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NOVEMBER 2025 PROGRAMS

WALKABOUT TEL AVIV: TEL TO TOWERS

Markets & Migrations: A Taste of Tel Aviv
Returns December 3, 7:00 pm ET

Learn more about the series here 

 

CSP

The Walnut Street Synagogue is pleased to be a partner congregation of the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program.  Please join us at an upcoming program!

Judaism: The Big Questions

Part 1 – The Monotheism Question (are Jews really monotheistic, and what does “real” monotheism mean?) – Sunday, November 2, 1:00 pm ET (online)
Part 2 – The Prophecy Question (who speaks for God—and who decides? – Sunday, November 9,  1:00 pm ET (online)
Part 3 – The Land Question (why the Promised Land is both anchor and flashpoint) – Sunday, November 16, 1:00 pm ET (online)
Part 4 – The Rationalism Question (how far reason can stretch when it meets mysticism) – Sunday, November 23, 1:00 pm ET (online)
Part 5 – The Gender & Sex Question (reconciling ancient texts with contemporary understandings) – Sunday, November 30, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)

Prof. Marc Michael Epstein returns for a five-part, exclusive CSP series that tackles Judaism’s most urgent, perennial questions—rooted in deep tradition, framed for today’s seekers.
Winner of CSP’s 4th Annual Maimonides Award for Excellence in Adult Jewish Education and the 2015 Jewish Book Award in Visual Arts for Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts, Marc Michael Epstein grew up in Brooklyn in a family of Slonimer and Lubavitcher Hassidim and Romanian socialists. Since 1992 he has been Professor of Religion at Vassar College, where he teaches medieval Christianity, Jewish texts, and the interplay of religion, art, and politics, and served as the first Director of Jewish Studies. A graduate of Oberlin and Yale (with research at Hebrew University), Epstein has published numerous works on Jewish visual and material culture, including The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination (Yale, 2011), named a “Best Book of the Year” by the Times Literary Supplement. Formerly Director of the Hebrew Books and Manuscripts division at Sotheby’s, he now consults internationally for libraries, museums, auction houses, and private collectors.
Part 1 – Program video
Part 2 – Program video
Part 3 – Program video
Part 4 – Program video
Part 5 – Program video

 

Shakespeare and the Jews

Part 1 – The Merchant of Venice In Historical Context – Thursday, November 13, 1:00 pm ET (online)
Part 2 –  The Geographical Context of Shakespeare and the Jewish Community – Monday, November 24, 1:00 pm ET (online)
Part 3 – Shakespeare’s Dark Lady – Tuesday, December 2, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)

Join us for a new three-part series with Dr. Aviva Dautch, exploring Shakespeare through a Jewish lens—history, geography, and biography. Together we’ll revisit The Merchant of Venice in light of fresh archival discoveries, map London’s Jewish landscape in Shakespeare’s time, and consider the case for Emilia Bassano Lanier as the “Dark Lady.” Come learn, question, and discover how these stories reshape what we think we know about Shakespeare—and about ourselves.
Part 1 – The Merchant of Venice In Historical Context – There have been many productions of the Merchant of Venice. We’ll look at a few key ones – from the Victorian period, produced or set during the 1930s and 1940s, on the 500th anniversary of The Venice Ghetto, to think about how the historical context reflects society’s views on antisemitism. This will help us consider the context in which Shakespeare wrote the play, and we’ll explore some exciting recently discovered archival documents that may shed light on his intentions.
Part 2 – The Geographical Context of Shakespeare and the Jewish Community – A research-project launched in September 2025 to unearth more material about the location and history of London’s Medieval Jewish Cemetery, has already thrown surprising light on Shakespeare’s relationships to contemporary conversos living in London alongside him. How does it help us understand his plays’ comments about Jews and other immigrants, and provide supporting evidence for the Jewish candidate for Shakespeare’s Dark Lady?
Part 3 – Shakespeare’s Dark Lady – Emilia Bassano Lanier, the daughter of Venetian Jewish converso musicians, is now widely believed to be the most compelling candidate for Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, the mysterious woman alluded to in several of his sonnets. She was an accomplished poet in her own right. In this session we’ll look at her Jewish family roots, her life as a woman in Elizabethan England, and her writing, which was published in the Jacobean period. We’ll explore parallels between her poetry and Shakespeare’s to think about the influence she may have had on him, and he on her.
Dr. Aviva Dautch is Executive Director of Jewish Renaissance, the UK’s quarterly Jewish arts magazine and the leading English-language Jewish cultural publication in Europe. An academic in Jewish literature, she earned her PhD with Royal Holloway’s Reid Scholarship and a Brandeis research award, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2025–2026 she will serve as the first Scholar-in-Residence for the University of Oxford’s Vera Fine Grodzinski Jewish Women’s Voices program at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing, while continuing to lecture widely at LSJS, JW3, and Limmud. A curator, producer, and educator with major London institutions (British Library, British Museum, Royal Academy, Tate Modern, and more), she is also an award-winning poet and a regular arts broadcaster for BBC Radio 4.
Part 1 – Program video
Part 2 – Program video

