Temple Beth Tikvah
The Temple Beth Tikvah Adult Education committee has partnered with PJP (Partners in Jewish Programming) and is bringing their thoughtful and thought-provoking programs to the TBT membership. We are excited to announce that we are able to join in their monthly programs via zoom, with other congregations throughout the US.
The following is a list of the upcoming topics. Once we have dates/times you will be required to register via Shulcloud to get the zoom link.
These programs are free to TBT members through our Adult Education Programming budget.
SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM FOR A LINK TO SEE RECORDINGS OF PAST LECTURES.
UPCOMING LECTURES:
Sunday, December 14 @ 1:00 PM (The Shtetl Series)
“Exploring the Lives of Jewish Children in Eastern Europe”
Discover the rich tapestry of Jewish childhood in the shtetl, exploring daily life, family traditions, and the community bonds that shaped the futures of young lives in Eastern Europe.
Evgenia Kempinski is a professional Jewish tour guide, born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. With over fifteen years of experience guiding Jewish heritage tours in her hometown, she has developed a deep passion for uncovering and sharing the stories of the Jewish Diaspora. With her family she spent six enriching years living in Israel and now resides in Barcelona, continuing her mission to connect people with Jewish history and culture around the world. She is the founder of the Online Jewish Travel Club, a vibrant community that brings together Jews from different countries through a shared love of travel, art, and Jewish heritage.
Thursday, January 8 @ 8:30 PM (Travel Series)
“Jewish Indonesia” with Rabbi David Kunin
Rabbi Kunin will examine the diverse kehilot that comprise one of the most isolated re-emerging Jewish communities in the world. Descended from many different Jewish diasporas, Indonesia’s Jews span the archipelago from Sumatra to Papua Indonesia. Each of their communities is unique, with its own history and culture, yet together they form a vibrant whole, creating a Judaism which is absolutely authentic, yet at the same time uniquely Indonesian.
Rabbi David Kunin graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Medieval History and then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained as a Rabbi and received an MA in Judaic Studies. Rabbi Kunin has served communities as rabbi in Glasgow (Scotland), Elmira, San Diego, Edmonton, and Tokyo (Japan). He now is rabbi of Congregation Beth Davud in Saratoga, CA. Rabbi Kunin has a strong commitment to Jewish learning, and to a strong laity that play a central role in the religious leadership of the congregation. He believes that Jewish learning and growth is a life-long process. He also believes that spiritual growth, as we build our relationship with the community and God should be a continuous part of Jewish life. Rabbi Kunin is a strong believer in the importance of good and harmonious relations between people from diverse religious communities. Interfaith relations have therefore been a continuous mark of his rabbinate. He served as the Chair of the Southern Tier InterfaithCoalition (Elmira, NY), where he created the Walking Together program, and was long time board member and president of the Edmonton Interfaith Centre for Education and Action. He received the Alberta Centennial Medal in recognition of his community work. Rabbi Kunin has been working with the emerging Jewish Community of Indonesia for ten years and has spent more than 3 months in the archipelago.
Sunday, January 11 @ 1:00 PM (Museum Series)
The Jewish Museum, NY – “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art”
During World War II, untold numbers of artworks and pieces of cultural property were stolen by Nazi forces. After the war, an estimated one million artworks and 2.5 million books were recovered. Many more were destroyed. This exhibition chronicles the layered stories of the objects that survived, exploring the circumstances of their theft, their post-war rescue, and their afterlives in museums and private collections.
Afterlives includes objects looted from Jewish collections during the war, including works by such renowned artists as Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Gustave Courbet, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Camille Pissarro. The Jewish Museum has also commissioned four contemporary artists to create new works that address the resonance of the exhibition’s themes: Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guez, and Lisa Oppenheim. Treasured pieces of Judaica, including rare examples of Jewish ceremonial objects from destroyed synagogues, will also be on view, as well as rarely seen archival photographs and documents that connect the objects to history.
75 years after the Second World War, Afterlives explores how surviving artworks and other precious objects were changed by those events, and how they have moved through time, bearing witness to profound historical ruptures while also acting as enduring carriers of individual expression, knowledge, and creativity. The exhibition follows the paths taken by works of art across national borders, through military depots, and in and out of networks of collectors, looters, ideologues, and restitution organizations.
