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OCTOBER 2025 PROGRAMS
WALKABOUT TEL AVIV: TEL TO TOWERS
Built to Tell: Tel Aviv in Architecture
Wednesday, October 22, 7:00 pm ET (online)
Tel Aviv’s skyline tells a story if you know how to read it. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the city boasts over 4,000 Bauhaus-style buildings, earning it the nickname “The White City.” But the architectural narrative begins even earlier, with the eclectic architecture of the 1920s, which blended European styles with local materials, Middle Eastern arches, and ornamental flourishes. In this session, we’ll trace Tel Aviv’s built identity from its earliest stylistic experiments to its modernist aspirations. We wil visit icons like the Rothschild kiosk, the site of everyday interactions and coffee-fueled conversations, the former municipality building in Kikar Bialik, a relic of civic pride and the wide boulevards lined with clean, functional Bauhaus façades, influenced by European émigrés fleeing fascism. We will also explore Tel Aviv’s later embrace of modernism and new urbanism, where glass towers now rise beside low-rise heritage homes. Architecture here isn’t just aesthetic, it’s political, personal, and prophetic. Each building is a window into the dreams and dilemmas of a city that’s always looking forward, yet grounded in its past. Renowned tour guide Gila Levitan will lead us on an eye-opening virtual journey that will take us far beyond the guidebooks. This series is made possible by a grant from the Congregation Ahabat Shalom Religious Fund and other generous donors.
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!
Ben Sira, Enoch, and Jubilees – Jewish Texts at the Edge of the Canon
Part 1 – Ben Sira – Thursday, October 9, 3:30 pm ET (online)
Part 2 – Enoch – Thursday, October 23, 3:30 pm ET (online)
Part 3 – Jubilees – Thursday, October 30, 3:30 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
In this three-part series, we’ll explore three ancient Jewish works that stood just outside the biblical canon yet shaped Jewish imagination for centuries.
Part 1 – Ben Sira: A 1,900-year-old book that almost, but didn’t quite, make it into the Bible, the Book of Ben Sira (also known as Ecclesiasticus) is full of moral advice, beautiful psalm-like passages, and some unfashionable views about women. We will look at its fascinating history and sample some of the text.
Part 2 – Enoch: Enoch only has a tiny part in the book of Bereshit, but his apparent failure to die inspired later Jews to fill in the rest of his story. We’re going to take a look at the First Book of Enoch, from the 3rd century BCE, which includes a tour of heaven, a universe bristling with angels, a solar calendar, and lots of apocalyptic stuff.
Part 3 – Jubilees: Back in the second century BCE, an adventurous Jew decided to rewrite the Bible … and produced the Book of Jubilees, a fascinating read with all sorts of secret information on the calendar, the early life of Abraham, and God’s plan for the Jewish people.
Rabba Dr. Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz obtained her PhD from University College London (in Jewish Studies and Anthropology), her MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (in Prehistory), and her BA from Cambridge University (in Archaeology and Anthropology). In 2021 she received Orthodox rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Maharat, New York. She has also participated in the Cambridge Senior Faith Leadership Program and held a Susi Bradfield Women Educators Fellowship. She is a Teaching Associate at Cambridge University, an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies, Manchester University, and a lecturer and Research Fellow at London School of Jewish Studies. She is currently writing her second book, on the history and development of Limmud. Her first book, published in 2021 by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, was Challenge and Conformity: The Religious Lives of Orthodox Jewish Women.
People of the Image – Jews and Art
Sunday, October 26, 3:30 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Celebrate the launch of People of the Image: Jews and Art, with author Prof. Marc Michael Epstein, as he takes us inside the world of medieval Jewish art and its bold commentaries on society, faith, and power. In addition to discussing the book, Marc will share behind-the-scenes stories, surprising discoveries, and insights that didn’t make it into the final manuscript. This special event offers a rare glimpse into both the making of the book and the hidden histories of a visual tradition that continues to inspire and challenge.
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.
