To commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and in honour of Tu B’Shvat, we are hosting a very exciting guest speaker and local neighbour to our Kehillah, Dr Anna Hájková, who will be presenting and doing a Q&A with us on her new book on the History of Theresienstadt, The Last Ghetto. Terezín, as it was known in Czech, or Theresienstadt as it was known in German, was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Terezín was the last ghetto to be liberated, one day after the end of World War II. The Q&A will be moderated by Sue Lukes, Kehillah Member and Labour Councillor for Highbury East.

The Last Ghetto is the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust. Challenging conventional claims of Holocaust exceptionalism, Hájková insists instead that we ought to view the Holocaust with the same analytical tools as other historical events. The Last Ghetto is a transnational, cultural, social, gender, and organisational history of Terezín, revealing how human society works in extremis and highlighting the key issues of responsibility, agency and its boundaries, and belonging.

Dr Anna Hájková is Associate Professor of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick. Her book The Last Ghetto, An Everyday History of Theresienstadt can be bought from the Oxford University Press online shop here.

Weekly Jewish Adult Education

Wednesdays 7.30-9pm (w/ a tea break in the middle) Most Wednesday evenings, with term time breaks sessions will be discussion-based, with sources/material provided by the teacher. Course is free for Kehillah members

Email Rabbi Leah for information at rabbileah@kehillah.org.uk

This is a full adult Jewish education course for community members at all levels of experience, aiming to cover all topics over the course of the year: Jewish history, time, texts, life cycle, thought and practice. Community members can dip in and out as the topics interest them — or stay for the whole course. Those community members pursuing conversion or confirmation of Jewish status with Kehillah are asked to attend the whole course (unless they can arrange with Rabbi Leah to pursue similar learning in another way). Everyone is welcome.

Rabbi Leah will be teaching the majority of the sessions, and we will also have the opportunity to hear other perspectives and connect to the broader London and British Jewish world (and perhaps internationally— one benefit of Zoom!), hopefully on topical and current issues as well.

Throughout the years, in our adult education classes (‘Come Learn With Us’), we explore Torah and other aspects of Jewish life.

Previous classes included a three week course titled “Abominable Texts? – Homosexuality in Rabbinic Writings” in April, where we took a fresh look at key texts in the Talmud and later Rabbinic writings about male and female homosexuality and same-sex marriage. We also had a 3-session Shabbat Song Sharing in December. This musical-educational-liturgical series covered the melodies we know and love to sing on Shabbat, as well as some lesser-known or new-to-us favourites. Sessions on “Trans-formations: The multiple genders of the Talmud”, about the space our texts create for trans, non-binary and queer people today, took place in March.

You can find current and previous class resource documents here