Aviva Ben-Ur has spoken for academic, lay, and congregational audiences in the U.S. Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe, on a variety of topics. To book an in-person or online presentation, email: aben-ur@judnea.umass.edu
*“Tan Judío Como Hispano/As Jewish as Hispanic: Sephardim in Immigrant America,” The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies, University of Miami (March 2025).
*“Sephardi Ancestry among Ashkenazi Jews: Fantasy Heritage or Genealogical Reality?,” The Israel Genealogy Research Association (on Zoom; January 2025).
*“Rethinking Monuments After Black Lives Matter: A View from the Graveyard “Jewish Monumentality,” the 16th Lavy Colloquium, Johns Hopkins University (Spring 2024).
*“The “Native Advantage:” Jewish Immigrants and the Oriental Carpet Trade in the West,” Temple Sinai, Brookline, Massachusetts (Spring 2024).
*“Jewish Education among Unfree People in a Slave Society: The Case of Early Modern Suriname,” one of two keynote speakers, International Workshop: “Esclaves et domestiques dans les sociétés chrétienne et juive à l’époque modern (XVIe-XIXe siècle”)/“Slaves and Domestics in Modern Christian and Jewish Societies (16th-19th Centuries): Education, Integration, Controversies,” Université libre de Bruxelles/Vrije
Universiteit Brussels (October 2022).
*“Ottoman Jews of Iberian Origin,” Temple Sinai, Brookline, Massachusetts (Spring 2022; rescheduled to October 2022 due to Family and Medical Leave).
*“A Jewish Community in a Slave Society-the Dutch Colony of Suriname,” Synagoge Groningen (Groningen Synagogue), the Netherlands (June 2022).
*“Surrender to a Slave Society,” Limmud Festival, Birmingham, UK, online (scheduled for December 2021; canceled due to Family and Medical Leave).
*“The Jews of Suriname,” for the series “From the City of Vlissingen to Nieuw Walcheren: The Dutch in the West Indies,” sponsored by The Scarborough Harbour Project /1677 Rockley Bay Research in collaboration with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Port-of -Spain, Trinidad (online, December 2021).
*“Critical Race Theory and Atlantic Jewish Worlds—Pathways and Roadblocks,” Katz Center, University of Pennsylvania, online (online, November 2021).
*book launch for Aviva Ben-Ur, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society, Congregation Bnai Jeshurun, Northampton, Massachusetts (online, November 2021).
*“A Jewish Community in a Slave Society—the Dutch Colony of Suriname,” Fleischman Lecture in Jewish Studies, George Washington University (online, October 2021).
*“A Jewish Community in a Slave Society,” The Center for Jewish Studies, and the History Ph.D. program, CUNY Graduate Center, New York (online, October 2021).
*“A Jewish Community in a Slave Society—the Dutch Colony of Suriname,” book launch with Marjoleine Kars and Stan Mirvis, commentators, Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, UMass Amherst (online, September 2021).
*“A Jewish Community in a Slave Society—the Dutch Colony of Suriname,” Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto (online, September 2021).
*“‘Western Sephardim’ in American Jewish History: Savannah as a case study,” guest lecture for Professor Pamela Nadell’s class “American Jewish History” (online, September 2021).
*Keynote, “The Jews of South America in the Long Eighteenth Century: Suriname,” Latin American Jewish Studies Association Conference (online, June 2021).
*Keynote, “Sex with Slaves and the Business of Governance,” “Atlantic Jewish Worlds” conference, University of Pennsylvania (online, April 2021).
*Book launch for Aviva Ben-Ur, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society, University of California, Irvine (online, April 2021).
*Book launch for Aviva Ben-Ur, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society, Penn State University (online, April 2021).
*Book launch for Aviva Ben-Ur, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society, Institute of Jewish
Experience, New York City (online, December 2020).
*“Centering Slavery: The Jewish Community of Suriname, 1651-1825,” The Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society/University of Edinburgh, Scotland (online, October 2020).
*“The problem with slave memorials: a perspective from Jewish history,” invited presentation at Limmud Festival, UK (online, December 2020).
*Book launch, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society, “The Sephardic World” (via Zoom, London and Amsterdam), July 11, 2020.
*Book launch, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society, Bevis Marks Synagogue, The Spanish & Portuguese Sephardi Community (online, London), June 23, 2020.
*“Being Jewish in a Slave Society,” Program in Jewish Studies, University of Albany (March 2020).
*Three invited presentations at Limmud Festival, Birmingham, UK: “Isaac Bashevis Singer’s ‘Sabbath in Portugal’: Medieval Persecution, Modern Angst;” “The Struggle for Citizenship: Ottoman Jewish Immigrants in Interwar Britain;” and “‘Jerusalem on the Riverside?’: A Jewish Village in a Slave Society” (December 2019).
*“What Did Iberian Jews Eat?: Challenging the Scholarly Consensus,” panel, co-
organized with Jessica Hammerman: “‘Sephardi’ Food and Foodways: Debunking
Scholarly and Popular Assumptions,” Association for Jewish Studies (December 2019).
