LBI London

Prof Lisa Appignanesi (King's College, London) Losing the Dead – Before and After 6.30pm, 7th December 2017   Lisa Appignanesi  teases out some of the hurdles she encountered researching her critically acclaimed family memoir,  Losing the Dead . These extended post publication: memoir writing elicits the kinds of responses historical texts rarely do. Please note: A short 15 minute film called:...

A memorial event in honour of the Leo Baeck Institute’s esteemed, longstanding former director Dr Arnold Paucker OBE Opening Words by Pauline Paucker Lecture by Peter Pulzer (Oxford): ‘Arno Paucker, A Scholar Who Reached Out’ Panel : ‘ Arno Paucker and German-Jewish History’ Peter Alter (Cologne) Simone Erpel (Berlin) Raphael Gross (Leipzig) Chair: Daniel Wildmann (London) The event was organized...

Edmund de Waal Artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes On the Eve of Departure: Art and Exile During the talk Edmund de Waal discussed the telling of family stories through words and sculpture, touching on his writing of The Hare with Amber Eyes and works by Paul Celan and Walter Benjamin. Organised by the Leo Baeck Institute London in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, Scho...

Panel Discussion Leo Baeck Institute London in partnership with the Pears Institute for the study of antisemitism ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.’ Prime Minister Theresa May, November 2016 In the aftermath of the vote for Brexit in 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May controversially broached a key issue of our times: how do we identify ourselves, and must...

Panel discussion as a part of the Leo Baeck Institute Lecture Series: The panel discuss the complicated and multi-layered relationship of the European left with Zionism and the State of Israel, examining this broad subject from a historical perspective and shedding light on the different debates on various European countries.   Panelists Nick Cohen  The Observer and The Spectator    Prof David Fel...

Dr Michel Dreyfus (University of Paris)     6.30pm, 26th January 2017       The Balfour Declaration (1917) boosted Zionism in France. Although the movement enjoyed the support of the Socialists in the inter-war period, it was denounced by the Communist Party (CP) and the ultra-left. The creation of the State of Israel marked the beginning of a new era. While support for Israel grew strongly among...

Prof Christina Späti   (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)   6.30pm, 8 December 2016     The positions and attitudes of the political left in Germany, Austria and Switzerland towards Israel  have undergone many changes since 1948. If the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by a romanticizing, pro-Zionist alignment with Israel, mainly expressed by Social-democratic parties and trade unions, the ri...

Thursday, December 1, 2016 - 18:45 Panellists are  Prof Neil Gregor ,  David Aaronovitch , and  Prof Maiken Umbach , and the panel will be chaired by Dr Daniel Wildmann and Prof David Feldman.  In Germany, until this year, it was illegal to print copies of Adolf Hitler's  Mein Kampf . The State of Bavaria held the copyright and banned publication of the book. In January 2016 the copyright expi...

Dr Brian Klug   (University of Oxford, UK) 6.30pm, 24 November 2016 A significant part of the British left, especially since the June 1967 war, tends to denounce Israel as a state and Zionism as an idea. Ostensibly, these attitudes are grounded in the anti-colonialism and anti-racism which have been staple causes for the British left since the sun began to set on the Empire. These grounds, however...

Thursday, April 14, 2016 - 18:30 Dr Wendy Pullan University of Cambridge German Historical Institute   In Jerusalem, the separation barrier has galvanized public opinion, both in its role as a hard barrier inside a divided city and as the visible ‘tip of the iceberg’ that reflects only a fraction of the political and military regime supporting the occupation. This lecture will acknowledge the wall...

Prof Yfaat Weiss The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel German Historical Institute 6.30pm, 11th February 2016 The UN Partition Plan for Palestine known as UN Resolution 181 envisioned Jerusalem as a Corpus Separatum, an international city open and accessible to believers of the three monotheistic religions. This did not materialize. While the city was divided as a result of the 1948 War, Moun...

