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MARCH 2022 PROGRAMS
CSP
The Walnut Street Synagogue is pleased to be a partner congregation of the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program. Please join us at an upcoming program!
Why is this Night Different from All Others? Three Sessions in Preparation for Passover
Seder and Symposium – Tuesday, March 29, 3:30 pm EDT
Tidbits for Your Seder – Wednesday, March 30, 3:30 pm EDT
Haggadah Study – Thursday, March 31, 3:30 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Seder and Symposium – Hearkening back to our Aphrodite series, Prof. Visotzky will talk about how the Passover Seder is modeled on the Greco-Roman Symposium banquet. From Kiddush through Hallel, we will trace the Hellenistic aspects of our Passover celebration.
Tidbits for Your Seder – We will study stories from the ancient rabbis and Midrashim NOT found in your Haggadahs, so that you can bring something new, yet traditional, to your own Passover Seder. The frogs will be hopping!
Haggadah Study – We read the Haggadah every year, but few understand how the core of the Seder — the Maggid section — actually works. We will study the text to see how the rabbis expand the Exodus story from the thumb-nail in Deuteronomy 26 (and why THAT text?) to the fullness of the redemption narrative. If you ask, Prof. Visotzky will also regale you about his work consulting with DreamWorks on the 1998 animated feature, Prince of Egypt.
Professor Burton Visotzky, PhD, serves as Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies Emeritus at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). He serves as the Louis Stein Director of the Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies at JTS, programming on public policy, and directs JTS’s Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Prof. Visotzky served as Master Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (where just taught two courses this Spring 2022). He is the author of ten books, editor of seven other volumes, and has authored over 125 articles and reviews. His book, APHRODITE AND THE RABBIS: How the Jews adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It, was published in 2016. He is proud to be a “regular” at CSP.
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Part 2 – Program video
Part 3 – Program video
Music in the Time of the Bible
Thursday, March 24, 3:30 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Music is mentioned quite often in the Bible. The ancient Israelites sang and played to accompany worship, but also for parades, parties, funerals, battles, coronations, and much more. To discover the nature of this music, we will investigate clues offered by the Bible and other ancient texts, archaeology and comparative musicology.
Dr. Joshua R. Jacobson holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music from Harvard College, a Masters in Choral Conducting from the New England Conservatory, a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Cincinnati, and a Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from Hebrew College. Before retiring in 2018, Dr. Jacobson served 45 years as Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Northeastern University, including nine years as Music Department Chairman and six years as the Bernard Stotsky Professor of Jewish Cultural Studies. He is also Visiting Professor and Senior Consultant in the School of Jewish Music at Hebrew College. He is also the founder and director of the Zamir Chorale of Boston, a world-renowned ensemble, specializing in Hebrew music. In 1994 Hebrew College awarded him the Benjamin Shevach Award for Distinguished Achievement in Jewish Educational Leadership, in 2004 the Cantors Assembly presented him with its prestigious “Kavod Award,” in 2016 Choral Arts New England presented him the Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2018 Chorus America selected him for its Distinguished Service Award.
Fascinating: How Judaism influenced Leonard Nimoy’s Life and Photography
Wednesday, March 23, 3:30 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Once there was a boy named Leonard who loved to sing and to act. His parents were immigrants who felt like aliens in America, and certainly didn’t understand Leonard’s drive to perform. “Learn to play the accordion,” his father told him. “Actors starve, but at least musicians can eke out a living.” But Leonard reached for the stars . . . and caught them. He moved to Hollywood, where he took acting lessons, and drove a taxi and took every role he could get. He worked hard, learned his lines, showed up on time, and studied his craft. Until one day he was offered the role of an alien science officer on a new TV show called Star Trek. Leonard knew what it felt like to be an alien. But did he want the role? Join us on Richard Michelson’s discussion of how Leonard Nimoy’s upbringing in a religiously-observant Yiddish-speaking home in Boston’s West End, helped him create the character of Spock, and inspired his lifelong interest in photography and acting.
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and recipient of two Sydney Taylor Gold Medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries, Richard Michelson, author and art-dealer, was a close friend of Leonard Nimoy, represents his photography, and is the author of Fascinating: The Life of Leonard Nimoy. Richard Michelson’s many books for children, teens and adults have been listed among the Ten Best of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker; and among the best Dozen of the Decade by Amazon.com. Michelson hosts Northampton Poetry Radio, and served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA. He is the founder and owner of R. Michelson Galleries.
