Celebrating Freedom under Captivity in Portugal c. 1500

Join us for a Passover discussion with Rabbi Shlomo Pereira.  Passover,  the Festival of Freedom, in 1497 was marked in Portugal by serious  tragedies for the Jewish people. In 1497 Jews suffered spiritual  slaughter through forced conversion and kidnapping of children. Is it  that the enemies of the Jewish people - then and now - seem to know  exactly when to strike to maximize pain? Pharaoh kidnapped and killed  the Israelite children and then worked them almost to death. How were  they (and us) able to celebrate freedom in times of tragedy?  

To register: https://tinyurl.com/PereiraPassover

About the speaker:  Rabbi  Shlomo Pereira is a native of Lisbon, Portugal and moved to the United  States in 1982. He lives with his wife Elisheva in Richmond, Virginia.  They have five children and eight grandchildren who live in the USA and  in Israel. His passions, aside from Judaic Studies and Economics,  include history in particular Iberian Jewish history. 

Rabbi Pereira received his rabbinical ordination in Jerusalem in 2004 and has served in the last two decades as assistant rabbi and education director at Chabad of Virginia. He has taught extensively in topics ranging from Jewish history and law to Jewish philosophy and mysticism and is the founder-director for the Richmond chapter of the Jewish Learning Institute. He is the author of two widely circulated research documents - “Hadrat Melech,” biographical notes on the Jewish sages throughout the centuries and “Chachmei Halacha,” an overview of the major works in Jewish law over the last fifteen hundred years. More recently, he wrote together with Rabbi Eli Rosenfeld of Chabad Portugal “Jewish Voices from Portugal,” and “Jewish Ethics from Portugal,” two bilingual books of commentaries, the first on the Torah portion and the second on Pirkei Avot, by rabbis who called Portugal home in the fifteenth century.

An economist and university professor by trade, Rabbi Pereira received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 1987 and has been a faculty at William & Mary since 1995 where he carries the title of Thomas Vaughan Professor of Economics and Public Policy. His main research and teaching interests are in the area of economics of the public sector, specifically on taxation, social security reform, infrastructure policies, and environmental issues. Having served frequently as advisor for the successive Portuguese governments over the last two decades, he made a definite technical contribution toward the introduction of a carbon tax in Portugal in 2015. He is the author of over 120 refereed research articles in international journals and of several policy book.