Classes and Lectures

Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern:
The Jewish National Home
7:30pm-9:00pm
Tuesdays, October 1, 8 and 15, 2013 
What does the “national home” for the Jewish people, mention in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, imply? Why Jewish nationalists decided to choose Palestine for their state? How did they plan to deal with the Arab population in the contemporary Palestine? Focusing on Europe between the 1830s and the 1910s, the class will trace the rise of the Jewish movement of national revivalism and analyze the causes of modern Middle Eastern conflicts.

Professor Claire Sufrin:
Buber and His Interlocutors
9:30am-11:00pm
Sundays, October 13, 20 and 27, 2013 
This three session course will begin with an overview of the key ideas of Martin Buber's philosophy and his approach to Judaism. Buber, who was born in 1878 in Vienna and died in 1965 in Jerusalem, was well-known during his life for his book I and Thou as well as his secular appreciation of Hasidism and his cultural Zionism. In the second session, we will look at the work of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel, who was born in Poland in 1907 and died in New York in 1972, initially admired Buber but ultimately was deeply critical of Buber's work. We will consider both Heschel's appreciation of Buber and his critique. In the final session, we will consider Emmanuel Levinas, who argued that Buber had failed to consider ethics as he developed his philosophy. For Levinas, who was born in Lithuania in 1906 and died in Paris in 1995, "ethics is first philosophy" and must be addressed before any other philosophical questions can be answered. As the very basic biographical information included in this description suggests, these three thinkers all lived through the two world wars and each fled from the Nazis to a new home; we will consider how this event of great evil affected the way each asked questions of meaning.

Interfaith Relationships Workshop Series:
9:30am-11:00pm
Sundays, November 3, 10, and 17, 2013 

Jane Kaplan (JRC Member)
November 3, 2013
Choices: The biggest choice an intermarried couple has to make is whether one religion will be dominant in their household, and if so, which one. This workshop will be an unbiased and non-judgmental forum about the issue of Jewish-Christian intermarriage.  There will be no single religious point of view that will prevail.  There will be no “right” or “wrong” answers to any questions that are raised.  Instead, both Christians and Jews will be given a chance to talk freely about how they have been handling the many aspects of intermarriage, and how they feel about the choices they have made. 

Rabbi Ari Moffic
November 10, 2013
Spiritual Parenting: How to bring spirituality and Jewish traditions to bedtime, eating, playing and learning with our children and grandchildren in realistic and accessible ways (even if a parent didn’t grow up with Judaism or the traditions being thought about.)  This will be a hands-on, participatory workshop in which we can discuss implications, challenges and successes in praying aloud as a family (particularly in Hebrew), how to understand who is Israel and peoplehood, and how to pass on values we hold dear to the ones we cherish. 

Rabbi Michal Woll and Jon Sweeney
November 17, 2013
Rabbi Michal and Jon will share their personal experiences of being an interfaith couple. They will discuss how religious identity has shifted over the last half century and is no longer the great organizer it once was. Intermarriage has reached its second or even third generation, and the old assumptions of marrying within, as well as condemnations of “marrying out,” are fading fast. Michal and Jon don’t discuss whether interfaith marriage is good or bad. It just is. Instead, they focus on what guided and guides them in their own relationship: a commitment to shared progressive, compassionate, egalitarian values. They will point to the possibility of lives filled with meaningful spiritual practice, values, and community that can transcend religious affiliation.

Rabbi Rosen:
God Talk (Lunch n’ Learn)
12:30-2:00pm
Saturdays, November 16 and 23, 2013 
Rabbi Rosen will take the class on a journey of a variety of Jewish texts, freewheeling from the Torah, to Maimonides, Kafka, Leonard Cohen and more.

JRC Authors’ Friday Night Service
7:30pm
Friday, November 22, 2013 

Charles Troy:
Musical Theatre Presentation: Irving Berlin
7:00pm Havdalah Service
7:30pm Presentation
Saturday, December 7. 2013
Irving Berlin’s incredible story, from his entry into America at age 5, overcoming early poverty and musical illiteracy, and emerging as our greatest American songwriter! Charles Troy’s multimedia presentations are seamless 90-minute programs with original graphics, edited audio tracks and video clips, and scripted narratives that weave the pertinent events into cohesive, dramatic stories.