Thursday, January 15 @ 8:30 PM– (Scholar Series)
“Jews for Choice: How Jews Have Been Active in the Fight for Reproductive Justice”, Michal Raucher (Rutgers)
The dominant narrative in the United States often portrays religion as inherently opposed to abortion, largely due to the influence of certain Christian groups. However, the reality is more complex: the majority of religious individuals in the United States actually support legal access to abortion. For decades, Jewish communities have played a key role in challenging this narrative and advancing reproductive rights. In this session, we will explore how Jews have been at the forefront of this advocacy—through efforts in women’s health, legal action, religious engagement, and the power of personal storytelling around abortion.
Michal Raucher is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where she teaches courses on religion and reproduction, women and gender in religion, and Israel/Palestine. Her research focuses on women in contemporary Judaism, reproductive ethics, and religious authority. Raucher is the author of “Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women” (Indiana, 2020), an ethnography of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish women’s reproductive ethics. She recently completed her second book, The New Rabbis, an ethnography of women rabbis in American Orthodoxy. Dr. Raucher is a PI on two studies exploring the intersection of religious identity and abortion. She has interviewed over 100 Jews who have had abortions in America since 1973. Dr. Raucher is the co-editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. She earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Northwestern University. She also has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia University.
Thursday, February 5 @ 8:30 PM (Museum Series)
National Museum of American Jewish Military History – “American Jewish Soldiers and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps”
Jewish American Soldiers played an important role in liberating Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Beginning in the spring of 1945, the U.S. Army began uncovering these camps, revealing the horrific realities of the Holocaust. Jewish soldiers, many of whom were fluent in Yiddish, were not only witnesses to the atrocities but also the first to offer solace and a sense of community to the survivors. The presentation will highlight their unique position as liberators that were simultaneously U.S. Army soldiers and members of the Jewish community, emphasizing their ability to communicate with survivors and provide immediate support and understanding amidst the chaos and devastation.
Michael Rugel is the Director of Programs and Content at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History. Prior to that he served on the museum’s collections management staff.
Rugel has frequently written about Jews in the American military. He regularly speaks about the history of Jews in the American Military at museum programs as well as to local schools, synagogues, community centers and veterans groups. He has given Jews in the military and Holocaust Remembrance talks to groups and organizations including at the Pentagon, Walter Reed Army Medical Research Center and Naval Medical Research Center. Rugel has produced a series of videos featuring American Jewish liberators of concentration camps describing their World War II experiences.
Upcoming publications include “The American Serviceman Finding and (Re)creating Jewish Community during World War II” in Michael: On the History of the Jews in the Diaspora published by The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University. His writing regularly appears in the Jewish Veteran magazine, Jews in Green website, and National Museum of American Jewish Military History website.
Rugel has appeared in multiple documentary films including GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II on PBS and Stabbed in the Back: the story of the 500,000 Jewish soldiers who served in the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary) armies during The Great War.
He was raised in Reston, Virginia. He received a Bachelor’s degree in history from the College of William and Mary and a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies from George Washington University. He lives in Dunn Loring, Virginia with his wife Judy and daughter Hadley.
Thursday, February 12 @ 8:30 PM (Scholar Series)
“Talmudic Stories: From History to Literature”, Jeffrey Rubenstein, (NYU)
How should Talmudic stories about the sages be studied? From the middle ages until recent times, interpreters adopted an historical approach that understood “sage-stories” as relating “what actually happened,” namely the lives and deeds of the sages. Much of the histories of the rabbis and of the Jewish people in the periods of the Mishnah and Talmud were written on the basis of these stories. More recently scholars have shifted to a literary approach that rejects the historicity of the stories and understands them as didactic literature, teaching morals and lessons to the audience. This talk will explore why scholars abandoned the biographical-historical approach and shifted to an understanding of rabbinic stories as didactic fictions. It will also delineate the revolutionary impact of this “paradigm shift” in our knowledge of the history of the Talmudic period.
