Yellow 22
For feminists, not just for frummies! In an Orthodox Jewish world dominated by men, mikvah is the one area of observance in which women dominate, often helping male rabbis who know less. Yet this important spiritual act is commonly neglected or even ignored. So leave your towel behind, bring your sense of adventure and take a dip in the dark!
mikveh4 presentation.pdf
Blue 33
Why does Judaism often seem so kitschy? In this session we will explore the role of aesthetics in Judaism. We will look to text and philosophy to discuss Jewish ideas about aesthetics in a world that is obsessed with beauty.
Hayden Cohen Ben Crowne Keith Kahn-Harris Michael Wegier Debbie Young-Somers Abi Symons
Orange 13
Every year at Limmud there are sessions that reveal the Jewishness of TV programmes, films, books, music etc. But is everything really Jewish? In this session, panellists will show off their skills in Jewification as they are challenged to Jewify apparently non-Jewish texts with no preparation!
Red 6
Come and join Alexander to learn about the contributions of Jewish musicians into the field of mallet instruments (Marimba, Xylophone, Vibes).
Red 3
When a self-driving car has a collision, the decision process behind the dashboard will come under very close scrutiny. No Rabbinical edicts yet, but there are plenty of precedents to consider within halacha. We will consider the moral issues behind the algorithms, look at sources from the Talmud (in English) and discuss other similar dilemmas.
Green 27
Arnau Pons, a poet from Mallorca who writes in Catalan, will explain how his cycle of Ladino poems came about. Perhaps he needed this experience to speak of an inner exile.
Red 7
Synagogues are often associated with practices of Jewish prayer, chanting Torah, and communal convocation. But in antiquity, Jews also used synagogues in different ways: they carved names into walls and buried teeth and magical amulets below doorways. This session explores such practices, offering insights into the synagogue and its development.
Green 25
What happens if a corpse is found, apparently murdered, and no one knows who it is? The biblical ritual of the calf whose neck is broken (Deut. 21:1-9) is one response. Detective Karen Pirie, in Val McDiarmid’s novels, provides another. We’ll look at both responses and what we learn about responsibility, guilt and atonement in the world today.
Orange 11
Enoch only has a tiny part in the book of Bereshit, but his apparent failure to die inspired later Jews to fill in the rest of his story. We're going to take a look at the First Book of Enoch, which goes back to the 3rd century BCE, and includes a tour of heaven, a universe bristling with angels, a solar calendar, and lots of apocalyptic stuff!
Red 5
In Philip Roth’s “Eli, the Fanatic,” attorney Eli Peck has one job, assigned by the local Jewish community: to run a school of “fanatical” Holocaust refugees out of town. But as he gets to know the yeshiva and its headmaster-rabbi, he begins to wonder who, exactly, is the fanatic. The symbols and themes are easy to unlock, but do they speak to us?
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