Presenters: S

Jessica Sacks

Jessica is senior translator at Koren Publishers, leading the team who produced the new Magerman Edition Koren Tanakh. She studied Literature at Cambridge University and made aliya in 2004. Trained in aggadah (non-legalistic midrash) at the Hebrew University and elsewhere, Jessica joined Koren in 2008. She lives in Givat Shmuel with her husband, three children and one grey cat.

Dan Saks

A spin-off of the critically acclaimed band, The LeeVees, the Macaroons have spent over a decade creating kid-centric catchy pop-rock music. Parents love their songs as much as their kids for the Macaroons' refusal to pander, their commitment to rocking and their ability to present Jewish culture and values in their hallmark feel-good style.

Jonathan Samuel

Jonathan studied Physics at Oxford University and works as a software engineer. A veteran of Limmud and Yakar, he created a Makaton signed version of the Shema. He camped at Appleby Fair 2021 (the biggest traditional Gypsy Fair in Europe) where he met Sherrie Smith, who he has invited to present at Limmud about Gypsies, Romani and Travellers.

Leonora Samuel

A graduate of the Susi Bradfield Women Educator Programme, Leonora trained as an adult educator and taught key skills to adults with intellectual disabilities in the 1990s. Her youngest son, Micah, has now grown to be a young adult. He has Down's syndrome. Leonora leads a fortnightly interfaith group called 'Talk and Torah'.

Benzion Sanders

Benzion (Benzi) Sanders grew up in the Orthodox community on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After making Aliyah in 2011 he served in the Sayeret Nahal special forces unit between the years 2012-2015, primarily deployed to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Benzi currently serves as the Jewish Diaspora Education Coordinator for Breaking the Silence.

Ian Sapiro

Ian Sapiro is Associate Professor of Music for Stage and Screen at the University of Leeds. His publications include 'Scoring the Score', 'Ilan Eshkeri’s "Stardust": A Film Score Guide' and 'The Screen Music of Trevor Jones’, as well as book chapters on John Williams’s orchestration, and the film-musical adaptations of Les Misérables and Annie.

Elli Sarah

Elli Sarah will appear on a panel led by Owen Power called ‘What might an accessible & inclusive Community look like?’.

Sassy

Sassy is the pub quiz master for Limmud Festival - back for the 12th year running! He is also a longstanding Limmud volunteer, member of the Board of Deputies, National Tournament Director for the card game bridge, a magistrate in his local area, and in his spare time works as a University Admissions Manager for a London university.

Larissa Schmitz

Larissa Schmitz, political scientist and journalist, lives in an old house in Cologne. Stolpersteine (literally 'stumbling stones' commemorating people persecuted by the Nazis) are just outside her front door. While searching for traces of the family who once lived in her house, Larissa met Kurt Marx, who grew up around the corner and left Cologne aged 13 on the children's transport.

Amos Schonfield

Amos is the CEO of Mavar, a confidential support service for people who have grown up within the Charedi community and have now chosen to explore the modern world. He founded Our Second Home, a youth movement for refugees and asylum seekers, and has worked and volunteered across the community, including at Yachad and the Board of Deputies.

Martin Schubert

Martin Schubert guides the Nefesh haShavua Jewish Meditation group at Hillel Base Berlin. His mission is to integrate the Feldenkrais method into a spiritual Jewish experience.

Pavlina Schultz

Pavlina was born in Prague, made aliyah and relocated back after ten years in Tel Aviv. As director of JCC Prague, Pavlina stands behind projects such as ‘Are We There Yet, Moses?’, ‘Don’t Be Afraid of Gefilte Fish’, animated videos about Jewish holidays, podcasts, pre-cooked Bible, j-cast and the mural by Tel Aviv street artists in the Prague 7 Art District.

Jan Schwarz

Jan Schwartz is a professor of Yiddish at Lund University, Sweden, and a farbrenter limudnik.

Hagai M. Segal

Hagai M. Segal is a multi-award winning academic and expert on geopolitics, terrorism and the Middle East. He has worked with institutions in over 30 countries and has participated in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Hagai lectures at New York University London, and served for a decade on the London First Security and Resilience Advisory Board.

Danny Seidemann

Danny is an Israeli attorney specialising in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem. He is the founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an non-governmental organisation that works towards a resolution to the question of Jerusalem that is consistent with the two-state solution. He is frequently consulted by the international community on developments in Jerusalem.