Dr. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein is the Skirball Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Literature at New York University. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He received his B.A. in Religion from Oberlin College, his M.A. in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also received rabbinic ordination, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Religion of Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Jewish Theological Seminary in addition to New York University. His books include, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods (1995); Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition and Culture (1999), Rabbinic Stories (Classics of Western Spirituality Series, 2002), The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (2003), Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), and The Land of Truth: Talmud Tales, Timeless Teachings (Jewish Publication Society, 2018). Dr. Rubenstein has written numerous articles on the festival of Sukkot, Talmudic stories, the development of Jewish law, and topics in Jewish liturgy and ethics.
Thursday, March 19 @ 8:30 PM (Scholar Series)
“Jewish Justification of Diaspora Life”, David Kraemer (JTS)
The majority of Jews have lived in exile from the time of the Babylonian Exile in the early sixth century BCE until the present day, and though exile has often been accompanied by difficulties, it has also provided Jews with peace in homes where they had the opportunity to flourish. By virtue of this reality, Jews have often defended and even lauded their diaspora experiences, in teachings and expressions that in recent generations have been too little recognized. In this session, Prof. Kraemer will introduce you to some of these teachings, asking what they may mean for the future of Jewish identity.
David Kraemer is Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian (=Director of The Library) at The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he has also served as Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics for many years. As Librarian, Prof. Kraemer is at the helm of the most extensive collection of Judaica—rare and contemporary—in the Western hemisphere. On account of the size and importance of the collection, Prof. Kraemer is instrumental in setting policy and establishing vision for projects of international importance.
Prof. Kraemer is a prolific author and commentator. His books include The Mind of the Talmud (1990), Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (1995), The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism (2000), and Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (Routledge, 2007, 2009), among others. His most recent book is A History of the Talmud (Cambridge U. Press, 2019). His most recent book is Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora, (Oxford U. Press, 2025).
Thursday, March 26 @ 7:30 PM (Museum Series)
Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience – “Stories from the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience”
Join us as we explore the stories held in the galleries of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE). Spanning thirteen states and three hundred years, the MSJE’s core exhibition explores the diverse relationships, experiences, and environments encountered by Jewish communities in the American South. We’ll discuss artifacts and stories from early Jewish immigrants as they navigated southern spaces to find and build communities. Learn how southern Jews maintained their identity and became part of the fabric of southern society. The MSJE team will walk us through the galleries and have a conversation about this unique yet universal story.
Lizzi Meister, the Public Programs Manager at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, will be our tour guide. She’s originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she went to Jewish summer camp in the north woods and developed a love for engaging programming. Her love for the South came during her time as a Community Engagement Fellow in Jackson, Mississippi. Before moving to New Orleans to work at the Museum, Lizzi lived in Seattle, getting her Masters in Museology and working with a Jewish co-op! She enjoys continuing to weave her love of museums, programming, and Jewish stories at the MSJE.
Thursday, April 23 @ 8:30 PM (Travel Series)
“Jewish Kurdistan” with Levi Meir Clancy
This session will explore the history of Jews in the Kurdistan Region through the lens of lived experience, personal stories, and cultural preservation. From ancient communities to modern erasure, we will trace how Jewish life in Kurdistan both shaped and was shaped by its surrounding cultures. The program blends historical context with firsthand insight, offering a grounded and human-centered view of a little-known chapter of global Jewish life.
Levi Meir Clancy is a writer, photographer, and educator based in the Bay Area, where he works in social services for a Jewish organization. He spent over seven years in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, working in demographic research, photojournalism, and interfaith engagement. His educational content and unique storytelling have been featured by TEDx, Aish.com, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Qesher, Yad Mizrah, The Forward, and The J.
Thursday, April 30 @ 8:30 PM (Scholar Series)
“A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: Jewish Name Changing in the 20th Century”, Kirsten Fermaglich (Michigan State)
Our images of name changing are frequently clichés: movie stars who adopted new names or Ellis Island officials who changed immigrants’ names. Kirsten Fermaglich upends these clichés by examining previously unexplored name change petitions. In twentieth-century New York City, thousands of ordinary Jews legally changed their names to respond to institutionalized antisemitism. While name changing allowed Jewish families to achieve middle-class status, the practice also became a source of family pain and community stigma.
Kirsten Fermaglich is Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Michigan State University. Her most recent book, A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (NYU, 2018), was awarded the Saul Viener prize for the best book in American Jewish history in 2019. She is also the author of American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares (Brandeis University Press, 2006) and the co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (2013), with Lisa Fine. She was a National Archives Distinguished Fellow in 2022-2023. From 2016 through 2021, she was co-editor of the journal, American Jewish History, along with Daniel Soyer and Adam Mendelsohn.
