Evening Seminar with Laila Seri

We are happy to welcome Dr. Bat Chen Laila Seri, who will give a reading seminar based on her dissertation In Search of Another Law: Three Talmudic Readings of Benjamin’s Kafka, successfully defended at Lund University in November 2025. The dissertation contributes to contemporary discourse on Talmud and philosophy through a reading of Walter Benjamin’s Kafka essays. Seri argues that, in contrast to the well-known negative concept of law in his earlier essay Toward the Critique of Violence, Benjamin develops a positive alternative in the Kafka texts. Her reading combines close attention to style and modes of meaning-making with a conceptual inquiry into the question of law—an approach modelled on the framework of halakhah and haggadah. She calls this way of engaging with the text a talmudic reading.

The exact location and texts will be provided upon registration (limited seats).

Bat Chen Laila Seri holds a PhD in Philosophy of Religion from the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University. Her doctoral project, titled In Search of Another Law: Three talmudic Readings of Benjamin’s Kafka, contributes to the contemporary discourse on Talmud and Philosophy through a reading of Walter Benjamin’s Kafka essays. Additionally, she has published on the political role of literature in European Jewish thought.

The seminar is organized in collaboration between the research project Experimenting with Traditions at Södertörn University and Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden.