My Father Was A Wandering European

Discussing triple loyalties in Brexit Britain - British, Jewish and European.

JW3 is the only Jewish Community Centre of its kind in the UK

From: JW3 - JW3 is the only Jewish Community Centre of its kind in the UK; a vibrant, cross-communal hub for Jewish arts, culture, family programming, social action, learning and much more, where everyone is welcome.

Four and a half years since the Brexit referendum, 80 years on from the Second World War, and 500 years after the Spanish Inquisition, thousands of British Jews are applying to reinstate their ancestral EU27 nationalities, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Austrian, Czech, and many others. What motivates them? What are their dilemmas? And do they differ from the many Britons re-discovering their European roots? And what does it tell us about the meaning of nationality and identity?

Julia Neuberger, Miri Rubin, Ruvi Ziegler and Simon Albert will unearth emotional, historical, social, and legal dimensions of this fascinating phenomenon.

This free event will be held online.

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Speaker Biogs

Simon Albert
Simon Albert is a lawyer based in London practising competition law. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, to 'second generation' expat British parents, he is a dual British / Czech national, having spent two years from 2017 restoring his late grandparents' former Czechoslovak citizenship.

Ruvi Ziegler
Associate Professor in International Refugee Law (Reading); Research Associate (Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford); Senior Research Associate (Refugee Law Initiative, SAS, London); Associate Academic Fellow (Inner Temple); Chair, New Europeans UK; Chair, Oxford European Association; Advisory Council, René Cassin; Author, "Voting Rights of Refugees" (Cambridge).

Miri Rubin
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. She was educated at Hebrew University and the University of Cambridge and taught at Oxford before moving to London. She is the author of several books about the religious cultures of medieval Europe and with particular attention to relations between Jews and Christians.

Julia Neuberger
Rabbi Baroness Neuberger DBE is chair of University College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Chair of the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust. She was Senior Rabbi of the West London Synagogue from 2011 to March 2020 and is now Rabbi Emerita. She is an independent cross bench Peer in the House of Lords.