"Orthodox Jews vs. the State: Responses to COVID-19 in the US, UK, & Israel" A tricontinental panel discussion about responses to the pandemic in Jewish ultra-Orthodox (haredi) communities on three continents. Social scientists from the UK, the US, and Israel will share how ultra-Orthodox communities have negotiated, worked with, and sometimes defied the state in the course of the pandemic and consider potential lasting impacts. Panelists: Ben Kasstan (HUJI and University of Sussex, UK) holds a Ph.D. from Durham University and is a medical anthropologist. His research explores public health relations with minority groups, and currently focuses on vaccine decision-making among Haredi Jews in Israel following international measles outbreaks. His recent book Making Bodies Kosher was published in 2019 with Berghahn and examines how Haredi Jews in England navigate healthcare services, which offers a foundation to understand the dilemmas posed by COVID-19. Making Bodies Kosher is available as open access download. Ben currently serves as Associate Editor for Anthropology & Medicine. He recently published a piece in Haaretz on the current crisis: “Angry at ultra-Orthodox Jews for ‘Defying’ Coronavirus Rules? It’s More Complicated Than That.” Schneur Zalman Newfield (BMCC, CUNY) holds a Ph.D. from NYU’s Department of Sociology. His research interests focus on cultural sociology and the study of identity, narrative, and resocialization. In particular he is interested in the process individuals undergo when making major life transitions. His book, Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, April 2020) explores the lives of a group of men and women who were raised in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and decided to leave that way of life. You can read an excerpt from the book here. He has also recently reviewed the series Unorthodox. Lea Taragin-Zeller (Cambridge University, UK and Technion, Israel) trained at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at Cambrige, Dr. Taragin-Zeller's interests lie in anthropology of religion (esp. Judaism, Islam and interfaith relations); medical anthropology (esp. health decision making, reproduction and ethnic minority and migrant health); gender and sexuality (esp. body, modesty, and transnational feminism), and anthropology of education (esp. sex education; science and technology). She has published widely in leading journals in sociology, anthropology and religion and serves as a section editor in Cambridge’s journal of Reproductive Biomedicine and Society Online. Her current collaborative project (based at the Technion and the University of Haifa): “Communicating Science among the JewishUltra-Orthodox in Israel: Journalistic Praxis and Audience Reception in Insular Communities” explores whether and how the Haredi community in Israel is legitimating and appropriating scientific knowledge. Moderator: Ayala Fader (Fordham) received her PhD from New York University and is currently Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University. She is the author of the award-winning book Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (Princeton 2009). Recent fellowships include the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of her latest book, Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (Princeton, 2020). Fader is the co-founder and co-convener of the New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies at Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies. Her book launch featuring a conversation with Robert Orsi (Northwestern University) on Zoom will be on Sunday, May 31st at 4PM.

Dr Lea Taragin Zeller, Research Fellow at the Woolf Institute, shares her research on encounters of gender, religion and belonging in the UK

Faith and Fashion from London College of Fashion, UAL joins the Woolf Institute in Cambridge to explore the interplay of body management, gender, and religious cultures from a comparative perspective. About the presenters: Kristin Aune joined Coventry University in 2014, having taught on sociology and youth work and theology programmes at the University of Westminster, Ridley Hall Cambridge and the University of Derby. She leads the Centre's Faith and Peaceful Relations research group. Kristin is author of numerous books: Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization, Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism Today (with Catherine Redfern) and Religion and Higher Education in Europe and North America (ed., with Jacqueline Stevenson) Routledge 2017. Reina Lewis is Professor of Cultural Studies at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, and convener of the public talk series Faith & Fashion. A specialist on cross-faith modest fashion, she is a regular media commentator, and recently acted as consulting curator on the exhibition Contemporary Muslims Fashions for the de Young Museum, San Francisco. Reina is author of Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures (Duke UP 2015); Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem (IB Tauris, Rutgers UP, 2008); and Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, Representation (Routledge 1996). She is editor of Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith (IB Tauris 2013). Azadeh Moaveni is a journalist, writer, and academic who has been covering the Middle East for nearly two decades. She is the author of one of the defining books on Iranian youth culture, Lipstick Jihad, the memoir Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. Azadeh is a lecturer in journalism at New York University, London, and her work often appears in the Financial Times, The Guardian and The New York Times, among others. She travels regularly to the region and is currently researching a book on the role of women inside the Islamic State. Lea Taragin-Zeller is a Research Fellow at the Woolf Institute and an affiliated researcher at the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (Reprosoc) at the University of Cambridge. She also serves as a Jewish Chaplain at the University of Cambridge. Lea has published widely on gender, religion, body and sexuality in leading academic journals such as Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues and Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions. She is currently working on a comparative study about female authority and leadership in contemporary Judaism and Islam in the UK. Recorded at The Woolf Institute on 30th January 2019 For further details and events go to: https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/current-research-and-projects/fashion-design/faith-and-fashion https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/