Rabbi Rosen:
Friday Night Prayer Service
Sundays, Session TBD
December 8 and 15, 2013 
Do you seek a way into the experience of Jewish prayer but are unsure where to start? Do services feel like a random series of Hebrew prayers with no rhyme or reason? Are you looking for a more meaningful Shabbat prayer experience? If the answer to any or all of these questions is “yes,” then this class is for you! Join Rabbi  Rosen for an introduction to the Friday evening Shabbat service.  We will look at the history, content and overall themes of Jewish prayer so that students can find a comfortable, meaningful place in the Shabbat service. (Knowledge of Hebrew is recommended by not mandatory.)

Cantor Friedland:
Sacred Music Tour
Saturday January 11, 2014 9:30-2:00pm 

Professor Danny Greene (JRC Member): 
The Problem of Dual Identity
9:30am-11:00am
Sundays, January 12, 19 and 26, 2014 
Some of the most influential figures in American Jewish life during the first half of the twentieth century found their voice in a magazine called the Menorah Journal. Within the pages of the Journal, Jewish intellectuals contemplated the thorny problem of being both American and Jewish at a time when the majority culture in the United States remained skeptical of such a possibility. This course will explore how American Jews addressed the question of dual identity—American and Jewish—by reading contributions to the Menorah Journal from Louis Brandeis, Mordecai Kaplan, Lewis Mumford, and Horace Kallen.  Topics covered will include Jewish culture, religion, art and architecture, and Zionism.

Professor Ann Dolinko (JRC Member):
Gender and Feminism and the Torah
7:30pm-9:00pm
Tuesdays, February 4, 11 and 18, 2014 
A discussion of Judith Plaskow's Standing Again at Sinai, a deconstructive reading of some of the Torah text she sites, as well as a discussion of the relationship of the language that we use to pray to our own experience of spirituality.  Additionally I would like to have the class examine alternative liturgy such as that of Marcia Falk.

Professor Rachel Haverlock:
Jewish Politics and the Land
11:30am-1:00pm
Sundays, February 9, 16 and 23, 2014 
How were the borders of Israel/Palestine configured?  What influence did Jewish or Muslim traditions play and how determinative was the British imperial context?  What role did resources like oil and water play in the formation of the modern Middle East?  The class will consider early Zionist writings about territory by David Ben-Gurion, Ahad Ha-Am, and Judah Magnes and think about how the categories of homeland and Diaspora were re-imagined by Jewish nationalism. In looking at how these thinkers interacted with international figures, we will see how the political transformation of Jewish ideas operated in an international context.  Finally, the class will look at contemporary environmental writing in Israel and think about how they respond to the increasing role of multinational corporations in the Israel of today.

Rabbi Rosen:
Saturday Morning Service
9:30am-11:00am
Sundays, March 23 and 30, 2014
Do you seek a way into the experience of Jewish prayer but are unsure where to start? Do services feel like a random series of Hebrew prayers with no rhyme or reason? Are you looking for a more meaningful Shabbat prayer experience? If the answer to any or all of these questions is “yes,” then this class is for you! Join Rabbi Rosen for an introduction to the Saturday morning Shabbat service.  We will look at the history, content and overall themes of Jewish prayer so that students can find a comfortable, meaningful place in the Shabbat service. (Knowledge of Hebrew is recommended by not mandatory.)<!--[endif]-->

Professors Michael and Elizabeth Shapiro (JRC Members):
Jewish Poetry
7:30pm-9:00pm
Tuesdays, April 1 and 8, 2013
American-Jewish poets address all of the problems that we as American Jews struggle within our daily lives. These include problems of faith, identity, Israel, gender, politics, and anti-Semitism. Being poets, they compress their ideas and feelings into hard nuggets of language, and as they do so they explore and clarify those issues for themselves and for their readers. We will spend two evenings studying the texts of selected poems.

Professor Devorah Schoenfeld
Jewish-Catholic Relations
Sunday, Session TBD