Presenters - K

Born in 1929 Poland, Jack Kagan survived Russian and German occupation by escaping in 1943 to become one of the Bielski partisans whose amazing story was told in the recent film Defiance. Living in London since 1947 Jack's book Surviving the Holocaust with Russian Jewish Partisans was published in 1997.

Sessions:

• Surviving the Holocaust with Russian Jewish Partisans

Organisation: St Thomas' Hospital

I am a consultant in St Thomas' Hospital Baby Unit, with the biggest maternity unit and the 2nd biggest children's hospital in London. I have been involved with dozens of mortally ill babies, for many of whom decisions about discontinuing medical care is discussed, during 29 years of experience.

Sessions:

• A Good Death

Organisation: RenéCassin
Website: http://www.renecassin.org/

Sarah is the director of RenéCassin, a human rights Non-Government Organisation (NGO) that uses historical Jewish experiences and positive Jewish values to educate and campaign on universal human rights issues, such as asylum and discrimination.

Sessions:

• Gaza, Goldstone, and the Ethics of War
• Value Judgements: British and Jewish Values – Can They Coexist?
• Naked Prayer

Organisation: Liberal Judaism
Website: http://www.liberaljudaism.org/tent

Avivit is Liberal Judaism’s young adults worker. She runs UK-wide 'tent' events, including Shabbat services, residential programmes and cultural outings. She also trained at Reidman International College for Complementary Medicine and worked as a Shiatsu therapist for eight years in Israel, America and London, offering individual treatments and group workshops.

Sessions:

• Creative Musical Service Leading for Today’s Generation
• Shiatsu Workshop

Hannah Kaye relishes Jewish learning, having studied at Nishmat and Orot in Israel. Not content with learning in only one country at a time, this year she has chaired the first International Chevruta Programme, and has been Skype's most frequent client. A sculpture graduate from Wimbledon School of Art, she is co-ordinating Limmud V'Omanut.

Sessions:

• Can you be a good person without Torah?
• Limmud V'Omanut

Charles Keidan is in his sixth year as director of The Pears Foundation, a UK based charitable foundation investing over £6 million annually in charitable causes. Charles previously worked as a political advisor in the British Parliament having graduated in history from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 2000.

Sessions:

• Taking Limmud Back Home - Fund Raising in a Global Economic Crisis
• Can Israel Redeem Africa?

Organisation: London School of Jewish studies
Website: http://www.lsjs.ac.uk/

Maureen teaches at the London School of Jewish Studies where she is Head of Programming. She is an Ashdown Fellow, is currently doing an MA in Jewish Education and is very proud to have been involved in Limmud from the beginning.

Sessions:

• Satan - friend or foe?
• Chavruta With a Twist
• A Kaddish'l (1 of 3)
• Limmud Town Hall: 2020 Vision – What Next for the Jewish People?
• Images of Jewish Childhood (2 of 3)
• Images of Jewish Childhood (3 of 3)
• A Good Death
• "The Slave": Paradise Lost, Regained and Regretted
• Poetry in the Bible and the Bible in Poetry

Jasmine/Yusmin has been making things ever since she can remember. Her life was revolutionised the day she got her first sewing machine, and she now loves to make patchwork quilts. In her spare time she is a junior doctor. Jasmine is also co-chair of Limmud Fest 2010.

Sessions:

• Israeli Coffee Shop (1 of 2)
• Israeli Coffee Shop (2 of 2)

Website: www.judyklitsner.com

Judy is a senior faculty member at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. She weaves together traditional exegesis, modern scholarship and her own original interpretations that are informed by close readings of the text. Judy is a popular lecturer on Bible in the US, Europe and Israel and she is the author of a new book: Subversive Segue’s in the Bible (JPS).

Sessions:

• "Let All the Daughters Live:" The Midwives of Egypt and the Seeds of Identity
• The Tent, The Field, and the Battlefield: The Dynamic Face of Biblical Motherhood
• Slumbering Prophets and the Escape From Self: How the Book of Jonah Undermines the Story of Noah
• Three Akedot: Ishmael, Isaac,and Job's Children

Website: http://www.cooljewbook.com/

Award-winning journalist Lisa Alcalay Klug has written for the New York Times, Forward, Jerusalem Post and many other publications. Her book, Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe, is the only humor book honored in the 50-year history of the National Jewish Book Awards.

