Jewish Music Institute
Chair:
Malcolm Singer is well-known as a composer, conductor and
educationalist. Previously Director of Music at The Yehudi Menuhin School
and Musical Director of the Zemel Choir. Currently teaches Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Chairman of the West London Synagogue Music Committee.
Panellists:
Professor Catherine Loveday is the author of “The Secret World of the Brain” and appears as an expert psychologist on BBC Radio 4’s ‘All In The Mind’, as well as many other radio and television programmes
Michael Etherton founded vocal ensemble Mosaic Voices and has
released two albums with them Michael is Chief Executive of UK Jewish
Film and former Chairman of the Young Actors Theatre, Islington
Ilana Webster-Kogen is an ethnomusicologist, specialising in
music, diaspora and ethnicity in the urban Middle East. Ilana teaches Jewish and Middle Eastern music, hip hop, and critical/cultural theory at SOAS.
Judith Ish-Horowicz is Co-founder and Director of Apples and Honey Nightingale (AHN), a community interest company and the UK’s first nursery co-located in a care home – Nightingale Hammerson, where music is integral to the daily intergenerational engagements, sparking memory and
building relationships. Awarded an MBE for services to Early Years Education
Rabbi Joseph Dweck: “Identity sits in memory: thoughts on being Jewish in the 21st Century” (BBUK Jewish Heritage Days – 15/11/2023)
Rabbi Joseph Dweck is the Senior Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community of the United Kingdom
Dean Irwin: “Gone but not forgotten: ‘Jewish” homes in post-expulsion England” (BBUK Jewish Heritage Days – 1/11/2023)
Dr Dean Irwin, Visiting Fellow at the University of Lincoln, explores the post-Expulsion history of houses in towns such as Lincoln and Canterbury inhabited by Jews for nearly a quarter of a millennium, which are still remembered as places that Jews had called home.
The Jews were expelled from England in 1290. Although they were permitted to take their money and movable goods with them, any debts which remained outstanding, as well as any houses which remained in Jewish hands, defaulted to the Crown.
Dean explores the post-Expulsion history of houses in towns such as Lincoln and Canterbury inhabited by Jews for nearly a quarter of a millennium, which are still remembered as places that Jews had called home
Paul Gross : “Update on the situation in Israel” (Bureau of International Affairs – 11/10/2023)
Lizzie Glithero-West : “Heritage – The Long Game” (BBUK Jewish Heritage Days – 27/09/2023)
Lizzie Glithero-West, CEO of The Heritage Alliance, brings her experience in running the sector’s umbrella body for heritage in England, the Heritage Alliance, to discuss the challenges facing the Heritage Sector as the country is impacted by the Cost-of-Living Crisis as well as some more specific challenges faced by organisations preserving Jewish heritage and collective memory. She also explores the opportunities for us to demonstrate how heritage can address a host of public policy problems, from levelling up and wellbeing to climate change
Professor David Newman : “The Lost Heritage and Majesty of British Synagogues” (BBUK Jewish Heritage Days – 06/09/2023)
Professor David Newman OBE is Professor of Geopolitics at Ben Gurion University. He set up the “Synagogues of the UK” Facebook site discussing the history of communities and their rabbinic and cantorial personalities.
Natasha Hausdorff : “Israel, Territory and International Law” (Bureau of International Affairs – 16/08/2023)
Natasha Hausdorff is is a Barrister at Six Pump Court Chambers in London, and Legal Director of UKLFI Charitable Trust. She speaks frequently on international law, including the law of armed conflict, foreign affairs, and national security policy. Natasha sits on the Committee of the UK Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists and is a member of the JD Corps of the World Jewish Congress
Izabella Tabarovsky : “The Soviet Propaganda Campaign Against The Jews” (Bureau of International Affairs – 15/06/2023)
Izabella Tabarovsky is a senior advisor at the Kennan Institute (Wilson Center) whose research and writing focuses on Soviet antizionism, contemporary left anti-semitism and Soviet Jewry.
Lizzie Muir: “Modern day slavery – a global perspective” (BBUK – 24/05/2023)
Lizzie Muir is Community Engagement Officer at Anti-Slavery International. Having read Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, University of London, she brings her experience to provide an eye-opening talk. Providing a global perspective of modern slavery affecting the most vulnerable, she shows how slavery has transformed in the last 200 years, how Anti-Slavery International are fighting for freedom and how you can join this fight.
Adam Levick: “Critical race theory, illiberalism and antisemitism” (Bureau of International Affairs – 19/04/2023)
Adam Levick is Co-editor of CAMERA UK, and previously was a researcher at NGO Monitor and the Civil Rights Division of the Anti-Defamation League. He has published papers on “Antisemitism in Progressive Blogs” and “Antisemitic Cartoons in Progressive Blogs”.
Ariela Cassuto and the BB Lodges of Italy: “Jewish Italy- Ebrei Italiani” (BBUK/BB Italy – 15/03/2023)
Ariela Cassuto is President of the Union of B’nai B’rith Italy and has worked closely with BBUK especially in relation to the support of refugees in Ukraine. In their presentation, Ariela together with B’nai B’rith Italy take us from the slavery of Roman times, through the ghettos of Venice to Milan, the new reality after World War II, to the freedom of Livorno, and the present day
Prof Richard Landes: The sad tale of the new antisemitism of the 21st century (Bureau of International Affairs – 15/02/2023)
Richard Landes , a former Professor of History at Boston University, is a trained medievalist who has written widely on apocalyptic beliefs, millennial movements and the honour-shame culture. Much of his writing relates to the
scourge of global antisemitism and how today’s anti-Israel movement has reproduced the tropes and canards of historic Jew hatred
Caron Sethill: Treasures from the National Library of Israel (Heritage Days – 25/01/2023)
Caron Sethill is Programme Manager Europe for the National Library of Israel, which is gearing up for the move to its beautiful new home in Jerusalem in 2023, with millions of items are making their way into new state-of-the-art storage facilities. The Library is putting the spotlight on some of these treasures in a new publication “101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel”. In this session, originally planned for December 2022, Caron presents her top ten of these treasures and tells some of the stories behind them.