The Annual Spiro Tribute Lecture, sponsored by the Pears Foundation,  celebrates the groundbreaking and innovative work of Robin (z”l) and Nitza Spiro in the field of Jewish education in Britain over more than four decades.

This year’s speaker is Professor Eli Vakil, the eminent Israeli clinical neuropsychologist from the Multidisciplinary Brain Research Centre at Bar Ilan University. His topic will be remembering and forgetting and their implications for collective memory.

We all have memorial days for our private losses as well as for traumatic events in the life of our people: the destruction of theTemple, exile, the Shoah, memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers, marked just before Independence Day. But what is the function of remembrance in our lives? Is it more than just stopping to think of a departed person or a past trauma on a set day in our calendar?

Research shows that personal memory has a variety of functions: it plays a role in survival and enables the formation of our social and moral identity. Forgetting is not a malfunction of the nervous system; it plays a vital role in memory processes and in coping emotionally with life’s events. Professor Vakil will apply the current understanding of individual memory to national memory and demonstrate the need for a proper balance between remembering and forgetting. He will consider the implications of these insights for memorial observances in general and of the Shoah in particular.

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The Annual Spiro Tribute Lecture – Professor Eli Vakil – Wednesday, 8th of February 2023 at 7.30pm