Sessions:

• "Neither Are You Free To Desist From It" -- Adventures in Tikkun Olam
• Cool Jew I
• Cool Jew II
• What Inspires Me: Artists & Writers

Tony is a veteran writer on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Recent publications include the acclaimed pamphlets: How peace broke out in the Middle East, and Visions of the Endgame. Tony is Vice Chair of the Arab-Jewish Forum; Special Advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and formerly a senior official at Amnesty International.

Sessions:

• Are Israeli policies entrenching anti-semitism worldwide?

Nick Kochan is the author of The Washing Machine, a book about money laundering, terrorist financing, and organised crime. He has also written a biography of Gordon Brown, and other books on fraud. He was educated at Cambridge University.

Sessions:

• Scandals in Jewish Public Life
• Organised Crime in Israel

Organisation: University of Portsmouth/ london jewish cultural c
Website: http://www.port.ac.uk/

Searle Kochberg teaches on the BA TV & Film Production course at the University of Portsmouth where he is Head of Curriculum in the Dept of Creative Technologies. Part time, Searle also works at the London Jewish Cultural Centre and in the creative arts as a writer and director.

Sessions:

• Mapping Jewish Identities in Non-fiction Film.

Daniella Kolodny is a Masorti Rabbi ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Until her recent marriage to an English Limmudnik she was a US Navy Chaplain. She now teaches UK landlubbers on topics including Jewish approaches to war and peace, social activism and prayer.

Sessions:

• The Flickering Flame: The Shabbat Lights in Prayer, History and Literature
• Rava’s Gavra to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: The Tale of the Golem

Born in the East End of London Bernard Kops is one of the best-known, most admired playwrights of his time, achieving recognition with his first play The Hamlet of Stepney Green. His autobiography, The World Is A Wedding, was published worldwide. The second instalment Shalom Bomb received great acclaim.

Sessions:

• My East End
• Playwriting Workshop: A Dramatic Happening
• This Room in the Sunlight

Jonny Koren is a classical pianist by training, and performs vocals, keyboard and accordion in Kobi Oz' Mizmorei Nevuchim - Psalms of the Perplexed.

Sessions:

• Mizmorei Nevuchim (Psalms for the Perplexed) in Concert
• Mizmorei Nevuchim (Psalms for the Perplexed) in Concert

Organisation: Initiative for Islamic Studies
Website: http://www.halimakrausen.com/

Halima studied Islamic theology and law in a rather unconventional way. She teaches at the Islamic Centre in Hamburg and at the university and is involved in a number of Islamic studies and interfaith projects in Germany, Britain, America and the Middle East.

Sessions:

• Who was sacrificed? The Akedah in the Quran
• Hotheads and Blockheads - A Muslim reads Parsha Pinchas
• Reason and Religion - A Jewish-Muslim Dialogue
• Jewish-Muslim Dialogue - a Muslim Perspective

Organisation: Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem

Joshua Kulp is the author of The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History and Commentary. He teaches rabbinic literature at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and at the Schechter Institute. He lives in Modiin with his wife and four children. In his spare time, he is an avid triathlete and runner.

Sessions:

• Sex on the Sabbath: Rabbinic and Non-Rabbinic Laws
• The Seder: A Response to Crisis
• The Cat That Ate the Mouse: The Seder as it was and as it is
• Judaism: Ethnicity or Faith
• Conversion Controversies: Converting for the Sake of Marriage

Organisation: Auschwitz Jewish Center

Tomasz is director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center (since 2006 affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, NYC). He has an MA in English Studies (Adam Mickiewicz University) and Jewish Studies (Brandeis), and major interests in Polish-Jewish history, the Holocaust, antisemitism, and xenophobia and tolerance education.

Sessions:

• Polska Year - What Was "Oshpitzin"?
• Polska Year - New Life
• Polska Year - How can Jewish educational tours encounter contemporary Poland?
• Polska Year - How Do We Remember?

Bill Kunin is a Professor of Ecology at the University of Leeds, and is also co-chair of the Leeds Masorti synagogue. His research focuses mostly on plant and insect populations, but he dabbles with Jewish texts whenever he has the chance.

Sessions:

• From Shma to Shmita: sustainability and rainfall in the Promised Land

Tony Kushner is Marcus Sieff Professor of Jewish/non-Jewish relations at the University of Southampton. His most recent book is Anglo-Jewry since 1066 (Manchester University Press, 2009). He and his family live in Southampton but he is a Mancunian and a (distant) relative of Joseph Hyman, Titanic survivor.

Sessions:

• Reading currents of anti-semitism: is it really on the increase?
• Jews and the Titanic