This year’s Adult Education programs have been varied and outstanding. We began the Friday Night series with a “standing room” crowd to hear Julian Zelizer speak about the Presidential Election a few weeks just before we went to the polls. In November, Alicia Ostriker gave many insights into the book of Jonah. Unfortunately, the evening that Scott Lasensky was supposed to speak about Arab-Israel peace, we had snow. However, he will be rescheduled for the coming year.
Seymour Feldman was most insightful about both the history and contemporary situation on Christians and Jews living in Muslim countries. Martin Raffel shared his idea for connecting future generations to Global Jewish issues. He also gave expert answers to questions about many political problems that are happening around the world today.
Gary Rendsburg was an outstanding Scholar in Residence. He taught new information about Egyptian religion and myths which clearly impacted on Jews and the Bible. He also gave very interesting ideas about understanding the book of Leviticus. We thank the people who were sponsors of this event and those who prepared the delicious lunch.
On the weekend prior to Yom HaShoah, Dr. Jacob Solomon Berger spoke about books which have been written by survivors about the Jewish communities of Europe which are no longer here. There are over 1270 books, written mostly in Yiddish. Dr. Berger has translated eight of these texts each of which is approximately 600 pages long. We thank Gilbert and Claudie Hayat who sponsor our excellent Friday Evening speaker series.
We also thank Michele Rosenfield who taught two semesters of Hebrew Prayer reading. Rabbi Zelizer’s classes were filled to capacity as he discussed what Jews believe in our time in the fall and many interesting aspects of the Bible in the spring. We had many students in the film series I hosted and especially enjoyed the movies about Debbie Friedman and Jacob Mendelson. Those who took my crash course on Jewish History rushed to discuss 3500 years of history in six hours.
We thank Nita Polay Levin for organizing the Rosh Chodesh study group and Heather Kibel for planning the Gateways Wednesday morning series. Rabbi Zelizer’s special workshops on Death and Ethical Wills were very well attended. Amy Artman deserves many kudos for this year’s Don and Ruth Kahn Book and Author event. As of this writing, we are still looking forward to the Israel Segal lecture featuring Rabbi Meyer Rabinowitz speaking about Jewish Law and Ethics and the Susy Schwartz concert starring Peri Smilow.
Miriam Saruyah planned a lovely Tu B’Shvat Seder and Steve Gross is putting together the Shavuot Night of Study. The Adult Ed. Committee chaired by Sam Grafton and Bob Moss is already hard at work planning next year’s events and speakers. We thank everyone who helped make this such a great year.