*Several lectures on Suriname and Ottoman immigrants and class visits for the Department of History and Program in Jewish Studies, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington (November 2019).
*Keynote, “From ‘Portuguese’ to ‘Sephardi’: The Transformation of Atlantic Jews,” Society for Sephardic Studies, University of Lisbon (June 2019).
*“Ottoman Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Interwar and Wartime Britain,” Concordia University, Montreal (September 2018).
*“Identity Imperative: Ottoman Jews and Christians in Interwar and Wartime Britain,” session: “Analysis of Migration Dynamics,” European Social Science History Conference, Belfast (April 2018).
*“Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: The Eurafrican Jews of Suriname, South America,” 2018 Sephardic Studies Visiting Scholar, Program in Jewish Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder (March 2018).
*“Creolization in a Caribbean Slave Society: Jews, Africans, and the Languages of Suriname,” Leiden International Seminar on the Atlantic, Leiden University (May 2017).
*“The Power of the Archives: The Case of Suriname’s Jews,” Nationaal Archief Nederland (The National Archives of the Netherlands), conference and ceremony for the “Teruggave Archieven Suriname” project (January 2017).
*“Under no Authority: Communal Jurisdiction and Early American Jews,” American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio (March 2016).
*“Surrender to a Slave Society: The Adjustment of European Newcomers to Suriname,” Duke University-University of North Carolina Jewish Studies Seminar, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies (November 2015).
*“South and Further South: American Jewry and the Atlantic World,” Margolis Lecture on the Jewish Experience in the American South,” Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, Duke University (November 2015).
*“Archives, Communal Memory, and Historians,” Congregation Mikvé-Israel, Curaçao (November 2014).
*Keynote Lecture, “‘Jerusalem on the Riverside:’ Territorial Autonomy in the Jewish Caribbean,” Mapping the Western Sefardi Diaspora in the Caribbean International Conference, Institute for the History of the Jews in Germany and the Université de Bordeaux Montaigne/AMERIBER (Hamburg, November 2014).
*(and Jessica Roitman), “Adultery Here and There: Crossing Sexual Boundaries in the Dutch Jewish Atlantic,” Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction, New Orleans (February 2014).
*“Atlantic Jews: A Conceptual Reorientation,” Symposium for the Launching of the Kaplan Catalogue and Opening of the Kaplan Exhibition, University of Pennsylvania (February 2014).
*“Identity Imperative: Ottoman-born Jews and the Quest for Citizenship in Interwar England,” Lecture Series: ‘Sephardim: The Jews of Spain, 1492 and Beyond,’ University of St. Cloud, Minneapolis (December 2013).
*“Portuguese among Suriname’s African-origin Jews: An Archival Case Study in Language Transmission,” panel: Portuguese Jews and Africans within a connected world: can we speak of “racial thought” with regard to late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Guiné do Cabo Verde and Amsterdam?,” convened by Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta, Fifth European Conference on African Studies:
African dynamics in a multipolar world, Lisbon (June 2013).
*“Eurafrican Identity in a Jewish Society: Suriname in the 18th and 19th centuries,” 6th Contact Day Jewish Studies on the Low Countries, Antwerp University (May 2013).
*“Autonomous Minority: The Jewish Community of Suriname,” Genootschap voor de
Joodse Wetenschap in Nederland, Amsterdam (May 2013).
*Lecture and discussion of Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History, “Meet the Author” series, Temple Reyim, Newton, Massachusetts (October 2012).
*(with Rachel Frankel), joint presentation and book launch, Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname, The John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island (May 2012).
*“Eurafrican Identity in a Jewish Society: Suriname in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” Association of Caribbean Historians, Curaçao (May 2012).
*(panelist with Hasia Diner), “Intersecting Streams: Jews in Emma Lazarus’ New York,” Jewish Museum of New York (January 2012).
*“My Father, My Slave: Close-Kin Ownership in Eighteenth-Century Suriname and the U.S. South,” Panel: “The Relativity of Freedom in Atlantic and U.S. Slavery,” American Historical Association (January 2011)
*“Commotion in the Colony: Being Black and Jewish in Suriname,” University of California Los Angeles (May 2010).
*“Sephardic Jews in America,” Jewish Book Fair, Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, Springfield Jewish Community Center, Springfield, Massachusetts (November 2009).
*“Sephardic Jews in America: Impact and Marginality,” book launch, Pioneer Valley Jewish Film and Arts Festival, co-sponsored by Congregation B’nai Israel and Jewish Community of Amherst (March 2009).
*Sephardic Jews in America, book launch, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York, NY (February 2009).
*“Eurafrican Women and Boundary-Crossing in a Slave Society: Suriname, 1650-1863,” panel: “‘Identity’ and Free People of African Descent in the Americas,” American Historical Association (January 2008).