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A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century
Tuesday, March 22, 3:30 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Based upon Professor Stein’s award-winning book, Family Papers, this talk surveys the history of the twentieth century–and world Jewry–through the arc of a single family whose roots tie them to Ottoman Salonica but who became a global diaspora all their own. For centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein is author or editor of nine books. Her most recent book, Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux: Macmillan, 2019), explores the intertwined histories of a single family, Sephardic Jewry, and the dramatic ruptures that transformed southeastern Europe and the Judeo-Spanish diaspora. Stein’s books, articles, and pedagogy have won numerous prizes, including two National Jewish Book Awards, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. Stein is also co-editor (with David Biale of UCD) of Stanford University Press Series in Jewish History and Culture.
Poetic Voices from the Cities Under Fire
Monday, March 21, 1:00 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
The names on our news screens these days were the birthplaces of the founding fathers and mothers of modern Hebrew literature as we know it. This session will offer a taste of the rich treasure we inherited and will feature Dr. Rachel Korazim, live online from Jaffa, Israel, and special guest Erika Togyeriska live from Budapest, Hungary.
Dr. Rachel Korazim is a powerful speaker and a freelance Jewish education consultant specializing in curriculum development for Israel and Holocaust education. She is involved with Jewish education worldwide; creating and implementing in-service training programs for educators, writing educational materials, counseling and teaching. As one of the founders and directors of a special program for Israeli soldiers from disadvantaged backgrounds, she was responsible for creating the educational framework and training teachers for the implementation of the program. Born in Israel, she served in the I.D.F. as an officer in the central training base for women and was later a member of the I.D.F. delegation to Niger (West Africa). She is a graduate of Haifa University with a Ph.D. in Jewish education.
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Jewish London on Location
Sunday, March 20, 3:00 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Inspired by her book Jewish London, Rachel Kolsky takes us on a journey discovering the East End and Hackney through Soho and the ‘Mittel Europe’ of NW2&6, tracing how London’s Jewish development has been portrayed on the page and the big screen. Among the books and films profiled, discover The Lowlife in Hackney, Sammy Lee in Soho, a Kid for Two Farthings in the East End, a Barber in Stamford Hill in … Stamford Hill, a Rainy Sunday in one of Rachel’s favourite films and Chicken Soup and the Ghetto, two iconic pieces of literature by Jewish authors.
Engaging, knowledgeable and entertaining Rachel Kolsky is a popular prize-winning London Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Focusing on the ‘human stories behind the buildings’ Rachel’s talks are known to be fun and informative filled with anecdotes past and present. From off-the-beaten track London and famous personalities to cinemas and shopping, memories of all aspects of London’s rich and varied social history come flooding back. Before embarking on her career as Guide and Lecturer Rachel, a qualified librarian, worked as an information professional in the financial services industry for over 25 years being recognized at industry level with the Information Professional of the Year award in 2006. Her professional organization, SLA, awarded her the Membership Achievement Award in 2008. Rachel has published five books, Jewish London (2012), Whitechapel in 50 Buildings (2016), Secret Whitechapel (2017), Women’s London (2018) and Whitechapel Doors (2019) and she is thrilled to have been a guest lecturer on cruises since 2009.
Pastrami, Verklempt, and Tshoot-spa: Non-Jews’ Use of Jewish Language in the United States
Thursday, March 17, 3:30 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Jews in the United States use many Hebrew and Yiddish words in their English conversation. To what extent do non-Jews pick up these linguistic markers? This multimedia talk explains how wordslike klutz, shpiel, and kibbitz have become part of the broader American lexicon, sometimes popularized by comedians. Politicians use Hebrew and Yiddish words in diverse ways, from Bill Clinton’s “Shalom, chaver” to Michele Bachmann’s mispronunciation of chutzpah. A much more sinister use of Jewish language is white nationalists mocking Jews with words like Goyim and Shoah. Several video clips are shown, from James Cagney as a Yiddish-speaking Irish taxi driver to Barack Obama “getting all verklempt” while honoring Barbra Streisand.
Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, where she teaches mostly masters students in the Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit Management and undergraduates at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps, as well as many articles about Jewish languages, Yiddish, and American Jews. She is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and co-editor of Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present and We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage. She founded and directs the HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project, which produces the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. Her current projects analyze Hebrew use at Jewish supplementary schools and the names Jews give their children and their pets.
Purim: A Perfect Example of Assimilation
Tuesday, March 15, 1:00 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
The Purim story should speak to modern Jews in the diaspora more than any other festival story in our calendar or Bible. These were not heroic figures or inspiring leaders. Forget Judah the Maccabee from Chanukah or Moshe from Pesach. All we’ve got here is a couple of Jews keeping their heads above water in an unsympathetic world. At last, a story about us and our friends. In this session, Clive Lawton will re-examine the story in the book of Esther and explore what it tells us about ourselves. Maybe that’s why we get drunk! Interesting?
