“Lleida and Judaism: the Sepharadic East”
Lecturer: Santi Torres Torradeflot

The town of Lleida did not remain apart from Jewish reality in Catalonia. Its Jewish quarter (aljama) was one of the most important and dynamic in our country and made a great contribution by linking their religious and cultural traditions to the land that gave us a home. It is the evidence of coexistence, conflict and union in a civilisation that somehow gave shape to medieval Lleida.


“The Jewish roots of Christianity”
Lecturer: Mario Saban

A lecture on Jesus and his doctrine related to Hebrew tradition. This conference will analyse the political economical situation in 1st century Judea and the different groups that coexisted at the time: sadduceans, pharisees y esennians.
 

The roots of German Antijudaism”
Lecturer: Rosa Sala Rose

XVIII-XIX Century Germany was special in that it was a nation with no State whose national identity could only base on their language and culture. The first Jews on the way to assimilation that showed signs of willingness to become part of this national building, like Moses Mendelsohn, were still welcomed. However, the cultural assimilation of a people of deep written tradition such as the Jews turned out to be quick and successful; so much was it so that according to the thesis this conference suggests, the cultural building on which the nation was based, in the German common imaginative brain, reached crisis point. For many, the only apparently efficient way out to this crisis was through the new ethnic theories divulged in mid 19th century.   
 

“Jew-Spanish cooking and Sepharadic recipes”
Lecturer: Debora Chomsky
Commented presentation of the bibliography of Jewish cuisine published in Spain in the last century. The question that guides us is how cooking is restored through personal memories and recipes that were written very recently (since transmission of this cultural legacy was basically oral. Through revision of this current recipe collection we could get an idea of what Jewish cuisine was like previous to the Expulsion of Spain, although with the natural prints of new cultures.

"Prints of Jewish cuisine in Spain. Shabbat cooking"
Lecturer: Debora Chomsky
Analysis of what Shabbat cooking was and is in Spain, as the most sacred day of the week. We will also deal on the prints it left on local cooking and how it became testimony of accusations of secret Judaism to real Jews or new Christians or converted people before the Inquisition Courts.
 
“Lithuanian Jew philosopher Emmanuel Levitas and his impact on modernity"
Lecturer: Julia Urabayen

Emmanuel Levitas is a Lithuanian Jewish philosopher who has been wondering about the sense of 20th century events. For Levinas, the Shoah can only be understood through a faulty humanism that is not capable to see the man as a being that is for the other one, as a being that involves the other one because his identity needs alterity.  In both dimensions of his work, Talmudical and philosophical, he makes a profound study of the big questions that worry men of all times and states that ethics is the first of philosophies. This priority of ethics has clear Hebrew philosophical roots, and has had in turn a great influence on other philosophers of 20th and 21st centuries.
 
“The Jewish influence on modernity”
Lecturer: Lourdes Rensoli

Doctor in Philosophy at Universidad Complutense, Madrid. Specialised researcher on Leibniz’ thinking. Cuban essayist, Professor on Philosophy, translator and poet.