Study Day & Viva Presentation at Leo Baeck College
To mark the centenary of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, we organised a special Study Day at Leo Baeck College, as part of EUPJ’s and MPJ’s Darkeinu conference, bringing together scholarship, reflection, and community engagement.
To mark this special occasion, then fifth-year rabbinical student and since then the most recently-ordained rabbi, Rabbi Yael Tischler also gave a Viva Presentation, defending her dissertation entitled Our Monstrous Mother: Encountering Lilith’s Multiplicities.
Relive the LBC Study Day & Viva Presentation with us – watch the recordings from this special event below.
In 1926, the World Union for Progressive Judaism was founded in London under the dynamic leadership of Lily Montagu, its honorary secretary, and Claude Montefiore, its first president. From the outset, the World Union sought to nurture and strengthen Progressive Jewish life wherever communities wished to renew or establish a contemporary expression of Judaism and its traditions.
As part of the 100-year anniversary, EUPJ and MPJ brought the celebrations back to where it all started in London.
At the LBC Study Day, participants were guided by faculty as they explored contemporary Jewish thought, text, and practice. They engaged with the questions that shape our communities today. This study day offered an opportunity to learn, reflect, and connect with the intellectual and spiritual foundations of Progressive Judaism.
Study Day Recordings
Student Rabbi Shacharit Service & Fellowship Award Ceremony
Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris – The Shifting Faces of the Progressive Rabbinate
Cantor Sarah Grabiner – Embracing Diversity in British Progressive Prayer: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrachi melodies for Piyyutim in our Siddurim
Dr Keith Kahn-Harris – How Significant is Antisemitism Today?
Viva Presentation – Our Monstrous Mother: Encountering Lilith’s Multiplicities
Focusing on the many faces worn by the character of Lilith throughout Jewish tradition Rabbi Yael Tischler defended her dissertation at the end of the Study Day.
Relive this exciting moment with us and watch the recording of Rabbi Tischler’s Viva below.
Dissertation Abstract
“The character of Lilith has worn many faces throughout Jewish tradition: a murderer of mothers and children, a seductress and rapist of men, and more recently, a feminist icon.
In this dissertation, I propose that re-examining Lilith through the lenses of the abject, monster theory and the monstrous-feminine reveals a complex re-imagining of Lilith as at once monstrous and multifaceted. Instead of crafting a two-dimensional image of Lilith as either a murderous threat to the normative family structure or an icon of feminist empowerment, it becomes possible to see Lilith as multiple. Lilith is at once a mother of many and a bereaved mother, a tender adoptive mother and a perpetrator of infanticide, a loving parent who chooses to visit her children, even when it is not in their best interest. Lilith is the embodiment of grief that leads to rage, of frustration made manifest. She may be a monster, but she also asks us to look within ourselves and within Jewish tradition, to engage with the parts of ourselves and our tradition that we find too monstrous to acknowledge.
A rabbi may serve as a teacher and guide to this process, holding her congregants as they meet Lilith, enabling them to uncover her wisdom, without being dragged into her depths. In my re-reading of Lilith, she retains her monstrosity, whilst also offering us a way into compassionately holding space for the pieces of ourselves, our tradition and our world that terrify us.
In this dissertation, I offer an analysis of Lilith in the Aleph Bet of Ben Sira and Zoharic literature, and provide tools for the progressive rabbi to introduce Lilith to her congregants for educational and pastoral purposes.”
Yael Tischler – 5th Year Rabbinical Student
Watch the recording of Rabbi Yael Tischler's Viva Presentation