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. 

Uri L’Tzedek, Orthodox Social Justice, will hold “Walking towards a more tolerable society: Tikkun Olam” with Mosaic Visions Dee Sanae on Monday, June 19, at noon. She will discuss “the complexities of social justice work that is rooted in Jewish ethics.” To register, click here.

The Jewish Theological Seminary will hold “Between the Lines: ‘Where I Am’” with Israeli author Dana Shem-Ur about her new novel on Tuesday, June 20, from 1-2 pm. “Where I Am” has been called “an intimate, witty book portraying a profoundly human yearning to stop everything, to lay down one’s head, and to feel – if only for a moment – at home.” For more information or to register, click here.

Melton will hold the lecture “Classic Israeli Souvenirs on Display” on Monday, June 19, from 7-8 pm. The cost to attend is $18. A new type of art emerged that celebrated the traditional images of the new State: Israeliana. Dr. Rachael Goldman will discuss the “mass-produced pieces, designed by Israelis, [that] aimed to put Israel’s new identity into the hands of Jews around the world.” For more information or to register, click here.

Melton will hold the class “Femme Fatale or Fierce Woman Warrior?” on Thursdays, June 22-July 13, from 1-2 pm. There is a sliding scale cost to attend. Each week will focus on a different biblical women – Delilah, Lilith, Tamar and Yael – and use midrash and poetry to explore the characters. For more information or to register, click here.

The Jewish Theological Seminary will hold the lecture series “The Dynamics of Change” from June to August on Mondays from 1-2:30 pm. Upcoming classes include “Patient Change, Slow Influence: The Model of the Rabbis of Late Antiquity” on June 26; “The Power of Words: How What We Say Affects Us and Those Around Us” on July 10; “Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World, Healing God in Kabbalistic Thought” on July 17; “Literature as an Agent of Change: Revisiting Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Novel Stone Butch Blues” on July 24; “Evolving Jewish Attitudes Towards Abortion” on July 31; “Becoming Jewish Americans: Popular Culture and Protest in Yiddish New York” on August 7; and “Can Institutions Be Nimble? Community Organizing in Tumultuous Times” on August 14. For more information or to register, click here. 

The HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project will hold the lecture series “Jewish Language on TV,” featuring the lectures “Language Mixing in Netflix’s ‘Rough Diamonds’” on Sunday, July 16, from 1-2:30 pm; “Jewish Language on TV,” including “Language in ‘History of the World Part II’” on Sunday, August 13, from 6-7:30 pm; and “Language in ‘Jewish Matchmaking’” on Sunday, August 20, from 1-2:30 pm. For more information or to register, click here.

The Yiddish Book Center will hold the talk “Kibbitz and Nosh – Cafeteria Culture in 1970s New York City” with Marcia Bricker Halperin and Deborah Dash Moore on Thursday, June 29, at 7 pm. They will discuss the photos Halperin took of self-service cafeterias of the 1970s and ‘80s. For more information or to register, click here.

The Center for Jewish History and the Museum of Chinese will hold a panel discussion “Beyond These Walls: Material Cultures of Jewish and Chinese Detainees” on Tuesday, June 27, at 6:30 pm. The panel will discuss materials created by Jewish and Chinese detainees as they waited for entry into the United States. For more information or to register, click here.

The Jewish Literary Journal offers an “online magazine/review/venue that publishes all genres of Jewish, creative writing on a monthly basis. Jewish Literature, Jewish Writing, and Jewish Expression are at the forefront of everything the JLJ does.” It also offers a podcast, which can be found at click here.

Roundtable will hold “Jewish Flavors of Italy with Silvia Nacamulli” on Thursday, June 22, from 4-5:30 pm. The cost to attend is $25. Nacamulli will speak about Italian-Jewish cuisine and offer a cooking demonstration combined with information about Italy’s 2000-year-old Jewish community.  

The Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center will hold the Project Oded Mini-Courses in hybrid. Classes run from July 2-27 and each class will meet over four one-hour sessions. There is a charge: from $36 for one course to $120 for all five. Courses include “Jeremiah’s Jerusalem – The Last Years (But Who Knew?)”; “(More) Women Who Built the State”; “Visions of Zion in a World Redeemed”; “Reading Bat Sheva: Woman, Wife, and Warrior”; and “Tehillim and Tehillot.” For more information or to register, click here.

Maven will hold several virtual lectures: “Protect and Persecute: A History of Jews and Catholics in Rome” on June 27, from 3-3:45 pm (available here); “The In-Betweens: Jewish Identity and Race in America” on Tuesday, July 11, from 3:3:45 pm (available here); “Virtual Tour of Auschwitz Exhibition at the Reagan Library” on Thursday, July 20, from 3-3:45 pm (available here); and “From Soviet Prisoner to Israeli Politician: Natan Sharansky’s Story” on Tuesday, July 25, from 3-3:45 pm (available here). 

Uri L’Tzedek, Orthodox Social Justice, will hold “Learn with Rabbanit Nomi Kaltmann : Is changing Australia’s constitution a Jewish value?” on Tuesday, July 11, at 8 pm. She will discuss the referendum vote to amend the Australian constitution to recognize Aboriginal Australians as the First Nations people of the country. To register for the seminar, click here. 

The Women’s Initiative of the Orthodox Union will hold a “Virtual Summer Beit Midrash” from July 10-20 with morning and evening classes. There will be classes in halacha, Jewish history, Tanach and tikkun hamiddot. To receive e-mail notification when the application form is open, click here. 

The Museum of Jewish Heritage will hold “The Forgotten Tales of Jewish Winchester,” a virtual walking tour, on Wednesday, June 28, at 11 am. The cost is $18 for museum members and $25 for non-members. The tour will explore the Jewish heritage of Winchester, England, including the once-thriving Jewish Quarter that was there during the Middle Ages. For more information or to register, click here. 

The Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning will hold “Sacred Numbers” on Wednesday, August 23, from 8-9 pm. The cost to attend is $18. The class will explore the Hebrew language focusing “around hidden meanings, rabbinic interpretations, and more. One of the most intriguing areas of exploration is Gematria, the study of how Hebrew letters correspond to numbers, unlocking codes that teach us something deeper than our surface understanding of words.” For more information or to register, click here.

The Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning will hold the virtual course “Abraham on Trial” on four Thursdays, August 17-September 7, from 1-2:30 pm. There is a sliding scale cost to attend. The class will explore the Akedah (binding), or near sacrifice of Isaac, along with the continuing reverberations of the controversial biblical story. For more information or to attend, click here.

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will hold a virtual Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series on Tuesdays and Thursdays from June 22-July 25. It will cover “topics ranging from history and historiography to literature, poetry, folklore and theater, and featuring some of the field’s leading scholars: Kenneth B. Moss, Daniela Smolov Levy, Marion Aptroot, Jonathan Boyarin, Glenn Dynner, Chaya Nove, Avi Blitz, Miriam Trinh, and Shachar Pinsker.” For information about individual courses, click here.

The Center for Jewish History’s Summer Reading Schmooze 2023 is looking for recommendations to send out in its newsletter. According to the site, the books “can be fiction or nonfiction... Maybe the author or characters are Jewish, it takes place in a relevant historical setting, or the themes echo traditional Jewish concerns.” Recommendations may be shared in e-blasts and on social media, and each entry will be entered in a drawing for CJH swag. For more information, or to recommend a book, click here.

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