JDOV: Recent Episodes
JDOV
Often, those with good intentions encouraging unity imagine a world where the weird and wonderful distinctions between us disappear. This can lead to difference or diversity becoming supressed – or even suspect.
For the son of an Indian immigrant who has grown up to be an involved atheist queer Jewish leader, there are many reasons why diluting difference could be appealing.
Join David on a journey from ancient Iraq to East London as he discovers a different take on difference. Together we might find that Jewishness offers a more optimistic approach to otherness – if we take a look from the other side…
The post From the Other Side appeared first on JDOV.
In this talk, Chana Kanzen explores the relationship between Judaism, education and technology. Comparing technology to Marmite, Chana reflects on core revolutions in Jewish history and connects them to the technology paradigms we experience today as parents, teachers and students. Take a Byte of the Apple and all will become clear….or will it?
The post A Byte of the Apple appeared first on JDOV.
In this talk, Sir Trevor Pears explores the Jewish values that underpin his philanthropy and the work of Pears Foundation. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said that when he marched with Martin Luther King at Selma he felt his legs were praying. He understood his faith as an imperative to be a force for good in the world. Similarly, Trevor talks about his own journey and the importance of social activism as an expression of Jewish identity.
The post Praying with Our Feet appeared first on JDOV.
Although we can listen to a piece of music or watch a recorded talk whenever we feel like it, our most inspiring and moving occasions are still those that happen when we find ourselves in a room with other people, sharing a communal experience.
The post What happens in the room appeared first on JDOV.
Guilt is feeling bad for something we have done. Shame is feeling bad for the kind of person we are. Which is the characteristic Jewish emotion? Rabbi Sacks proposes that it is guilt, that each Jew stands with awareness of divine judgement looming, feeling bad for what they have done or not done. I argue that this is an idealisation. In fact our community as a whole is functionally atheist in moral terms, even if many individuals have faith. Instead, the community talks about Jewish pride, but runs in practice on shame and fear of shame. And we laugh off the associated ugly feelings as guilt. But when attention is paid to the role of shame, the possibility arises of weighing the unsettling truths associated with these feelings of shame, as well as potential misapprehensions.
The post Guilt isn’t the problem appeared first on JDOV.
What should we do? How do we make a difference in our wondrous, fragile and interconnected world? How can we know what makes a difference when our acts reverberate far beyond our field of vision and span of life? Julian grapples with these questions, based on his ten years in the saving the world business (climate change activism, eco-city design and solar energy in Africa), twenty years being married and twenty five years studying Talmud – with the help of a Talmudic story and its journey to Beijing and back.
The post Learn Talmud – Save the World? appeared first on JDOV.
There is a well-kept secret in our Jewish tradition. The period of aninut – the time from a person’s last breath until the covering of their grave – actually belongs to the dead, not to the living. What are the implications of this? What are the practical implications of the realisation that our funerals are our property, are our possession – not the mourners, not the community, not the institutions and the establishment – they belong to the dead? 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.
The post From Scared to Sacred: On the Cusp of Life appeared first on JDOV.
How is it possible to undo years of firmly held belief about ourselves? What does it take to recognise that changing our narrative is possible? This is the story of a profound moment in Nick’s life – the Hineni moment when he challenged and fought back against a belief that was unwanted but that he felt he was destined to live with. It’s a very personal story, and it’s a story that we probably all have, or could have our own version of.
The post Will You Embrace Your Hineni Moment? appeared first on JDOV.
When Susan travelled to Ethiopia to adopt her son, she didn’t expect to encounter Martin Buber there. But she did.
Jewish philosophy, theology and Torah study are ways to describe the indescribable, the unknowable: God’s will. But sometimes, in some moments, all these ideas take on immediate, gritty, real-life meaning. And that’s when they demand something from us – and when they matter most.
The post Second Nurture appeared first on JDOV.
The most devastating attacks on the Jews of medieval Christian Europe took place in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon during ten months from June 1391 to April 1392, and left a trail of deaths, forced conversions, and communal destruction. Many were the motives for these assaults, and diverse were the participants.
While the rioters’ success cannot be easily explained, the intervention of those who pledged to protect the Jews was ineffective. While these rulers believed it their mandate to protect the Jews, they did not see the Jews’ safety as their highest priority. Aragonese royal authorities, when they looked back over the months of riots, bitterly conceded that it appeared “as if the Jews had no lord.”
That the safety of a minority people cannot be assured is not simply a banality of Jewish history, but a truth about the fate of all people and of all groups whose security is dependent on others. However sincere the intentions of the majority society and the assurances of its leaders, to protect those who are reliant upon them, the security of a minority community is ultimately, for them, not a matter of paramount importance.
The post As if the Jews had no Lord: Anti-Jewish Riots in Castile and Aragons, 1391 appeared first on JDOV.
If 2016 has shown us anything, it’s that the world needs heroes more than ever.
All superheroes possess a single superpower, and it’s far more powerful than flight, strength or speed. Heroes, by their words, actions or even legends have the power to make us think and do things nobody else – not even our nearest and dearest – can.