Thursday, May 7 @ 8:30 PM (Travel Series)
“Jewish Uruguay” with Shai Abend
Join us for a captivating virtual journey as we travel back in time to uncover the roots of Jewish immigration to Uruguay. Imagine yourself stepping into the lives of these early settlers and experiencing the unique reality they encountered. We’ll explore the fascinating process that led to the formation of Uruguay’s organized Jewish community. Discover how Uruguay, once celebrated as the ‘Switzerland of America’—a pioneering welfare state, Latin America’s most secular nation, and a global leader in progressive thought—profoundly shaped a vibrant, diverse, and ideologically active Jewish community. We’ll share the compelling life stories of prominent figures who lived here and reveal intriguing connections between Jewish and Uruguayan cultures. Finally, we’ll open a dialogue about the current state of Jewish life in Uruguay, reflecting on its key issues and future challenges
Driven by a passion for connecting individuals with their Jewish heritage in Uruguay, Shai Abend Abudara (43, Israeli-Uruguayan) is a community entrepreneur, educator, and experienced tour guide. Holding a B.A. in Political Science and Humanities from the Hebrew University and an M.A. in Business Intelligence from the University of Barcelona, Shai brings a unique blend of academic rigor and practical experience to his work. He is the visionary founder and director of “BERESHIT: The Jewish Experience,” a non-profit community initiative that fosters connection through engaging educational, cultural, and tourism projects. Within BERESHIT, Shai also spearheads the “Jewish Museum Initiative.” He previously led the Jewish Studies department at the Catholic University in Uruguay, and he is deeply committed to Holocaust education, volunteering with Holocaust survivors and leading educational trips in Poland.
Thursday, May 14 @ 8:30 PM (Museum Series)
Virtual Tour of the Borscht Belt Museum
The Borscht Belt Museum will illuminate and celebrate the golden age of the Catskills resort era, when millions of urban dwellers sought refuge in the mountains of upstate New York, leaving deep imprints on mainstream American culture, from stand-up comedy and comfort food to mid-century modern design and popular concepts of leisure. A virtual tour of those “thrilling days of yesteryear” when Urban Jews loaded their Chevys and Fords (and a few Cadillacs and Lincolns) crossed the Hudson on the George Washington Bridge and ventured “up to the mountains” via Old 17 (or the new “superhighway called the Quickway”) and, after a quick pit stop at the Red Apple Rest, finally pulled into the driveway of one of the 538 hotels or 1500 bungalow colonies that dotted areas of Ulster and Sullivan counties to begin their “vacation in the Borscht Belt!” Whether a weekend, a week or an 8 week summer, the Borscht Belt had something for everyone! Relive those times; those experiences (perhaps maybe even relive those “R-Rated experiences”) with Borscht Belt Historian and “ultimate Catskill Rat,” Dr Peter Alan Chester, Treasurer/CFO – Founding Director of the Catskills Borscht Belt Museum, as he takes you on a trip down memory lane. “The Main Dining Room is now open for your dining pleasure”— CHARGE!
DR PETER ALAN CHESTER is the first generation American born son of Holocaust Survivors Leo and Henriette Chester. His Great-Grandfather was the Chief Rabbi of Bad Ems and Koblenz. His Great-Uncle was the Chief Rabbi of Paris. Peter has three earned degrees from New York University, graduating Magna Cum Laude as a Fellow of the Department. A life-long career in public education, Peter began as a Teacher of Middle School Science and Math in Coney Island, advancing to Dean of Students and Science Chairperson. He served on the staff of three Chancellors and later returned to his district as Director of Science and Professional Development. Peter facilitated the establishment of The Bay Academy for the Arts and Sciences, a middle school for the academically gifted, serving as its Founding Director. He also served as Interim Principal of several elementary and middle schools. He is fluent in German, French, Flemish and Yiddish and is a trained keyboard and vocal musician. He is active in numerous “2G” groups for Children of Survivors and has presented “The Legacy of My Family: The Story of Their Survival of The Holocaust” for many audiences nationally and internationally speaking in English, German and Flemish.
Temple Beth Tikvah 