Program video
Jerusalem: City of the Book – Secrets, Gatekeepers, and the Libraries that Made a City
Tuesday, October 21, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Step inside Jerusalem’s hidden libraries in this 50-minute illustrated talk, based on Jerusalem: City of the Book (Yale University Press) and accompanied by striking photographs by Frédéric Brenner, created especially for the project. Through rare access to Jewish, Islamic, and Christian collections, we’ll explore how libraries both guard and unveil the treasures of a city that gave birth to some of the world’s most powerful ideas. Along the way, you’ll hear vivid stories from the field—like negotiating entry to the Temple Mount with the Waqf, or watching cutting-edge imaging technology bring long-lost fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls back to life.
Benjamin Balint, a Jerusalem based writer, is the co-author, with Merav Mack, of Jerusalem: City of the Book (2019), an intimate portrait of the city’s libraries accompanied by photographs by Frédéric Brenner. His most recent book, Bruno Schulz: An Artist, A Murder, and the Hijacking of History (2023), follows the fate of a visionary artist caught in the crosscurrents of war and memory. His previous book, Kafka’s Last Trial (2018), winner of the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and translated into a dozen languages, tells the dramatic story of Kafka’s manuscripts and their contested legacy. Balint’s essays and translations have appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, Die Zeit, and The New Yorker.
Program video
Lines of Identity – A Conversation with Cartoonist Liana Finck
Sunday, October 19, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Acclaimed cartoonist Liana Finck draws with humor, honesty, and heart on everything from the awkwardness of daily life to the weight of cultural memory. A regular contributor to The New Yorker and author of graphic works such as Passing for Human and Let There Be Light, Finck reimagines biblical stories, wrestles with questions of faith and doubt, and explores motherhood, Jewish identity and being human in general in both personal and universal ways. In this interview, she will reflect on her creative process, the intersection of art and Judaism, and the power of cartoons to capture what is both timeless and deeply contemporary.
Liana Finck is a cartoonist, illustrator and regular contributor to the New Yorker where she also authors the “Dear Pepper” advice-from-a-dog column. As the author of eight books, her work also frequently appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine and more. She is the recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships.
Program video
My Father’s Paradise – A Journey into Jewish Kurdistan
Thursday, October 16, 3:30 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Join award-winning journalist and author Ariel Sabar for a conversation about his acclaimed book My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Part memoir, part history, the book traces Sabar’s journey alongside his father, a Jewish scholar born in a remote Kurdish village, as he uncovers the extraordinary story of one of the world’s oldest and most isolated Jewish communities. Through personal narrative, cultural history, and themes of identity, exile, and belonging, Sabar invites us into a moving exploration of heritage and the bonds between generations.
Ariel Sabar is an award-winning author and journalist. His debut, My Father’s Paradise (2008), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has since published Heart of the City (2011), The Outsider (2014), and Veritas (2020), a finalist for both the Edgar Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award. A contributing writer for The Atlantic, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian, Harper’s, and This American Life. Sabar has reported globally, taught creative writing at George Washington University, and lectured at universities including Yale, Brown, and Georgetown.
The Simchat Torah Flag – From Biblical Roots to Modern Israeli Icon
Sunday, October 12, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Colorful, festive, and deeply symbolic, the Simchat Torah flag has long captured the imagination of Jewish children and communities. Although its material history extends only to the late 19th century, its conceptual roots lie in biblical and rabbinic traditions of the degel (“banner”) and degel Torah. This lecture traces how the flag became a miniature emblem of joy, devotion, and continuity, first in the Ashkenazi communities of Eastern Europe, later reshaped by Zionist imagery, and eventually reinterpreted in Israel and America. Its evolving iconography, from the emblems of the Twelve Tribes, Torah scrolls, and the Ark flanked by Moses and Aaron, to Zionist leaders such as Herzl and Nordau, and even the victorious generals of the Six Day War, mirrors changing Jewish identities, hopes, and ideals. Today, contemporary designs reflect the diversity of Jewish life, ranging from ultra-Orthodox interpretations to politically correct, modern versions.
