By Reporter staff

A variety of Jewish groups are offering educational and recreational online resources. Below is a sampling of those. The Reporter will publish additional listings as they become available. 

The Biblical Archaeology Society will hold a virtual Scholars Series. The four lectures will be “Jesus’s Resurrection in the New Testament: Who Witnessed What and Why?” on Thursday, March 10, from 8-9 pm; “New Views on the Philistines: What Archaeology Reveals about Goliath and His Peers” on Sunday, June 19, from 3-4 pm; “The Archaeology of Qumran 75 Years after the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls” on Thursday, September 8, from 8-9 pm; and “Mary Magdalene: Memory and Mystery at Dura Europos” on Thursday, December 8, from 8-9 pm. There is a cost to attend. A video of the lecture will be available to paid registrants for approximately one week after each event. For more information or to register, visit this link. 

The Jewish National Fund will hold virtual lectures called “Conversations on Zionism: Reclaiming the Narrative.” Upcoming lectures include “Scott Shay with Russell F. Robinson: Exploring Campus Conspiracies” on Tuesday, January 18, at 7:30 pm; and “Digital Media Warriors” on Tuesday, February 1, at 7:30 pm. For more information or to register for individual lectures, click here.

Maven at the American Jewish University will hold online classes and talks in January and February, including “Measuring and Meaning: A Vision for Jewish Education in America” on Thursday, January 20, from 3-4 pm; “American Shtetl: Satmar Hasidism Blossoms in Upstate New York” on Thursday, January 20, 3-3:45 pm; “The Holocaust in Israeli Theater” on Wednesday, January 26, from 1-2 pm; “Menopause as a Jewish Rite of Passage” on Thursday, January 27, from 3-3:45 pm; “Civil Discourse and Judaism” on Wednesday, February 2, from 3-4 pm; Good is the New Cool: Purpose, Meaning and Tikkun Olam: on Wednesday, February 2, from 1-1:45 pm; and “Book Talk: Naomi Ragen’s ‘An Observant Wife’” on Wednesday, February 16, 1-1:45 pm. Some talks/classes are free, but there is a charge for others. For more information and to register, see their classes and events page.

The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will hold the virtual talk “Wandering Jews of New Jersey” on Monday, January 31, from 7-8:30 pm. The talk will explore memories of New Jersey towns. For more information or to register, see this page.

RitualWell will hold three free programs: “A Play for the End of the World: Book Talk with Jai Chakrabarti” on Thursday, January 27, from 7-8 pm, about his novel that was inspired by the true story of a play written by an Indian poet and performed in a Warsaw Ghetto orphanage before the residents are deported to Treblinka (more info here); “Black Fire / White Fire: Reading and Writing Creative Midrash” on Wednesday, February 2, from noon-1:30 pm (see event); and “Writing from Single Words of Torah” on Tuesday, February 22, from 7-8:30 pm (available here). 

RitualWell will hold classes beginning in January and February. There is a cost to attend these classes, which include “Writing the Revelatory Poem,” on Tuesdays from January 25-February 15, from noon-1:30 pm (view here); and “The Masked Writer: Persona Poetry as Modern Midrash” on Wednesdays from February 16-March 2, from noon-1:30 pm (learn more). 

UJA – Federation of New York and The Jewish Week will hold the virtual book talk “American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York” on Wednesday, January 19, at 6 pm. Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers will discuss their book about Kiryas Joel, which was named for Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the founder of Satmar Hasidism. For more information or to register, click here.

Gesher will hold a variety of talks about different Jewish areas of the world, including “Vilnius: The Jerusalem of Lithuania and the city of my family” on Tuesday, January 18, from 1:30-3 pm (find out more); “Greek Jewry: At the crossroads of civilizations” on Thursday, January 20, at 1:30 pm (www.qesher.com/greek-jewry/); “Desert Roots: Concert and Presentation by Dror Sinai” on Sunday, January 23, at 1:30 pm (available here); “A Portrait of Jewish Life in Berlin” on Thursday, January 27, at 1:30 pm (more info here); “Jewish Africa: A Photographic Journey” on Sunday, January 30, at 1:30 pm (click here); and “Gleams and shadows of Jewish life in France” on Thursday, February 3, at 1:30 pm (view here). 