Honored by the Queen in 2016 for services to ‘Education and the Jewish community’, voted no 18 in the UK’s Jewish ‘Power 100’ list and awarded the Max Fisher International Prize for Jewish Education by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, and CSP’s 11th Annual One Month Scholar in January 2012, Clive Lawton is CEO of the Commonwealth Jewish Council and scholar-in-residence at JW3, London’s flagship JCC (of which he was a founding trustee) and an internationally active management and education consultant. He was co-founder of Limmud, the internationally renowned Jewish adult education movement and worked for it in senior roles from 1999 till 2016. He has been a High school principal, Director of Education for the City of Liverpool, a governor of the Metropolitan Police, Chair of a Hospital Trust, a patron of the Jewish AIDS Trust, on the Editorial Board of Jewish Renaissance, President of the Shap Working Party on Education in World Religions and was for over a decade Chair of Tzedek, (a 3rd World development charity).
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Jewish Life in Rio de Janeiro the “Marvelous City”
Monday, March 14, 3:30 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Join us for a conversation between Rabbi Elie Spitz and Rabbi Nilton Bonder about the joys and challenges of living a Jewish life in Rio de Janeiro. Born in Brazil and trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, Rabbi Bonder is a bestselling author of eighteen books in Latin America. He leads one of Brazil’s most influential Jewish congregations and is also active in civil rights and ecological causes. Some of his books have been translated in Europe and Asia and twelve of them in the US. His book Our Immoral Soul was turned into a play in 2006 and won as the best play and best actress of 2007. This play is also being staged in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A second play on his book Heaven’s Criminal Code is in the making in Brazil as well as a movie under the title Our Immoral Soul by director Silvio Tendler. He has led workshops for many corporations and delivered lectures at many universities and conferences.
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CSP Pre-Purim Music Event – “Live from Salon Ben Dosa III”
Sunday, March 13, 3:00 pm EDT
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Modern-day Israel is home to multiple immigrant communities. The more established are from Eastern Europe, and date back to the late 19th century—people who fled pogroms, discrimination, and centuries of oppression. A massive influx of Jews from throughout North Africa and the Middle East joined them after 1948. These newer immigrants were settled—along with recent survivors of the Holocaust—both in makeshift tent cities (which, over time, morphed into towns like Sderot, Kiryat Shmona, Yerucham and others), as well as in established centers along Israel’s Mediterranean coast and around Tel Aviv. Over the next 70 years, successive waves of immigrants arrived from places like Yemen, Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, and, recently, France—often on the heels of conflict and political uncertainty. Their stories are similar to their predecessors, and they have settled in many of the same places. These immigrant communities are distinct. Their histories, foods, music, politics, and assumptions vary, and that variety can be radical. Yet they often live side by side, and Israel is young enough, and its immigrants are fresh enough, that their various musical traditions can still be found in their pure, undiluted forms. But what happens when we bring a variety of these musical traditions together? Join us as we enjoy a live from Jaffa Pre-Purim musical celebration in honor of Phyllis Gilmore produced by Asaf Rabi and featuring some amazing Israeli folk musicians, including Aviel Sultan, Julie Bensandilove & Amitai Aricha.
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American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York
Wednesday, March 9, 1:00 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel (named for the charismatic founder of Satmar Hasidism, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum) is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that it disavows. Is this community’s existence consistent with or is it a deviation from the American legal and political tradition? Join us as Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers share the curious case of Kiryas Joel (based on their new book published in 2022 by Princeton University Press).
David N. Myers holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA. As of fall 2017, he serves as the director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy. He previously served as chair of the UCLA History Department (2010-2015) and as director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (1996-2000 and 2004-2010). He received his A.B. from Yale College in 1982 and undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before completing his doctorate at Columbia in 1991. He is the co-author with Nomi M. Stolzenberg of American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (Princeton, 2022). At UCLA, he teaches courses on Jewish history and the history of history.
Nomi M. Stolzenberg holds the Nathan and Lily Shapell Chair at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She is a legal scholar whose research spans a range of interdisciplinary interests, including law and religion, law and liberalism, law and feminism, law and psychoanalysis, and law and literature. After getting her J.D. at Harvard Law School in 1987 and clerking for the Honorable John Gibbons, chief judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, she joined the faculty at the USC Gould School in 1988. She helped establish the USC Center for Law, History and Culture, one of the preeminent centers for the study of law and the humanities, which she currently co-directs. She is the co-author with David N. Myers of American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (Princeton, 2022).