*“How the Jews Became Black Folks: The Case of Suriname,” First Lavy Colloquium in “Atlantic Jewry in an Age of Mercantilism,” Johns Hopkins University (March 2005).
*“The Jews Who Weren’t There: Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in American Jewish History,” Walter P. Zenner Memorial Lecture, State University of New York Albany (December 2004).
*“Speaking This Language Against Our Will:” Ladino, Latinos, and Sephardic Jews in the U.S.,” Brandeis University (February 2004).
*“A Walk Through Spanish Harlem/Little Jerusalem: Encounters between Catholic Puerto Ricans and Ladino-Speaking Jews in the Early Twentieth Century,” Recovering Hispanic Religious Thought in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Conference, University of Houston (May 2003).
*“The Jewish Agricultural Community of Suriname: Retrospective Utopia,” at the symposium, “Slavery: Linking Literary and Historical Perspectives,” Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change, National University of Ireland, Galway (November 2002).
*“Jews in the Jungle: The Afro-Sephardic Community of Suriname, South America,” State University of New York Albany (December 2004); Western Massachusetts Jewish Genealogical Society (September 2004); B’nai Shalom Reform Congregation in Albany, New York (April 2004); Rhode Island College
(March 2004); Trinity College, Dublin (November 2002); Florida International University (April 2002); Wellesley College (February 2002); Modern Languages Association (December 1999)
*“In ‘Another Environment’: The Afro-Sephardic Community of Suriname, South America,” Association for Jewish Studies (December 2000).
*“Ladino in Print: Towards a Comprehensive Bibliography,” Ladino in Print Symposium, University of Washington (May 2001).
*“The Hispanic/Sephardic Connection: Jews, Latinos and the Legacy of Spain in Early Twentieth Century America,” SUNY Albany Judaic Studies Faculty Lecture (April 2001).
*“Ladino: A Precious Legacy,” National Yiddish Book Center (March 2001).
*“The Sephardic Jews of New York in the Early Twentieth Century,” Sephardic History and Civilization Seminar at the Institute for Sephardic Studies, CUNY (January 2001).
*“Rebecca Machado Phillips: a Colonial and Early American Woman Rediscovered,” Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia (September 2000).
*“Spain Was Nothing But Pain: Jews, Hispanics and the Ethnic/Racial Identity of Sephardim in Twentieth Century America,” Association for Jewish Studies (December 1999).
*Co-Chair and/or Co-Organizer of the Sephardi/Mizrahi Studies Caucus, Association for Jewish Studies (December 1998-December 2002).
*“The Sephardic Jews of Seattle: Influence Beyond Numbers,” University of Washington Jewish Studies Colloquium (November 1999).
*“Sephardim or Oriental Jews?” The Ethnic/Racial Debate Between the ‘Grandees’ and the ‘Turkish Jews’ in Early 20th Century New York City,” Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Conference (November 1999).
*“Sephardic Jews and Hispanics in the City of New York: A New Dimension of the Spanish Diaspora,” Western Jewish Studies Association (March 1999).
*“The Ladino Language: Its Impact on the Jewish People,” University of Washington Hillel, Seattle (March 1999).
*“Close Encounters of the Ethnic Kind: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in Early Twentieth-Century New York City,” Association for Jewish Studies (December 1998).
*“A Rocky Reunion: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in the City of New York,” New York Jewish Historical Society Lecture (December 1998).
*“The Hispanic/Sephardic Connection: Ladino-Speaking Jews in the City of New York,” Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Conference, Montreal (November 1998).
*“New Discoveries from Suriname’s Forgotten Jewish and African Jungle Cemeteries,” a slide/lecture presentation with Rachel Frankel, A.I.A., Brandeis University (October 1998); Foundation for Jodensavanne, Paramaribo, South America (August 1998).
*“American Zionism and the Ashkenazic/Sephardic Connection,” Leon Levy Lecture, Queens College, New York (October 1998).
*“Women as Transmitters of Secret Judaism in Marrano Communities,” The Jewish Cultural Experience at Circle Lodge, The Workmen’s Circle, New York (July 1998).
*“The Exceptional and the Mundane: Rebecca Machado Phillips, 1746-1831,” Consultation on the Religious Lives of American Jewish Women,” The Myer and Rosaline Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, Temple University, Philadelphia (March 1998).
*“The Making of Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia,” Jewish Historical Society of New York (March 1998).
*“Sephardim and the Land of Israel: Jewish Nationalism and Hebrew Education Among the Ladino-Speaking Jews of New York,” Association for Jewish Studies (December 1997).
*“The Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Collection of the Lubavitcher Rebbes,” Association for Jewish Studies (December 1996).
*“Sephardim in More Than Just Name: The Ladino-Speaking Jews of New York,” Scholarship Awards Ceremony, Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, New York (June 1996).
*“Acculturation and Cultural Preservation of a Sephardic Immigrant Community: The Ladino-Speaking Jews of New York,” Jewish Historical Society of New York (March 1996).