 

In-Between Notes – Geography, Culture, & the Shaping of Israeli Music 

Tuesday, November 18, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)

What defines Israeli music?  Is there a truly local sound shaped by geography, history, and cultural fusion? How have Arabic and Middle Eastern aesthetics influenced what we now call classical music, Israeli rock and pop? In this session, Yael Cherni explores these questions and traces the complex musical dialogue between East and West that has influenced Israel’s unique sonic identity. Join us for this special one-hour online session in honor of the memory of CSP patron, Bernard “Barney” Gilmore (z”l), beloved Professor of Music at UC Irvine.
Yael Cherni is a conductor, soprano, and founder of Kol HaMusica, Israel’s only classical music radio station. A recipient of the Gary Bertini Biennial Prize for Promising Young Conductors, she has performed worldwide and served as assistant conductor to Maestro Claudio Abbado. As a soprano, she has sung with leading orchestras in Israel and abroad. Cherni has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University and Shenkar College, and a presenter and editor for Israeli radio, where her acclaimed series It’s All About the Classics explored links between music and society. She was also a founder and participant in several Jewish–Arab classical music initiatives. Her first book It’s All about the Classics: An Updated View on the World of Classical Music, was based on that praised series and was published in Israel in 2016 by Modan. Her new book Classical Music: Undressed dedicated to “anyone who appreciates the beauty of art” was recently published.

 

Seeing into the Life of Things – Imagination and the Sacred Encounter

Tuesday, November 11, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)

In this author presentation, Rodger Kamenetz invites us on an exhilarating journey that weaves together poetry, personal experience, and spiritual exploration. Drawing from his new work, Seeing into the Life of Things, Kamenetz reveals how imagination itself can be a natural spiritual path. From the rhythms of his native New Orleans to his friendship with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, visionary founder of Jewish Renewal, Kamenetz connects everyday life with the deepest spiritual longings. In his talk Rodger will teach a simple but powerful blessing visualization practice from his new book  that he integrates with the morning Jewish gratitude prayer modeh/modah ani, a way to cultivate resilience in difficult times.
Rodger Kamenetz is an award-winning poet, author, and teacher, best known for The Jew in the Lotus, his bestselling account of rabbis meeting the Dalai Lama, now in its 37th printing and widely taught in religion courses. A PBS documentary and his sequel, Stalking Elijah, which won the National Jewish Book Award, further established him as a leading voice at the intersection of Judaism and Buddhist thought. His books include acclaimed poetry collections (The Lowercase Jew, Yonder, Dream Logic), the memoir Terra Infirma, and The History of Last Night’s Dream, which led to an interview with Oprah on her “Soul Series.” In Burnt Books (Jewish Encounters), he explores the spiritual legacies of Franz Kafka and Rebbe Nachman. A graduate of Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford, Kamenetz taught English, Religious Studies, and Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, where he founded the Master of Fine Arts program. He now lives in New Orleans, focusing on spiritual direction through dreams.
Program video

 

The Extraordinary Story – of ‘Hester Street’ 

Thursday, November 6, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)

Marking the 50th anniversary of Joan Micklin Silver’s groundbreaking 1975 debut, Hester Street, this session with Dr. Julia Wagner explores how the film transformed Jewish American cinema and carved out a new space for women in the industry. A trailblazing Yiddish, feminist work that defied expectations and became an international hit, Hester Street vividly captures the immigrant experience through Gitl (Carol Kane, in an Academy Award–nominated performance) as she arrives from Eastern Europe to New York’s Lower East Side in 1896, confronting the challenges of assimilation and identity. Dr. Wagner will uncover the film’s rich layers of Yiddish culture, offering fresh insights into an under-appreciated classic, drawing from her  book Hester Street (BFI Film Classics/Bloomsbury, 2025), the first to focus exclusively on Micklin Silver’s work.
Dr. Julia Wagner is a lecturer and writer specializing in Jewish-interest film and television, based in London, UK. She holds a PhD in Film Studies from UCL and is author of Hester Street (Bloomsbury 2025), a BFI Classics study of Joan Micklin Silver’s debut film. Her writing has been published widely and she is a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle. Julia is passionate about media education and public engagement. You can find out more about her work at: www.juliawagnerfilm.com
Program video

 

Between Documentation, Loss and Memory – Israeli Photography After Rabin’s Assassination 

Tuesday, November 4, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)

