David Lehmann is now Emeritus Reader in Social Science at the University of Cambridge. After years working on Latin America, he finally encountered what seemed to him the most exotic form of religious practice he had ever encountered ‒ in a Chassidic yeshiva a couple of miles from his birthplace in London. Thus began a seven or eight-year involvement in the study of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Together with Batia Sebzehner he wrote a book Remaking Israeli Judaism: the challenge of Shas (Hurst, 2006) which provides an interpretation of Israeli society and places the highly political religious revival in the context of the social situation of Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent in Israel, and also in the context of worldwide religious revival. His study of Shas work led on to a project on ultra-Orthodox Jewish marriage, which will be the subject of his talk to the ‘Lit’.
Marian Oppenheim Hall, Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation, 4 Salisbury Road, 8pm.
Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society 