Silvia Bemporad Servi

Born in Florence, Italy, Silvia is a glottologist, freelance translator, Talmud student, and teacher at local Talmud Torah. A previous participant at Limmud Festival and Training on Tour and one of the founders of Limmud Italia. Married with two sons and four grandchildren, Sylvia loves the Feldenkrais Method.

Limmud Shabbat Team

The Limmud Shabbat Team has been working to create the Limmud Shabbat experience at Festival this year. Shabbat Shalom!

Nachman Shai

Nachman Shai is Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs. He took on this position after many years of service strengthening of the relationship between Israel and the Jewish people. The Minister served as a member of Knesset representing the Labour Party from 2009-19.

Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro is a former Moishe House resident in London. He is passionate about creating shared spaces for people to connect with their identity in their own way. During his time as a resident he enjoyed welcoming people to Shabbat dinners, celebrating festivals, running a book club and hosting interfaith events.

Carole Shaw

Raised in a London Jewish family of serial joke-tellers, started performing at six for local children. Presenting solo musical comedy cabaret-style shows since 1992 at Edinburgh, Brighton, Boulder USA, Whangarei NZ, Perth and Adelaide Fringes, S Africa's National Arts Festival, Limmud 2020 and in Yiddish at YIVO and in Germany. Soberly, a linguist.

Natasha Shaw

Natasha joined BBYO as Executive Director in December 2020. Youth movements, youth empowerment and advocacy are truly important to her since she started out as a madricha (youth leader) and movement worker herself. Natasha is passionate about providing meaningful Jewish experiences for young people in the UK and Ireland.

David Shilling

In the words of the V&A Museum: “David Shilling continues to amaze with his inventiveness". He bakes chollas, revolutionised hats, 200 million watched his Moscow TV show live, he's had work shown in the Louvre, works with government agencies and now offers a world first: a chance to buy your own space craft! Is six days work a week enough? What do you think?

Penina Shtauber

Meet Penina Shtauber, author of #ShidduchCrisis and #ShalomBayis, humorous and poignant short story collections on Orthodox Jewish dating, marriage and life. You can find Penina teaching courses on art and storytelling, allowing participants to write and publish their personal stories (see My Jew-ish Story). She has a BFA from Bezalel.

Adrian Sieff

Adrian Sieff has been involved in the Jewish community's environmental work through the Noah Project, and social justice issues through Tzedek and Jewish Support for the Homeless. Adrian and Simone retrofitted their home to an ultra-low energy standard and Adrian advised Finchley Reform Synagogue on the environmental design of its new building.

Hana Siková

Hana Šiková is a resident of Moishe House Prague. To her, Moishe House is an open Jewish living room, where everyone should feel at home. In her events she likes to explore contemporary topics through a Jewish lens. Outside of Moishe House she is a Scout leader, studies sociology and writes for an online magazine about sustainability.

Alan Silman

Alan is an epidemiologist at Oxford University, previously medical director of Arthritis Research UK. He has a wide-ranging research career spanning several areas of medicine, with current interests in global health, medicine safety and frailty. He is also a trustee of Limmud and has led tours to sites of Jewish historical interest in Europe and Asia.

Judith Silver

Judith has been composing, leading, performing and teaching music for 26 years, much of this happening within the Jewish community. Whichever facet of the work she’s exploring, she always brings to it her own deep experience of the power and potential of music, and her passion to share these with others. She founded Companion Voices in 2014.

Daniel Silverstein

Daniel teaches Chasidut at the Conservative Yeshiva. He has served as director of Jewish Life and Learning for Hillel at Stanford University and as Director of the UJS-Hillel Culanu Centre for Cambridge University. Daniel is the founder of appliedjewishspirituality.org, an online platform for the exploration of Jewish spirituality.

Avigail Simmonds-Rosten

Avigail Simmonds–Rosten, CCJ Jewish Programme Manager James Roberts, CCJ Christian Programme Manager

Jake Wallis Simons

Jake Wallis Simons is an award-winning British journalist and novelist. In December 2021, he was appointed Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, where he has become known for publishing a number of world exclusives about the Mossad, including the inside story of the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and a major three-part sabotage operation in Iran.