The mid-1990s in Israel were tumultuous. The rapid pace of events, from suicide bombings to the Oslo accords, meant a tectonic shift was underway. Photojournalists and visual artists were capturing and recording the events, processing them and the changes they meant for Israeli society in real time. On November 4, 1995, after months of protests, civil unrest, and public rituals yearning for his death, a domestic terrorist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. This lecture observes how that moment and its national aftermath were portrayed by photographers, documentarians and the media, observing how they tried to process the unthinkable and understand its meanings for Israeli society. We will also discuss the relationship between Israel’s photographic histories and how documentary perspectives were and are vital for Israel’s national imagination.
Dr. Rotem Rozental is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Los Angeles Center of Photography, formerly Chief Curator at American Jewish University, and a lecturer at USC Roski. A scholar of photo-based art and visual culture, she authored Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement (Routledge, 2023), winner of the AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Award, and has written widely for Artforum, Photographies, Jewish Currents, Tablet, and Forward. She mentors artists globally, edits and contributes to artist books (including Itinerarium, 2023), and is currently developing a nonfiction memoir; upcoming and recent creative work includes an essay in Afterimage (2025) and a short story in the anthology Scars.
Program video

 

COMMUNITY PARTNER PROGRAMS

Philanthropy in Boston’s Jewish Community at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Origins and Impact of the First Jewish Federation in the U.S.

Thursday, November 20, 6:00 pm ET
(in-person program at the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at American Ancestors, 97 Newbury Street, Boston)

Join our 2025 Genevieve Geller Wyner Research Fellow Benjy Maor to learn about how and why Jewish community leaders in Boston founded, in 1895, the first federation in the United States, The Federation of Jewish Charities of Boston (today known as Combined Jewish Philanthropies). In this lecture, Maor will discuss the first community-wide fundraising campaign, the key players in this early history (including Jacob Hecht, Abraham C. Ratshesky, Rabbi Solomon Schindler, Martha Silverman, and Morris D. Waldman), and the wider context for these large-scale changes, in philosophy and approach, from charity to philanthropy.  Attendees will have the special opportunity to view and interact with archival materials that Benjy Maor used in his research.

 

The Jews of Iran:  Past and Present

Thursday, November 13, 8:00 pm ET
(online program presented by the Massachusetts Antisemitism Synagogue Task Force)

To celebrate Mizrachi Jewish Heritage Month, the Massachusetts Antisemitism Synagogue Task Force is hosting Matthew Nouriel, for a conversation about the Iranian Jews in the past and present.   Matthew serves as the Director of Community Engagement at JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) and is based in Los Angeles, California. An activist and content creator of Iranian Jewish heritage, Matthew is dedicated to advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, promoting equality within the Iranian and Jewish communities, combating antisemitism, and supporting the Women Life Freedom movement for a free Iran.

 

Will Eisner: A Comics Biography

Thursday, November 13, 6:00 pm ET
(in-person program at the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at American Ancestors, 97 Newbury Street, Boston)

Join the Jewish Heritage Center and the Boston Comic Arts Foundation for a moderated conversation with Stephen Weiner and Dan Mazur about the life of Will Eisner, one of the most influential artists in the history of comics, and their work to record it through the most appropriate medium: a graphic novel!  As they do in Will Eisner: A Comics Biography, Weiner and Mazur will explore Eisner’s Jewish immigrant roots and childhood in New York, how he started his own comics studio and business, the creation and publication of his beloved comic, The Spirit, and much more.

 

In Conversation with Eli Sharabi

Wednesday, October 12, 12:00 pm ET
(online program presented by Combined Jewish Philanthropies)

Live from Tel Aviv, CJP invites the community  for a conversation between CJP’s Executive Vice President Jennifer Weinstock and Eli Sharabi, who endured a grueling 491 days in Hamas captivity, all the while holding onto the hope that he would one day be free and reunited with his loved ones.  Jennifer will discuss with Eli what life was like in captivity and how he survived hunger and heartache by showing incredible strength, resilience, and a refusal to surrender both during captivity and in the days since returning to Israel.

 

Eating Identity: Yemeni Jewish Migration and Foodways  

Thursday, November 6, 7:30 pm ET
(online program presented by the Lappin Foundation)

Join the Lappin Foundation for an exploration of the history and migration to Israel of most of the age-old Yemeni Jewish community. Ari Ariel, PhD, will use the Jewish foodways to examine how Yemeni Jews struggled to resist assimilation, while also working to integrate into Israeli society.  Ari is the Director of International Studies at the University of Iowa and an Associate Professor of Instruction in International Studies and History.  The program is free and everyone is welcome.

 

YAD CHESSED

Yad Chessed helps Jewish individuals and families who struggle with financial hardship pay their bills and buy food. As a social services agency rooted in the Jewish values of kindness (chessed) and charity (tzedakah), they are committed to helping those in need navigate a path toward financial stability while preserving their privacy and dignity.  They provide emergency financial assistance, grocery gift cards and compassionate advice for those trying to make ends meet. Hundreds of families and individuals throughout the state rely on Yad Chessed to provide for their essentials, and even at times, a Jewish burial for a loved one.  Members of our community, as well as others in the Jewish community, who need assistance may contact Yad Chessed by phone at 781-487-2693 or by Email at intake@yadchessed.org for a confidential conversation.    Questions can be directed to info@yadchessed.org.
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