UJA-Federation of New York will hold the virtual talk “Jewish Women: Deep Footprints in American History” on Tuesday, January 18, at 10:30 am. Pamela Nadell, author of “America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today,” will tell “how Jewish women maintained their identity and influenced social activism as they wrote themselves into American history.”  Click here for more information or to register.

The Siegal Lifelong Learning Program at Case Western Reserve University will hold the virtual program “Hazamir: Not Just a Choir” on Friday, January 21, from noon-1:30 pm. Vivian Lazar will tell the story of the international Jewish teen choir, HaZamir. The musical youth movement has more than 40 chapters in the United States and Israel. For more information or to register, follow this link.

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois will hold the virtual program “How to Interpret Jewish DNA Test Results” on Sunday, January 23, from 1-2 pm. Topics will include ethnicity estimates, tools to understand and locate DNA matches, nuances found at each testing company, and strategies to tackle endogamy. For more information or to register, click here.

The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute will hold several events this winter: Rachel Sharona Lewis on “The Rabbi Who Prayed With Fire” on Wednesday, January 19, from 7-8 pm; Laura Arnold Leibman, Ph.D., on “Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multi-Racial Jewish Family” on Tuesday, February 15, from 7-8 pm; Judy Heumann on “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” on Wednesday, March 23, from 7-8 pm; and Tamar Biala on “Dirshuni: Israeli Women Writing Midrash,” date and time in May TBD. For more information or to register, see this page.

Jewish Together will hold “Jewish Disability Advocacy Day” virtual programs on Wednesday-Thursday, February 23-24. For more information or to register, see link.

The Brooklyn Public Library will hold the virtual book talk about “‘The Books of Jacob’ by Olga Tokarczuk” with Jennifer Croft and Ruth Franklin on Tuesday, February 1, from 4-5:30 pm. The novel examines the legacy of Jacob Frank, a mid-18th century Jewish mystic. For more information or to register, sign up here.

The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History will hold a “Musical Tu B’Shevat Seder” on Sunday, January 16, at 8 pm. The event will be available on Zoom, the museum’s Facebook page and the museum’s website. For more information, visit this link.

The Jewish Women’s Archives Quarantine(ish) Book Talks Winter 2022 will be held virtually: Helene Wecker, author of “The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni,” on January 27, at 8 pm; Ariella Elovic, author of “Cheeky: A Head to Toe Memoir” on Thursday, February 3, at 8 pm; Haviva Ner-David, author of “Hope Valley,” on Thursday, February 10, at 8 pm; and “Writing Jewish Fiction for Kids” with Emily Barth Isler and Aimee Lucido on Thursday, February 17, at 8 pm. To register for the talks, click here.

“Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS” will feature an online discussion with author Ken Krimstein about his book “When I Grow Up,” a graphic narrative based on newly discovered, never-before-published autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish teens on the brink of World War II on Wednesday, January 26, at 7:30 pm. For more information or to register, visit this link.

The Jewish Theological Seminary will hold the webinar series “The Power of Emotion: Judaism and the Inner Life” on Mondays from January 24 to April 4, except February 21, from 2-3:30 pm. Topics include “The Importance of Shame in Rabbinic Tradition”; “Trust, Frustration, and Confusion in the Psalms”; “Unlocking the Gates of Heaven: The Transformative Power of Grief”; “Love During the Holocaust”; “The ‘Burning Heart’ from the Book of Jeremiah to the Metropolitan Opera”; “Compassion and Love in Jewish Mystical Sources”; and “Divine Rage.” To register for the series, see this page. 

For additional resources, see previous issues of The Reporter or our other Jewish Online Resources here.