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.
Maven will hold several virtual programs in March: “Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle” on Tuesday, March 21, from 3-3:45 (available here); and “To Be or Not to Be: The Jewish American Paradox” on Tuesday, March 28, from 3-3:454 (available here).
The Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning will hold “Yiddish: Wanted Dead or Alive” on Monday, March 20, from 1-2 pm. There is an $18 cost to attend. Dr. Rachel Seelig will explore the fate of Yiddish culture since World War II. For more information or to register, click here.
The Jewish Theological Seminary will hold the virtual program “We Are Not One,” which is part of “Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS,” on Tuesday, February 7, from 7:30-8:30 pm. Historian Eric Alterman will talk about his book “We Are Not One,” which traces the debate about the fate of the state of Israel and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, from its 19th-century origins. For more information or to register, click here.
The Yiddish Book Center will hold the online course “Shakespeare & Yiddish” on Wednesday, March 8-29, at 7 pm. The course will focus on how the Yiddish theater performed and adapted Shakespeare’s works. For more information or to register, click here.
The Jewish Theological Seminary will hold the virtual program “Sephardic Food and Culture: A Culinary-Historical Perspective” with Hélène Jawhara Piñer and Dr. Benjamin Gampel as part of its “Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS” on Wednesday, March 8, from 1-2 pm. Piñer and Gampel will discuss “how the mass conversion of Iberian Jews in the late 14th and 15th centuries, initially triggered by the anti-Jewish riots that swept Castile and Aragon in 1391, led to distinctive and identifiable food and eating practices among those Jews who were compelled to embrace the Christian faith.” For more information or to register, click here.
The Jewish Initiative for Animals in conjunction with other organizations will hold “Faith in Food: Individual and Collective Responsibility in Food Practices” on Wednesday, February 1, at 3:30 pm. The program will feature clergy and leaders in the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Unitarian Universalist spaces. The panelists will speak about their religious community and how to create “collective efforts that include community change, legislative progress, justice movement coalition building and widespread action for the greater good.” For more information or to register, click here.
Hadassah Magazine will hold a virtual book discussion “One Book, One Hadassah: “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’” on Thursday, February 16, at 7 pm. One need not be a member of Hadassah to attend. Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein will interview Gabrielle Zevin about her novel “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” which was a New York Times bestseller and named Amazon’s top book of 2022. For more information or to register, click here.
Judaism UnBound will hold the course “Speaking Jewish Around the Globe: Endangered Jewish Languages from Italy to India and Beyond” on Sundays, February 5-April 30, at 1 pm. The cost to attend has a sliding-scale fee of $299-$499; financial aid may be available. For more information or to register, click here.
Maven will hold the virtual program “The Diary Keepers: Untold Stories of WWII in the Netherlands,” a look at the story of World War II and the Holocaust through the diaries of Dutch citizens living through extraordinary times, on Tuesday, February 21, from 3-3:45 pm. For more information or to register, click here.
The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will hold several virtual programs in February: “The Jews of Long Island 1705-1918,” a book with author Brad Kolodny on Tuesday, February 7, from 7-8:30 pm (available here); “Seeking Sanctuary: 125 Years of Synagogues on LI,” a book talk with author Brad Kolodny on Wednesday, February 15, from 7-8:15 pm (available here); and Gangsters, Goniffs & Goons,” a talk about Jewish hoods in the cinema on Wednesday, February 27, from 7-8:15 pm (available here).
Qesher will hold the following virtual tours: “The Two Millennia Story of Moroccan Jewry” on Thursday, February 2, at 3 pm; “The Jews of Belarus: From the Pale of Settlement to the USSR and Beyond” on Sunday, February 5, at 3 pm; “The Jews of Egypt: From the Bible to the Golden Age and the Abraham Accords” on Thursday, February 9, at 3 pm; “Jewish Denmark and a Virtual Tour of Copenhagen” on Sunday, February 12, at 3 pm; “The Jews of Crimea and the story of the Karaites” on Thursday, February 16, at 3 pm; “From the Inquisition to the Caribbean: Jews of Jamaica” on Sunday, February 19,at 3 pm; “Jewish Lisbon and Portugal: a community reconnecting with its past” on Thursday, February 23, at 3 pm; “The Jews of Georgia: A Diverse and Ancient Community in the Caucasus” on Sunday, February 26, at 3 pm; and “Growing up Jewish in Uganda” on Thursday, March 2, at 3 pm. For more information or to register, click here.
The Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion will offer a Spring 2023 Library Lecture Series. Some of the lectures will be available on Zoom, including “A New Look at an Old Book: Rethinking the Purpose of Pirke Avot” on Wednesday, February 15, at 5 pm; “Good Samaritans? Jewish-Samaritan Relations in the Roman World” on Monday, March 13, at 7 pm; “‘He Showed Him the Likeness of the Tabernacle’: The Biblical Tabernacle in Samaritan Literature and Art” on Tuesday, March 14, at noon; “Tzafun: The Behind the Scenes Work of Repairing the 1526 Prague Haggadah” on Monday, April 10, at 11 am; and “The Histories of the Hebrew Language and its Script” on Wednesday, May 10, at 1 pm. For more information or to register, click here.
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will hold the virtual book talk “Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America” on Monday February 27, at 1 pm. Sandra Fox will discuss her new book, “The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America,” which explores “how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.” For more information or to register, click here.
Pardes will hold the three-part virtual class “The Great Beyond: Death and The Afterlife” with Rabbi Jon Leener on Thursday, February 9-23, at 12:30 pm. Leener will explore “Jewish ideas around death, the soul, and the afterlife using traditional Jewish sources.” For more information or to register, click here.
The Jewish Theological Seminary will hold two classes: “The Kabbalah of Tzefat” on Wednesdays, February 8-March 15; from 1:15-2:30 pm, the cost to attend is $180 (www.jtsa.edu/event/the-kabbalah-of-tzefat/); and “Mitzvot: Obligation in Jewish Thought” on Mondays, March 13-April 3, from 7-8:30 pm, the cost to attend is $120 (available here).
The Jewish Book Council will hold “Virtual Unpacking the Book: Escaping the Holocaust with Jonathan Freedland and Weina Dai Randel” on Wednesday, February 15, from 7-8 pm. Jonathan Freedland, author of “The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World,” and Weina Dai Randel, author of “Night Angels,” will hold “a conversation about the stories we know and tell about escaping the Holocaust – fact, fiction, and the sometimes blurred line between them.” For more information or to register, click here.
The Biblical Archaeology Society will hold the virtual “Spring Bible and Archaeology Fest 2023” from April 22-23. Scholars in the field from around the world will speak on archaeology of the Bible, Bible lands, and Bible peoples. There is a cost to attend. For more information or to register, click here.
The Blue Dove Foundation offers free mental health resources for Tu B’Shevat here. Resources include “Planting a Gratitude Tree,” “Mental Health and Climate Change,” “Tu B’Shvat: Gratitude as Self-Care” and “Mental Health Tu B’Shvat Seder.”
For additional resources, see previous issues of The Reporter on its website, For additional resources, see previous issues of The Reporter or our other Jewish Online Resources here.