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 Yiddish Book Center will hold several virtual programs: “A Conversation: Jennie Goldstein, Yiddish Drama Queen,” with Amanda Seigel, on Thursday, May 12, at 7 pm; “A Conversation: Translator Rachel Mines and ‘The Rivals and Other Stories’” on Thursday, June 9, at 7 pm; “Working toward a Healthy Generation: An Archival Show-and-Tell on Jewish Women’s Health in Eastern Europe,” with Stefanie Halpern, on Thursday, June 16, at 7 pm; and “My Father’s Yiddish Library,” with Mila Goldberg, on Sunday, June 19, at 2 pm. For more information or to register, visit here.

The Jewish Book Council will hold the virtual program “Paper Brigade’s Short Story Club: ‘The Realist” with Basia Winograd on Monday, May 9, from 12:30-1 pm. The event is free. Those interested can read the short story at www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/the-realist. For more information or to register, visit this link.

Season two of the “A Bintel Brief” podcast, the Forward’s advice column, has started. Recent episodes can be found here.

A Joey Weisenberg Album Release Concert will be held on Thursday, May 26, from 7:30-9 pm, live at The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and livestreamed on Zoom. A minimum donation of $5 is requested to see the concert on Zoom. Weisenberg will be joined by Deborah Sacks Mintz, Yosef Goldman, Daniel Ori and Richie Barshay. For more information or to register, click here. 

The Museum of Jewish Heritage will hold three musical events: “Music from Auschwitz: A Concert Series,” a series of two concerts to be held on Wednesday, May 25, and Thursday, May 26, at 7 pm, which will feature “10 short musical pieces arranged by Polish political prisoners who were members of the men’s orchestra in the Auschwitz I camp” (available here); and “Good Trouble: A Juneteenth Tribute Concert” with the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra on Sunday, June 19, at 3 pm (register here). 

Maven will hold the free event “Is It Funny for the Jews?” with Rabbi Sherre Hirsch in conversation with Dani Klein Modisett, founder/CEO of Laughter on Call, on Tuesday, June 14, from 3-3:45 pm. The discussion will focus “on how and why we address serious topics – from the personal to the global – with humor, and whether it is always helpful to do so.” For more information or to register, visit the event page.

The Jewish Theological Assembly will hold several virtual events and classes in May: “Does Faith Matter?: The Ancient Jewish Debate About Faith and Mitzvot” on Monday, May 9, from 2-3:30 pm (more info here); “Reaching for the Heavens: The Music of Composer Gerald Cohen” on Tuesday, May 10, from 7:30-9:30 pm (register here); “Watering the Soul in Times of Faith and Doubt” on Monday, May 16, from 2-3:30 pm (see event page); “Resilience in the Face of the Crusades” on Tuesday, May 17, from 8-9 pm (available here); and “Jewish Theology in America, Today and Tomorrow” on Monday, May 23, from 2-3:30 pm (see event here). 

Tikvah has sponsored a 10-part podcast “The Stories Jews Tell” with Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse, which will explore classic stories of the modern Jewish literary canon. Works to be discussed were written by Chasidic masters and poets, satirists and surrealists, Zionists and heretics. There is a cost of $25 for the season. Click here for more information or to sign up.

Hadassah will hold several virtual programs in May and June: “Exploring ‘Israeliana’: Iconic Souvenirs and Judaica” on Thursday, May 12, at 12:30 pm, with Sharon Weiser-Ferguson, a senior curator at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Dr. Ella Tenenbaum-Koren, a collector, (register here); “Faces and Flavors of Judaism: Cooking, Culture, and How Food Connects Us” on Monday, May 16, from 7-8:15 pm, with chief Einat Admomy (tickets available here); and “One Book, One Hadassah: Live With Rachel Barenbaum and ‘Atomic Anna’” on Wednesday, June 15, from 7-8 pm (more info here).

Maven will hold two virtual tours: “Tour Global Jewish Life: Uganda” on Tuesday, May 17, from 5-6 pm, with Shoshana Nambi, the first Ugandan woman studying to be a rabbi, sharing the history of Abayudaya community, as well as her own family story and journey to rabbinical school (register here); and “Tour Global Jewish Life: Bulgaria” on Thursday, June 2, from 1-2 pm, with Dr. Joseph Benatov talking about Sephardic Jews of the area and his own personal story (available here). 

The Center for Jewish History will hold the virtual program “Homes of the Past: The Story of a Lost Museum,” featuring Jeffrey Shandler and Kalman Weiser, on Thursday, May 19, at 1 pm. The program will explore why a group of scholars abandoned their attempt to create at Museum of the Homes of the Past” For more information or to register, visit click here.

The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will hold the virtual program “The Dawn of the American Film Industry” on Monday, May 23, from 7-8:30 pm. It will talk about the beginning of the film industry and include the stories of Adolph Zukor, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn and the others who started Hollywood. For more information or to register, visit this link.

The virtual program “When Rabbis Bless Congress” with Howard Mortman and Brian Lamb will take place on Youtube on Tuesday, May 10, at 1 pm. The event is free and no registration is required. The program will examine160 years of Jewish prayers given at Congress by more than 400 rabbis. For more information, visit this page. To watch the program, visit here.

The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History will hold the virtual program “La Nona Kanta: The Remarkable Life of Flory Jagoda” on Wednesday, June 15, from 8-9:30 pm. The program is free with a suggested $10 donation. The program tells the story of the late Flory Jagoda through interview and features performances of her music by Trio Sefardi and more. For more information or to register, click here.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage will hold the virtual program “Art from Tragedy: Molly Crabapple and Sara Softness in Conversation” on Thursday, May 19, at 5 pm. A $10 donation is suggested. The program will discuss artists who chronicled World War II, such as Boris Lurie, Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, Francisco Goya, Otto Dix and Käthe Kollwitz. For more information or to register, visit the event page.

The Jewish Fertility Foundation offers a weekly podcast called “Fruitful and Multiplying with Jewish Fertility Foundation.” The podcast episodes offer “the latest in all things related to fertility and infertility from leading doctors, attorneys, rabbis, therapists, and professionals in the field.” For more information, visit their website.

The Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, will host the Sacred Ink eLecture series, which focuses on body marking for ritualistic, aesthetic and other benign purposes throughout the ages, from Ancient Egypt up to the present day. Jewish-themed lectures include “Tattoos in Jewish Languages” on Wednesday, May 11, from 11 am-noon (available here), and “Is There Such a Thing as a Kosher Tattoo?” on Wednesday, May 25, from 11 am-noon (more info here).

The Tenement Museum will hold virtual book talked about the memoir “Lost and Found” by Pulitzer-prize winning author and New Yorker columnist Kathryn Schulz on Thursday, May 19, from 6:30-7:30 pm on YouTube Live. Schulz will talk about her memoir with Dani Shapiro, a bestselling novelist and the host of the podcast Family Secrets. For more information, visit this page.

The Center for Jewish History will hold the virtual program “Galicia on Our Mind: The Role of Regionalism in New York’s Jewish Immigrant Community, 1890-1938,” featuring Oskar Czendze and Jeffrey Shandler, on Wednesday, May 25, at 1 pm. The program will focus on New York’s immigrant quarter and trace the lives and culture of Jews who arrived from Galicia. For more information or to register, click here.

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