Dr Thabet Abu Rass German Historical Institute London In this lecture the state policies toward tens of thousands of the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev region in Israel who live in ‘unrecognized villages’, will be highlighted. Militarizing space to secure land has always been one of the means tocontrol land. The Prawer Plan is the current attempt of displacing the Bedouins to finalize their l...

Prof Gunnar Lehmann Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel German Historical Institute London The different concepts of the past are an integral part of Israeli politics today. Jewish politics in Israel often seek legitimation through a connection with the physicalremains of the past. As stones do not speak, their presence and their past meanings are explained within the present political disc...

Prof Dan Diner (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Dr Daniel Wildmann (Acting Director Leo Baeck Institute London) and Prof Elizabeth Harvey (Chair German History Society) are delighted to invite you to a lecture by Prof Dan Diner (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) as part of the German History Society Annual Conference. Rites of Reserve: The German-Israeli Encounter in Luxemburg 1952   The lecture pre...

Prof. Jay Winter (Yale University, USA) The Great War and Jewish Memory The Great War shattered Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s celebrated distinction between history and memory in Jewish cultural life.  Jay Winter argues that Jewish history and Jewish memory collided between 1914 and 1918 in ways which transformed both and created a new category he terms ‘historical remembrance’.   The war unleashed bot...

Roz Currie Jewish Military Museum, London The First World War was a pivotal time of change forthe Jewish community in Britain and indeed throughout Europe and the Middle East. Roz Currie has curated the Jewish Military Museum and Jewish Museum London joint exhibition on this subject. This lecture will discuss the challenges behind telling this story, it will touch on newly uncovered narratives of...

Prof David Nirenberg (University of Chicago) Presented by the Leo Baeck Institute London, in cooperation with QMUL, School of History In his recent book "Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking," David Nirenberg argued that Anti-Judaism should not be thought of as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought.  Instead, he suggested, it was a powerful c...

https://www.leobaeck.co.uk/events/special-events/kristallnacht-remembrance-lecture Opening words by Sir Nicholas Montagu KCB   November 1938: The Story of Herschel Grynszpan Raphael Gross 's talk focuses on Herschel Grynszpan and the diverse reactions to his assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. It tells the story of Grynszpan’s background and examine the various responses to an...

Prof. Sander L Gilman Chairman, LBI London  Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences; Professor of Psychiatry Emory University A lecture organized by the Leo Baeck Institute.  Cosmopolitanism and the Jews The newest buzzword for globalization is cosmopolitanism. As with many such reuses of older concepts, cosmopolitanism has a complex history, specifically in the German-speaking la...

Prof Richard Wolin (City University of New York)  CCLS Lecture Theatre (Queen Mary, University of London, Lincoln’s Inn Fields Campus) How can one explain the fact that Walter Benjamin’s youthful essay on political violence, “The Critique of Violence” (1921), has, among representatives of the post-political “academic left” (Derrida, Zizek, Agamben), acquired canonical status? What did Benjamin mea...

Dr. Brian Klug  University of Oxford, UK Generally speaking, the British left has been on the side of the disadvantaged and the oppressed. Forthis reason, socialists,radicals and liberals have instinctively rallied to the cause of newcomers in an increasingly multicultural society. But circumstances have changed and the waters now are muddied.  This lecture will explore the reasons why it is diffi...

Prof. David Fraser University of Nottingham, UK  From 1940 to 1945 the Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to fall under Nazi occupation. German anti-Jewish decrees became part of the Islands’ legal structures. Local police and government officials identified and registered the few remaining Jews. Jewish property was Aryanized and Jews were deported, all with the knowing involvement of g...

European Leo Baeck Lecture Series London 2011 24 May 2011, 7pm at the German Historical Institute Claims about Jewish intellectual superiority surface regularly even in the 21st century. Modern genetics, it is claimed, prove that being smart is a singular component of “being Jewish”. Can it be a bad thing to be thought to be smart? The claim reveals itself to be a form of insidious philosemitism,...