LIMMUD FSU Recharge Presenters 2022
What is Limmud? What are the Principles? Also, learn some of our History and more.
Yehuda Rothstein Fulbright Scholar & Real Estate Developer
J.R. Rothstein is a transactional real estate attorney and investor currently on secondment at Spotify. Mr. Rothstein is a 2018-2019 Broome Fellow of Muslim-Jewish Relations at the American Sephardic Federation. Rothstein was a 2017–2018 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Toronto School of Law where he lectured on comparative Islamic and Jewish Law. Rothstein received his Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School where he was Editor of the Journal of Law and Public Policy and an Albert Heit Scholarship recipient. He simultaneously obtained an L.LM. Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law from Cornell Law School, which included studying Islamic Law at the American University of Cairo, Egypt. Mr. Rothstein is a graduate of several Yeshivoth in Israel, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he studied Middle-Eastern & North African Studies, and the Ariana De Rothschild Fellowship at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where he focused on Social Entrepreneurship and impact investing with faith-based communities. Mr. Rothstein has traveled as a delegate and personally throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He grew up in a haredi family, in Monsey, New York. Mr. Rothstein enjoys genealogy, history, diving and hiking and lives in Manhattan with his brothers.
Sessions
Muhammad and the Jews. The First Muslim-Jewish Encounter & What It Means For Jews Today
Come learn about Muhammad's encounters with the Jews and Samaritans of Medina, and how these interactions influenced the formation of the religion of Islam. Together we will overview the Israelite reaction to Muhammad’s teachings, daily interactions between the first Muslims and Medina’s Jews, the expulsion of Medina’s Jewish and Samaritan tribes (including the massacre of the Cohanim of Banu Qurayza). Other topics to be explored are the story of Muhammad’s Jewish wife and concubine, Muhammad’s conquest of the Arabian Jewish City State of Khaybar, and Caliph Umar’s eventual expulsion of the Israelites of Arabia.
The second part of our class will outline how the first Muslim-Jewish encounter in Arabia shapes both classical Islamic attitudes towards Jews, and contemporary Islamic approaches to Jews and the State of Israel. Throughout the presentation, we will review Arabic and Hebrew language source sheets (with translations) of ancient Jewish and Islamic primary documents.
The series will conclude with a group discussion regarding the future of Muslim-Jewish relations and a review of some proposals of how the Jewish community can best achieve an historical reconciliation (or accommodation) with Islam.