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Legacy & Responsibility – A Granddaughter’s Search for Her Family’s Forbidden Nazi Past
Tuesday, March 8, 1:00 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Join Rachel Kadish and Julie Lindahl in conversation. Rachel Kadish, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, is an award-winning author of three novels including From a Sealed Room, Tolstoy Lied: a Love Story, and The Weight of Ink. She has been a fiction fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, has received the National Jewish Book Award, the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award, and the John Gardner Fiction Award, and was the Koret Writer-in-Residence at Stanford University. Julie Lindahl is a multinational author, activist and educator living in Sweden. Her 2018 memoir, The Pendulum; A Granddaughter’s Search for Her Family’s Forbidden Nazi Past (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, paperback 2022) reveals her 6-year journey through Europe and Latin America to discover the role her grandparents played in the Third Reich – her grandfather had been a fanatic member of the SS since 1934 and was responsible for enslavement and torture and was complicit in the murder of the local population on the large estates he oversaw in occupied Poland. The pendulum used by Julie’s grandmother to divine good from bad and true from false becomes a symbol for the elusiveness of truth and morality, but also for the false securities we cling to when we become unmoored. Together with other critically acclaimed authors from the Boston area, Rachel and Julie curate a podcast series exploring how we co-create a world that’s more considerate, more resilient, and stronger in the face of today’s challenges.
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In the Days of Achashverosh: Purim and the Persian Empire
Monday, March 7, 3:30 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
The Persian Period is a mysterious period in Jewish History – it includes many fascinating details and unanswered questions. This virtual tour will follow some of these mysteries, and bring to life the story of the Megillah through visiting the domain of the Achaemenid Persian Kings of Kings – in Susa, Persepolis, Pasargadae. We will explore some of the discoveries that are on display in famous museums around the world – such as the Cyrus Cylinder, and the abundant gold and silver treasures of this luxurious empire. The aim of this virtual tour is to enhance your appreciation of the story of Purim, and to see aspects of the story come to life through seeing the artifacts and locations from the Persian Empire.
Nachliel Selavan, originally from Jerusalem’s Old City, is back in Israel after seven years of teaching full-time in the United States, developing his unique and engaging method of learning Torah through tour, travel and archaeology. During his undergraduate degree studies in Tanach and Mass-Communications at Lifshitz Teachers College, Nachliel hosted a local weekly radio show on 101.6 FM. Nachliel completed his first MA through the Melton Blended Masters in Jewish Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is studying for his second MA in Ancient Jewish History at Bernard Revel Graduate School, Yeshiva University.
The Jewish Barry Levinson on Film
Sunday, March 6, 7:00 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
As a youth, Academy-award winning director Barry Levinson had Holocaust-survivor relatives stay at his family’s home. Their visit made a great impression on him and he inserted such a visit in his 1990 film classic, Avalon. Now, Levinson has just finished a new film, The Survivor, about a concentration camp inmate who was made into a boxer for the entertainment of his Nazi guards. The film focuses not only on what happened during the Shoah, but on how this survivor adapts to American life after the war. These movies and other films by Levinson, like Diner and Liberty Heights, provide great insight into the American Jewish experience, the subject of this lecture with film clips.
Dr. Eric Goldman is an adjunct professor of cinema at Yeshiva University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. He is a known scholar and lecturer on Yiddish, Israeli and Jewish film. A noted film educator, Dr. Goldman hosts “Jewish Cinematheque” on the Jewish Broadcasting Service (seen monthly across the nation). Dr. Goldman received a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and was a fellow of the Max Weinreich Center for Eastern European Jewish Studies at Columbia University. In addition, Dr. Goldman holds graduate degrees in Contemporary Jewish Studies and Theater Arts from Brandeis University. He is the author of Visions, Images and Dreams: Yiddish Film Past and Present (Holmes and Meier Publishers, 2011) and The American Jewish Story through Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2013). He has also curated several Jewish film festivals, including the Ring Family Israel Film Series at Y.U.
The Israeli Defense Forces: The Human Aspects
Thursday, March 3, 3:30 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
The IDF fulfills many roles in Israel besides its obvious function as an army. Since its earliest stages in the pre-State period, the various Jewish militias recognized the need to educate the immigrants who would then take on central roles in 1948. The diverse population required a rapid immersion in new values and the army played an essential role in assisting in the nation-building process. In the session, Paul Liptz will include his own experiences in a field unit, the 1982 Lebanon War, and in the Education Unit dealing with a wide range of fascinating challenges.