Shalom Sabar is a professor of Jewish art and folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He researches Jewish and folk material culture and ephemera, objects associated with the cycles of life and of the year, and ritual and custom in the Jewish communities in Europe and in Islamic Iands. He is also interested in the culture of Italian Jews and the Sephardic diaspora in Europe, the cultural and artistic interrelationships between the Jewish communities and their Christian and Muslim neighbors, and the image of the Jew and Hebrew writing in art. Prof. Sabar received his PhD in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Program video
Hinneni – Soldiers’ Poems for the Days of Awe
Sunday, October 5, 1:00 pm ET (online)
(online in partnership with the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program)
Amidst the holidays of Tishrei, a time of reflection, judgment, and renewal, we turn to voices that have emerged from the most difficult of days. The Hinneni collection gathers poems written by soldiers, both in regular and reserve duty, in the wake of October 7th. A joint project of the Mashiv Haruach publishing house and the IDF Education and Youth Corps, the collection spans Israel’s diverse ideological landscape. Some poems may feel immediately familiar, while others challenge us to encounter perspectives beyond our own. Just as the High Holidays invite us to face ourselves and our community with honesty and courage, these poems open a raw and intimate window into the fractured, searching discourse of Israeli society today.
Dr. Rachel Korazim is a Jewish education consultant specializing in curriculum development for Israel and Holocaust education. Over the past four years, in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Rachel created an online global community of hundreds of people who meet to study Israeli poetry. Through her teaching, she has opened a window into Israeli society through literature, stories, poems, and songs. Since October 7th, 2023, Rachel has been collecting and sharing poems by Israelis who are grappling with the recent tragedy, offering a profound insight into the nation’s collective grief, resilience, and hope.
Program video
COMMUNITY PARTNER PROGRAMS
Antisemitism, An American Tradition
Wednesday, October 29, 7:30 pm ET
(online program presented by the Lappin Foundation)
Join the Lappin Foundation for Professor Pamela S. Nadell’s talk about her new book, Antisemitism, an American Tradition. Prof. Nadell is the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University. The book has already been acclaimed as “the book that the world needs now.” The book investigates the dark history of how this hate threaded across the American past from colonial times to today. The program is free and everyone is welcome.
Nova Exhibition
Friday, September 26 through Tuesday, October 21
(in-person at the former FW Webb Building, 307 Dorchester Avenue, Boston)
The Nova Exhibition, presented by the Tribe of Nova Foundation, is an in-depth remembrance of the brutal massacre at The Nova Music Festival on October 7th, 2023. The installation sets out to recreate a festival dedicated to peace and love that was savagely cut short by a terrorist attack on that fateful day. The attack at The Nova Music Festival was the largest massacre in music history.
Walk for Women’s Health
Sunday, October 19, 12:30 pm ET
(in-person in Chestnut Hill presented by Hadassah Northeast – location to be provided upon registration)
Join a community event for Hadassah members and nonmembers, men and women. The goal is to support Hadassah’s work in Israel and the US to improve women’s health, through breast cancer research, heart health awareness, gender equity in medical research, and advocacy for reproductive rights. Funds raised will also support the continued construction of the Gandel Rehabilitation Center and trauma-related medicine in Israel. Children 12 and under do not need to register. Leashed dogs are welcome. Registration Fee: $30 per person, children under 12 are free.
A Discussion of the Ceasefire: In Conversation with Brett McGurk
Friday, October 17, 8:00 am ET
(online program presented by Combined Jewish Philanthropies)
CJP invites the community for a conversation between CJP’s President and CEO Rabbi Marc Baker and Brett McGurk, CNN Global Affairs Analyst and former senior national security advisor to the last four U.S. Presidents. While we are filled with hope for a peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians alike, many questions remain such as what comes next for Israel and Gaza, when will every hostage return home and can peace truly endure? Together, they will explore this pivotal moment and discuss how the end of the war could reshape life for Israelis, Palestinians, and the entire Middle East.
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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