The Yerushah Lecture
The annual Yerushah Lecture in the Faculty of Divinity was established with a benefaction from the Righteous Persons Foundation, created by Steven Spielberg from the proceeds of his 1993 film Schindler’s List. "Yerushah" is the Hebrew word for "heritage". The Yerushah Lecture is devoted to Jewish heritage in all its aspects, with an emphasis on the transmission of Jewish identity and values across the generations.
Wednesday 25 May at 6 pm
2022 Yerushah Lecture
Changing Perspectives on the Song of Songs: Literal and Allegorical Loves
Professor Ilana Pardes
The Cambridge Faculty of Divinity is pleased to announce that the 2022 Yerushah Lecture will take place at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 25 May, in the Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, West Road. Professor Ilana Pardes (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will speak on ‘Changing Perspectives on the Song of Songs: Literal and Allegorical Loves.’ All are welcome, and refreshments will be served following the lecture.
Ilana Pardes is the Katharine Cornell Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew Kather University of Jerusalem and the director of the Center for Literary Studies and of the Institute of Literatures. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Harvard University Press, 1992), The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (University of California Press, 2000), Melville's Bibles (University of California, 2008); Agnon's Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture (The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies, University of Washington Press, 2013), The Song of Songs: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books, Princeton University Press, 2019) and Ruth: A Migrant’s Tale (Yale University Press, Jewish Lives series - forthcoming).
Previous Lectures:
- 2021 Professor Martin Goodman, ‘Mission and toleration in Judaism.’
- 2018-19, Michael Rosen, ‘So They Call You Pisher!’: An exploration of a secular Jewish identity
- 2016 -17, Dr Diana Lipton, 'Legacy, Prognostication and Jews'
- 2015-16, Nicholas de Lange, 'The poetry of Judaism: Translating a precious heritage'
- 2014-15, Leon Rosselson, 'That Precious Strand of Jewishness That Challenges Authority'
- 2013-14, George Steiner, 'The Roots of Darkness'
- 2012-13, Antony Lerman, 'The revival of Jewish culture in Europe: real or imagined?'
- 2011-12, Norbert Samuelson, 'Light and Enlightenment: A Brief Comparative History of the Correlations Between Scientific and Rabbinic Conceptions of Light'
- 2011 Robert Gibbs, 'Saved in Translation: Law and Love in German Jewish Thought'
- 2010 David Novak, 'Was Spinoza the First Zionist?'
- 2008 Julia Neuberger, ‘On Being Jewish’
- 2007 Marc Saperstein, 'Ploughshares into swords: marshalling the Jewish heritage in times of war'
- 2006 Oliver Letwin MP, in conversation with Canon Robert Reiss
- 2004 Robert Winston, 'Judaism and Science'
- 2003 Daniel Snowman, 'The Hitler emigrés: the cultural impact on Britain of refugees from Nazism'
- 2002 Claudia Roden, in conversation with Nick Lander, 'We are what we eat: Jewish identity and Jewish food'
- 2001 Daniel Libeskind in conversation with Nicholas de Lange
- 1999 Peter Ochs, 'Tradition, modernity, and the future of Jewish thought.'
- 1998 Stanislaw Krajewski, 'The revival of Jewish life in Poland'
- 1997 Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, 'Judaism - From Survival to Heritage'