Paul Liptz, a social historian and CSP’s recent 19th Annual One Month Scholar in Residence, was on the Tel Aviv University faculty for 40 years, teaching graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Middle East and African History and the International School, where he dealt with a wide range of topics. His main interests are History of the Yishuv the Modern State of Israel and Arab Women and Nationalism in the Middle East. Paul was born in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and came as a volunteer to Israel one day before the Six Day War on June 4, 1967. He decided to stay in Israel, married Brenda and they have 4 children and 12 grandchildren.
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By the Grace of the Game: The Holocaust, A Basketball Legacy, and an Unprecedented American Dream
Wednesday, March 2, 1:00 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive.
Join us as Dan Grunfeld, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family, a delicately interwoven narrative that doesn’t lack in heartbreak yet remains as deeply nourishing as his grandmother’s Hungarian cooking. The true improbability of the saga lies in the discovery of a game that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together a fractured Jewish family. From the grips of the Nazis to the top of the Olympic podium, from the cheap seats to center stage at Madison Square Garden, from yellow stars to silver spoons, this story navigates the spectrum of the human experience to detail how perseverance, love, and legacy can survive through generations. Ernie Grunfeld, Dan’s father, escaped to America and went on to reach unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive.
Dan Grunfeld was a two-time Academic All-American as a member of Stanford University’s men’s basketball team. He played eight professional seasons in top leagues around the world, including a year in Germany, three in Spain, and four in Israel, with a brief stint in the NBA for the New York Knicks. Grunfeld received his MBA from Stanford, and his writing has appeared in outlets including Sports Illustrated, Huffington Post, Jerusalem Post, and SBNation.
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Universal Questions in a Jewish Key: How the Witness Institute Draws on Jewish Wisdom to Empower Diverse Leaders
Tuesday, March 1, 3:30 pm EST
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Drawing on the inspiring example of his teacher Elie Wiesel, Rabbi Dr. Ariel Burger founded The Witness Institute, which strives to create a more compassionate and just world. As a rabbi and Jewish spiritual seeker, Ariel draws on Jewish texts and tales to open and deepen conversations with emerging leaders about universal topics like memory and moral leadership, Otherness, sacred conflict, and the competing claims of justice and compassion. How do the Witness Fellows, most of whom are not Jewish, see Jewish wisdom as a resource for their work as leaders and activists? Join Ariel and Witness Fellow Juliana Taimoorazy, an Assyrian Christian refugee and powerful leader, to explore how The Witness Institute is reframing the conversation about particular Jewish identity and universal human commitments.
Ariel Burger, CSP’s 20th Annual one month scholar in residence, is the founding director and senior scholar of The Witness Institute, a new project to empower emerging leaders, inspired by the life and legacy of Elie Wiesel. He is an author, artist, and teacher whose work integrates spirituality, the arts, and strategies for social change. An Orthodox-trained rabbi, Ariel received his PhD in Jewish Studies and Conflict Resolution at Boston University under Elie Wiesel. A lifelong student of Professor Wiesel, Ariel served as his Teaching Fellow from 2003-2008, after which he directed education initiatives at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. He recently published a book about his tenure with Elie Wiesel entitled Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom (winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Biography).
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COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
Zionism – Herzl’s Vision Then and Now
Sunday, March 27, 7:30 pm EDT
(online program presented by the Lappin Foundation)
The Walnut Street Synagogue is pleased to be a co-sponsor of the Zionism – Herzl’s Vision Then and Now program, presented by the Lappin Foundation. Theodore Herzl is heralded as the visionary of the only Jewish State in the world. What if he lived among us today? A State of the Jews or a Jewish State? Join us for a presentation by Ido Aharoni, Global Distinguished Professor at New York University’s Program of International Relations in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Zionism – Herzl’s Vision Then and Now (Event flyer)
Register here
COMMUNITY PROJECTS
Ukraine Emergency Fund
Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) has launched the Ukraine Emergency Fund to provide humanitarian assistance to the Jewish Community of Ukraine. All funds will go to partners on the ground in Ukraine to help with food, housing, medicine and other basic needs.
Learn more and Donate here
Chelsea Gateway Project
Yad Chessed
Sponsor meals for those in our community who are struggling with economic hardship and isolation and help to support other needs through Yad Chessed. Yad Chessed serves as a safety net for Jewish individuals and families and is rooted in the Jewish values of kindness (chessed) and charity (tzedakah). They are committed to helping those in need navigate a path toward financial stability while preserving their privacy and dignity. Questions can be directed to info@yadchessed.org.
Support Yad Chessed