Perhaps the only Indian scholar of
Indo-Judaic Studies and a Jewish-Muslim Relations Activist, Dr. Navras
Jaat Aafreedi would be on a lecture tour of Australia from 9th to 24th
February 2013, during which he would speak at four Australian
universities in Sydney and Brisbane among many other venues on a wide
variety of topics. His tour is sponsored by the Fund for Higher Jewish
Education and Mandelbaum House, a residential college of the University
of Sydney. Dr. Aafreedi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
History & Civilization at the Gautam Buddha University, Greater
NOIDA
He starts his tour with a presentation on the “Indian Muslim
Involvement with the Hebrew language” as part of a panel dedicated to
the Asian Sub-Continent: India, at the 25th annual conference of the
Australian Association for Jewish Studies on “Jewish Languages, Jewish
Cultures: The Shaping of Jewish Civilization” on Sunday, 10th February
at 2:30 p.m. at the Jewish Museum in Sydney. It is a prestigious
conference exploring the profound place and importance of language in
shaping Jewish culture in the past, present and future. During the
conference Dr. Aafreedi would also chair the session focused on the
Egyptian Jewish World.
He would draw the attention to the “Paradox of the Absence of
Anti-Semitism and the Popularity of Hitler in India” in a lecture under
the auspices of the Shalom Institute’s lecture series Network on
Tuesday, 12th February at 12:30 p.m. at ABL Level 24, Chifley Tower,
Sydney. The same day in the evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Mandelbaum
House, 385 Abercrombie Street, Darlington, Sydney 2009, he would bring
into sharp focus the “Jewish Contributions to Indian Cinema and
Literature”. The very next day on Wednesday, 13th February, he will
explore the “South Asian Muslim Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and
Zionism” under the auspices of the Shalom Institute’s lecture series
Encounters at Waverley Library, 32-48 Denison Street, Bondi Junction. In
the evening that day, Dr. Aafreedi will deliver a lecture at the
Sephardi synagogue at 7:30 p.m. on the “Tradition of Israelite Origin of
Pathans”. Before leaving for the second leg of his lecture tour in
Brisbane, he will speak on the interconnections between “India, Islam
and Israel in the 21st century” under the auspices of Australia/Israel
& Jewish Affairs Council. During his stay in Sydney, Dr. Aafreedi
can be reached for a potential interview through Professor Suzanne
Rutland of the University of Sydney, whose email address is suzanne.rutland@sydney.edu.au
In Brisbane, Dr. Aafreedi would give a lecture each on “South Asian
Muslim Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and Zionism” at the Multi-Cultural
Centre, Griffith University and the University of Queensland on Tuesday
19th February and Thursday 21st February respectively. He will be
hosted in Brisbane by the Institute of Asian Studies.
Dr. Aafreedi is a well known orator whose lectures have been greatly
appreciated in the US, the UK, Israel and India, and he has held
fellowships at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK, Tel Aviv University,
Israel, and the Centre for Communication and Development Studies, Pune,
India. He would be touring Australia as a Visiting Scholar of the
University of Sydney. He has to his credit the first ever Holocaust
films retrospective in South Asia, held in Lucknow, a major centre of
Muslim scholarship, in India in 2009. He sits on the editorial board of
the Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies, the International Advisory Board of
Asian Jewish Life and is the Editor (International) of the English section of the online newspaper Weekly Press Pakistan.
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