Sherrie Smith

Sherrie Smith is a Romany Gypsy from North London and a community activist involved in health research, social inclusion and challenging prejudice as well as widening participation. Sherrie is co-founder of Drive2Survive, a community-led organisation of ethnic Romanies and Travellers to challenge the policing bill and prejudice social issues.

Yiscah Smith

Yiscah is a spiritual activist, Torah educator, mentor and meditation guide who teaches various practices of encountering the Divine Presence within one's inner self. In fact, Yiscah views Judaism as a spiritual practice. As a spiritual trailblazer, while carving her own path, Yiscah encourages, ennobles and empowers others to do the same.

Limmud Social Programming

The Limmud Social Programming Team are here to make your Limmud experience a more social one. Look out for a range of activities and sessions that will help you to meet new people, try out new skills, have some time to relax and much more.

Daniel Sokatch

Daniel J Sokatch is an American activist, serving since 2009 as CEO of the New Israel Fund. In recognition of his leadership and influence, Sokatch has been named multiple times in The Jewish Daily Forward's “Forward 50,” a yearly list of the 50 leading Jewish activists who have had a significant impact on the Jewish community.

Tommer Spence

Tommer is a founder of Na'amod, the movement to end British Jewish support for the occupation, and a representative of Jewish students on the Board of Deputies of British Jews. He has previously served as a trustee of Yachad and a New Gen Fellow at the New Israel Fund UK. He is currently completing a PhD in health sciences at the University of Warwick.

Chlo Spinks

Chloe Spinks is the Marcomms Chair for Limmud Festival 2021 and business student at Oxford Brookes University, where she is president of Brookes Quiz Society.

Eva Srut

Eva Srut is an accomplished PR specialist and Jewish educator who currently lives with her husband and daughter in Prague. Eva is the Director of Global Communities at Moishe House and loves reading poetry, DIY projects and painting, spending time with her loved ones, and cooking.

Amir Stein

Amir Stein works as a mental health advocate and is a Literature and Jewish philosophy student. He is originally from Bnei Brak, having spent a year studying in the Gateshead old Seminary. He is also active in Hillel, an Israeli organisation for Yotzim.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, as well as Professor of History and the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. She is the author or editor of ten books, including 'Family Papers, a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century' (2019).

Helen Stone

Helen Stone is a founder member and co-chair of Generation 2 Generation, a Holocaust education charity that enables the children and grandchildren of survivors to tell their stories. Before retirement she was head of English in a pupil referral unit. She currently teaches English to refugees and tells her mother's story in schools.

Maurice Stone

Maurice is Chairman of the Israeli Dance Institute (IDI) and works for UJIA, the UK’s leading Israel charity. He has been teaching dance for many years at Limmud in the UK, Russia and Ukraine. He believes that Israeli dance is a fundamental educational tool promoting Jewish identity and a connection with Israel. So let’s dance!

Robert Stothard

Rob is a teacher and photographer, currently working at a secondary school in south London. He has photographed elections in Egypt, conflict in Ukraine and travelled the length of the Irish border. He is the co-author of two other publications, 'Tilbury' (2018) and 'Removal: A Short Guide to the United Kingdom Immigration Detention Estate' (2017).

Katja Stuerzenhofecker

Katja Stuerzenhofecker is Lecturer in Gender Studies in Religion and a Fellow of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester. She has a special interest in contemporary Jewish practices and their relation to thought and tradition. For entertainment, she organises the ‘Screen & Talk’ film club at the Centre for Jewish Studies.

Adam Sutcliffe

Adam Sutcliffe is Professor of European History at King's College London. He is the author or editor of six books, including, most recently, 'History, Memory and Public Life: The Past in the Present' (2018); 'The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. VII: The Early Modern World' (2018), and 'What Are Jews For? History, Peoplehood and Purpose' (2020).

Abi Symons

Abi is a writer and informal educator. She has a background working in theatre, comedy writing, performance and production. She is on the Limmud exec team for Volunteers and she is training to be a therapist.

Yali Szulanski

Yali Szulanski is a writer and spiritual educator. She is the youth director at The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and is enrolled at Yeshivat Maharat. She founded the "I Am" Project, which brings spiritual, emotional, mental and physical wellness to the classroom. Yali creates engaging, inclusive and evolving spaces for people going through life’s big changes.