YAD MORDECAI ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAM

2007-2008 (partial list)

 

Shabbat, October 20 after the Kiddush                     Carl Sheingold

Topic: “Israel at 60: What is it in our hearts, our minds and our movement?”

 

Thursday, November 8 at 7:30 PM                             Anne Griffin

Topic:  Rescue of Jewish Children in Belgium, during the Holocaust period

 

Thursday, November 29 at 7:30 PM                           Rabbi Scheinberg

Topic:  Jewish views on the Death Penalty in the United States?

 

 

ISSUES PROGRAM

Shabbat following Kiddush: Monthly discussions dealing with current issues led by members of the congregation.

October 13            - Moshe Sayer, Israel: Jewish and Democratic

November 17         - Elliot Wales, Major Supreme Court decisions affecting us

December 22         - Stan Samuels,   Can Liberal Judaism unite?

January 5              - Aryeh and Stella Gold, My big Israeli wedding

February 16 -           TBA

March 29               - Jerry Posman, Jewish Land of Opportunity - CUNY

April 26                 – Fran Hoffinger, Justice and Judaism

May 24                  – Barbara Gish, New perspectives on the Middle East

 

 

LECTURE SERIES

Four Who Entered the Pardes: Four Approaches to Ancient Jewish Mysticism

Rabbi Joel Hecker

Sunday, December 9 at 10:30 AM

Sunday, December 16 at 10:30 AM

 

 

COURSE

Liturgical Engagement: Recent Reflections on Reconstructionist Prayer

Rabbi Yael Ridberg

Session 1 - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 6:30 PM

Session 2 - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 6:30 PM

Session 3 - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 at 6:30 PM

 

 

Lecture in Memory of Naomi Rappaport

Mr. Eddy Portnoy, Thou Shalt Not Make Graven Images: Cartoons of the Yiddish Press -

Thursday, February 14th, 7:30 pm.  
By appropriating a popular format that had not appeared previously in Jewish life and filling it with Jewish content, the cartoonists of the Yiddish press were able to furnish a wide audience with a form of graphic commentary that referenced the texts and traditions of their own minority culture. This lecture will provide an overview of the phenomena of Yiddish language cartoons in both Eastern Europe and America, with a particular focus on Warsaw and New York as cultural centers. 
Mr. Portnoy is currently completing his dissertation on this subject at the Jewish Theological Seminar. He   writes and lectures on modern Jewish history and Jewish popular culture throughout the US and Europe. The event is sure to be a fitting memorial to our good friend Naomi Rappaport.

 

 

Jewish Food Around the World

Sunday, March 9th, 10:30 am.

TBA

 

SECOND ANNUAL FILM SERIES

1) January 24 -      Paper Clips

2) March 27 -         Mr. Klein

3) April 24 -           Watermarks

4) May 22 -            A Walk on Water

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1) January 24, 7:00 pm -       Paper Clips

Dir.:  Elliot Berlin, Joe Fab, USA, 2004
Struggling to grasp the concept of six-million Holocaust victims, the students of Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee decide to collect six-million paper clips.  The film details how the experience transforms the students and their community.
 

2) March 27, 7:00 pm -          Mr. Klein

Dir.: Joseph Losey, France, 1976
As Jews flee Paris, Robert Klein, an unscrupulous art dealer in Nazi-occupied France, exploits them, preying on their desperation by buying their valuables at a fraction of their worth…until he finds his name is shared by a Jewish fugitive who is a member of the anti-Nazi resistance.
 

3) April 24, 7:00 pm -            Watermarks

Dir.:  Yaron Zilberman, Israel, etc. 2004
Watermarks is the story of the champion women swimmers of the legendary Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna.  In the 1930s Hakoah’s best-known triumphs came from its women swimmers.  Sixty-five years after the women fled Austria, director Yaron Zilberman meets them in their homes around the world, and arranges for them to have a reunion in their old swimming pool in Vienna.

 

4) May 22, 7:00 pm -             A Walk on Water

Dir.: Eytan Fox, Israel, etc. 2004
Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission of tracking down and killing the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who may still be alive.  Pretending to be a tourist guide, Eyal befriends Himmelman’s grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia.

 

 

SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE

The Adaptation of Liturgy to Modernity with Rabbi Robert Scheinberg

Friday, March 14th evening and Shabbat, March 15th afternoon

Program will include a dialogue with Rabbi Ridberg during services.

 

 

HISTORY COURSE  

Judaism and Islam: Cultural Interactions During the Middle Ages

Arnold Franklin, Assistant Professor, Department of Classical and Oriental Studies, Hunter College of the City University of New York.
We will examine how intellectual currents within Islamic society exercised a decisive impact on Jewish religious and literary culture, shaping among other things the way Jews thought about God, revelation and the significance of halakha.  In particular, we will explore the beginnings of the fruitful, though sometimes challenging, medieval interaction between Jewish tradition and Greek philosophy.

 

Session 1 – Sunday, March 23: “Jews and Muslims in Seventh Century Arabia”

Session 2 – Sunday, March 30: “Jewish Society in the Aftermath of the Islamic Expansion”

Session 3 – Sunday, April 13:   “Jewish Culture during the Flowering of Abbasid Society”

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Session 1 – Sunday, March 23: “Jews and Muslims in Seventh Century Arabia”

This lecture will explore the earliest contacts between Muslims and Jews as they are reflected in the message and the actions of Muhammad.  We will begin with a brief look back at the presence of Jews in Arabia during the period preceding Muhammad’s call to submission to God.  Through a close reading of several passages from the Qur’an we will then consider whether Jewish traditions may have influenced the fledging faith. Finally we will examine the first protracted political confrontation between Muslims and Jews during Muhammad’s period in Medina, an encounter with regrettable consequences for future relations between the two communities.

 

Session 2 – Sunday, March 30: “Jewish Society in the Aftermath of the Islamic Expansion”

This lecture will look at the second major moment of contact between Jews and Muslims, ushered in by the military and political conquest of the Near East in the decades after Muhammad’s death.  We will consider some surprising Jewish responses to these developments, the fascination in Islamic society with Jewish lore, as well as the emergence during this period of a more clearly-defined view of the Jews as a tolerated religious minority in the Islamic legal tradition.

 

Session 3 – Sunday, April 13: “Jewish Culture during the Flowering of Abbasid Society”

In this lecture we will explore the third major moment of contact between Jews and Muslims, an encounter which took place in and around Baghdad, the political and cultural center of the Islamic world, in the ninth and tenth centuries.