About
MILIM ONLINE
We are delight to bring you some of our planned talks online to help you through these difficult times.
If you have missed any of our online talks or want to watch them again go to our CATCH UP page.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
MiliM is non-profit making and run entirely by volunteers, we are proud to be able to offer an exciting programme of webinars during the Covid-19 crisis.
To be able to do this, we do need help to replace event revenue we have lost this year.
Every penny helps, goes directly towards events and we are very grateful for your contribution.
Milim Spring 2019
Maya Arad
The Hebrew Teacher
Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises. llana is a veteran Hebrew instructor at a Midwestern college who has built her life around her career. When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life’s work. Miriam, whose son left Israel to make his fortune in Silicon Valley, pays an unwanted visit to meet her new grandson and discovers cracks in the family’s perfect façade. Efrat, another Israeli in California, is determined to help her daughter navigate the challenges of middle school, and crosses forbidden lines when she follows her into the minefield of social media. In these three stirring novellas-comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity-celebrated Israeli author Maya Arad probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.
Maya Arad is the author of twelve books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London. For the past twenty years, she has lived in California, where she is currently Writer in Residence at Stanford University’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies.
She is the inaugural recipient of the Jewish Book Council Jane Weitzman Prize for New Israeli Fiction (2019) and the Newman Prize, awarded by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Newman Family Foundation (2024).
The Hebrew Teacher is her first book to appear in English translation (New Vessel Press, translated by Jessica Cohen). Her novel, Happy New Year, will appear in translation in August this year (NVP, also by Jessica Cohen).

Keith Kahn-Harris
Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are
‘Can Jews be boring? On the value of everyday Jewishness’
Particularly at this moment, Jews are subject to extraordinary scrutiny and fascination. Our friends and our enemies are in awe of our significance. This intense interest risks ‘hollowing out’ Jewish life so that only our public existence remains. Drawing on his new book Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are , Keith Kahn-Harris will make the case for Jews embracing their mundane, parochial and ‘everyday’ side. Jews can be as boring as anyone else and, right now, non-Jews need to be confronted with this side of Jewish existence
‘Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and writer. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College. Everyday Jews is his ninth book

Jordan Rosenblum
Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig
A surprising history of how the pig has influenced Jewish identity
Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in biblical law. Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. Horses, rabbits, squirrels, and even vultures, while also not kosher, do not inspire the same level of revulsion for Jews as the pig. The pig has become an iconic symbol for people to signal their Jewishness, non-Jewishness, or rebellion from Judaism. There is nothing in the Bible that suggests Jews are meant to embrace this level of pig-phobia.
Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity, from the Roman persecution of ancient rabbis, to the Spanish Inquisition, when so-called Marranos (“Pigs”) converted to Catholicism, to Shakespeare’s writings, to modern memoirs of those leaving Orthodox Judaism. The pig appears in debates about Jewish emancipation in eighteenth-century England and in vaccine conspiracies; in World War II rallying cries, when many American Jewish soldiers were “eating ham for Uncle Sam;” in conversations about pig sandwiches reportedly consumed by Karl Marx; and in recent deliberations about the kosher status of Impossible Pork.
All told, there is a rich and varied story about the associations of Jews and pigs over time, both emerging from within Judaism and imposed on Jews by others. Expansive yet accessible, Forbidden offers a captivating look into Jewish history and identity through the lens of the pig.

Maya Arad
The Hebrew Teacher
Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises. llana is a veteran Hebrew instructor at a Midwestern college who has built her life around her career. When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life’s work. Miriam, whose son left Israel to make his fortune in Silicon Valley, pays an unwanted visit to meet her new grandson and discovers cracks in the family’s perfect façade. Efrat, another Israeli in California, is determined to help her daughter navigate the challenges of middle school, and crosses forbidden lines when she follows her into the minefield of social media. In these three stirring novellas-comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity-celebrated Israeli author Maya Arad probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.
Maya Arad is the author of twelve books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London. For the past twenty years, she has lived in California, where she is currently Writer in Residence at Stanford University’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies.
She is the inaugural recipient of the Jewish Book Council Jane Weitzman Prize for New Israeli Fiction (2019) and the Newman Prize, awarded by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Newman Family Foundation (2024).
The Hebrew Teacher is her first book to appear in English translation (New Vessel Press, translated by Jessica Cohen). Her novel, Happy New Year, will appear in translation in August this year (NVP, also by Jessica Cohen).
Keith Kahn-Harris
Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are
‘Can Jews be boring? On the value of everyday Jewishness’
Particularly at this moment, Jews are subject to extraordinary scrutiny and fascination. Our friends and our enemies are in awe of our significance. This intense interest risks ‘hollowing out’ Jewish life so that only our public existence remains. Drawing on his new book Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish people are not who you think they are , Keith Kahn-Harris will make the case for Jews embracing their mundane, parochial and ‘everyday’ side. Jews can be as boring as anyone else and, right now, non-Jews need to be confronted with this side of Jewish existence
‘Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and writer. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College. Everyday Jews is his ninth book
Jordan Rosenblum
Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig
A surprising history of how the pig has influenced Jewish identity
Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in biblical law. Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. Horses, rabbits, squirrels, and even vultures, while also not kosher, do not inspire the same level of revulsion for Jews as the pig. The pig has become an iconic symbol for people to signal their Jewishness, non-Jewishness, or rebellion from Judaism. There is nothing in the Bible that suggests Jews are meant to embrace this level of pig-phobia.
Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity, from the Roman persecution of ancient rabbis, to the Spanish Inquisition, when so-called Marranos (“Pigs”) converted to Catholicism, to Shakespeare’s writings, to modern memoirs of those leaving Orthodox Judaism. The pig appears in debates about Jewish emancipation in eighteenth-century England and in vaccine conspiracies; in World War II rallying cries, when many American Jewish soldiers were “eating ham for Uncle Sam;” in conversations about pig sandwiches reportedly consumed by Karl Marx; and in recent deliberations about the kosher status of Impossible Pork.
All told, there is a rich and varied story about the associations of Jews and pigs over time, both emerging from within Judaism and imposed on Jews by others. Expansive yet accessible, Forbidden offers a captivating look into Jewish history and identity through the lens of the pig.
Private: sponsors
Milim is funded by Leeds City Council through the Leeds Cultural Investment Programme