In this talk, Stephen Rosenthal explores whether the concept of “Jewish heroism” exists. Did our Biblical heroes possess any shared characteristics or qualities that inspire the Jewish heroes of today?
And if they do, where are today’s Jewish superheroes?
Spoiler alert: They’re everywhere…
The post Where are the Jewish Superheroes? appeared first on JDOV.
How do you mourn someone you never knew? This was the challenge that Keren David and her family faced when their second child, Daniel was stillborn a week before his due date in February 1998, an unexplained, mysterious death.
Keren framed this talk as the barmitzvah speech that she never got to give for Daniel, because it was a way to reflect on the positive ways in which he changed them and the world. When Daniel died the pain was so acute that she really could not imagine how one goes on living with such a burden of grief. Camille Compton from the Jewish Baby Bereavement group gave her the inspiration to keep going. Keren’s hope is that her talk will reach other parents struggling with the loss of a baby.
This talk is dedicated to Daniel Moss, to Daisy Compton and to James Valentine Peake. Never forgotten, always with us, written on our hands.
The post Living a Double Life appeared first on JDOV.
(((David Aaronovitch)))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 his Jewish identity he would lay claim to it – there was one major problem: he could cherry-pick the Jewishness, but the anti-Semitism picked him.
The post (((David Aaronovitch))) appeared first on JDOV.
In this talk, Matthew Gould tells us what he has learned about being a ‘British Jew’ from his life as a diplomat. During his time as the UK Ambassador to Israel his Jewishness and Jewish values and beliefs became a real issue for some people. However, whilst he believes the age old accusation of “dual loyalties” is still alive and well, Matthew himself is clear that we can be at the same time 100% proudly British and 100% proudly Jewish. We should not let anyone else define for us what it means to be patriotic and what it means to be Jewish.
The post A Loyal Brit and A Proud Jew appeared first on JDOV.
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.
The post As if the Jews had no Lord: Anti-Jewish Riots in Castile and Aragon, 1391 – Benjamin Gampel appeared first on JDOV.
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 post From Scared to Sacred: On the Cusp of Life – Mimi Feigelson appeared first on JDOV.
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 […]
The post The Myth of Jewish History – Miriam Shaviv appeared first on JDOV.
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, […]
The post (((David Aaronovitch))) appeared first on JDOV.
“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 post The Uncomfortable Jew – Tim Franks appeared first on JDOV.
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. […]
The post Growing Grown Up Jews appeared first on JDOV.
‘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 […]
The post Six Feet Under appeared first on JDOV.
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 […]
The post I am an Impostor appeared first on JDOV.
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 […]
The post Why I Believe in Bourgeois Stability appeared first on JDOV.
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 […]
The post Silver Linings appeared first on JDOV.
When Yisrael Campbell sat and thought “what’s the most important thing I have to say?”, he realized that it’s “the story” that has been the connecting factor of his life. Both the stories of others that have helped guide him as well as the story of his life that has helped ground him. Yisrael Campbell […]
The post Because God Loves Stories – Yisrael Campbell appeared first on JDOV.
Think all Muslims hate us? Think again. Jews – and most people in the Western world – have let fear mongers and extremists paint a picture of Islam that is out of touch with reality. In fact, our fear, our ignorance, and our arrogance, may be the biggest detriment to peace. Ilene Prusher is an […]
The post Our Own Worst Enemy: Jewish Islamophobia appeared first on JDOV.
Jonathan Wittenberg is not an atheist. He believes that we are all connected by the one consciousness of God and that God is within and beyond all. In his talk, he speaks of why he holds these beliefs, how God makes him feel accountable and how these sensitivities are the foundation of his moral and […]
The post Why I’m Not an Athiest appeared first on JDOV.
It’s often said that Israel faces “an existential threat”, the phrase usually used to refer to the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Without dismissing that fear, here Jonathan Freedland looks at what he regards as the far greater threat to Israel’s existence – the country’s apparently permanent grip on the territories it gained in the […]
The post The Real Existential Threat Facing Israel appeared first on JDOV.
It’s time to take a good look at who Jews today really are and what we want. If we are truly going to embrace the new face of American Jewry and stay relevant, three kinds of walls must come down: The Walls of Hierarchy, Denominations and Institutions. Emergent Jewish communities – those that exist outside […]
The post The WOW Factor – Beth Finger appeared first on JDOV.
Avraham Infeld’s vision for the Jewish People is to find a way to be unified without being uniform. Listen to this talk to hear his suggestion as to how we can achieve this vision by constructing a “five legged table” which allows each person to choose at least three of the following legs to express their Jewish […]
The post The Five Legged Table – Avraham Infeld appeared first on JDOV.
The talk proposes that improved relations between Jews and Christians requires mutual knowledge and mutual respect, it corrects several misperceptions that Jews and Christians have of each other, and it provides one answer to Christian missionaries who want to “save” Jews. Levine is Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. […]
The post I Didn’t Mean to Sound Anti-Semitic – Amy-Jill Levine appeared first on JDOV.