Adult Education

Sundays, in person in the CBI Library
10:30-11:00 am: Coffee and nosh  
11:00-12:00 pm: Presentation and discussion 
No registration required

November 3: Book Talk - Displaced Persons (Meet the Author)
Displaced Persons is a collection of rich, multi-layered short stories, half set in Israel, half among Jewish families in the States, and explores exile, belonging, and what it means to call a place home. Winner of the New American Fiction Prize, it was selected out of 500+ submissions.

Joan Leegant's Displaced Persons was also selected for the One Book, One Hadassah program which chooses six books a year to highlight for their members. The Women's League for Conservative Judaism, the umbrella organization for Sisterhood's and women's groups at Conservative synagogues, has also selected Joan Leegant’s Displaced Persons for the Women’s League Reads program. Joan is also the author of two other books: Wherever You Go, a novel which the Union of Reform Judaism designated as a “Significant Jewish Book,” and An Hour in Paradise, which, won the PEN/New England Book Award, the Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

This session is cosponsored by JCA, Hadassah, and the CBI Adult Education Committee.

November 10: Writing a Prayer book with Rabbi Ed Feld 
 
What were the critical decisions in putting together Mahzor Lev Shalem and Siddur Lev Shalem?  How did the committee work? How long did the process take? 

Rabbi Edward Feld is the author most recently of The Book of Revolutions: The Battles of Priests, Prophets and Kings that Birthed the Torah (Jewish Publication Society). Reviewers have called the book, “an essential religious and cultural history”, “stunning” and the Religion News Service listed it as one of the best books of 2022. Rabbi Feld is also the senior editor of Mahzor Lev Shalem and Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and Festivals. He is currently at work on a weekday siddur in the series.  Rabbi Feld’s other publications include Joy, Despair and Hope: Reading Psalms (Cascade Press) and The Spirit of Renewal: Finding Faith After the Holocaust (Jewish Lights). 

In his noted career, Rabbi Feld has served as Rabbi-in-Residence at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hillel Director and College Chaplain at Princeton University, the University of Illinois and Smith and Amherst Colleges and as Rabbi and spiritual leader of the Society of the Advancement of Judaism. 

November 17: Ecological crisis and Redemption with Mara Benjamin 

Traditionally, Jews have understood redemption to concern the future not only of the Jewish people, but also of the non-Jewish and non-human world. What meaning can traditional ideas of "redemption" have given that the future of humans (and many lifeforms) have been foreshortened and diminished by the intensive burning of carbon? 

Mara H. Benjamin, a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, is a scholar of modern Jewish religious thought and a constructive Jewish theologian. She teaches and writes at Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, Massachusetts), where she is Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor and Chair of Jewish Studies. She is also a founding gabbai of the Ohel Minyan. 

December 15: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Kabbalah--That We Can Learn in a Sunday Cafe with Larry Fine

Kabbalistic tradition began in medieval Provence and Spain and is still alive and well today in contemporary forms. This presentation will focus on a beautiful text from 16th century Safed that illuminates how to imitate the Divine by way of humility, love, and compassion. 

Larry Fine is Irene Kaplan Leiwant Chair of Jewish Studies and professor emeritus of Religion at Mount Holyoke College. He is a widely published scholar in the fields of early modern Judaism and Jewish mystical tradition. 

January 12: Sing, O Barren One: Reproduction in Jewish Texts and Magic in the Ancient World 

This presentation will explore what the Jewish tradition teaches us about how birthing people in antiquity navigated questions of fertility, pregnancy, and birth. We will examine not only written texts from the Torah and rabbinic literature, but evidence of magical traditions such as amulets and incantation bowls. This conversation will help us gain a deeper understanding of how Jews in antiquity understood larger issues such as bodies and health, reproduction, community, and identity, and what we can learn from them today. 

Sari Fein is a birth doula and a scholar of women and gender in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish antiquity. She teaches in the Jewish Studies program at Smith College. Sari recently published the article “A ‘Queer’ Mother of Nations: Reproductive Futurism and the Maccabean Mother of Seven” (Journal of Ancient Judaism, 2024). Sari lives in Northampton and is a part of the CBI community along with her partner, two children, three cats, and six chickens. 

January 26: Once subterranean and now no longer hidden LGBTQ+ Orthodox community with Miryam Kabakov
 
Miryam will discuss the odyssey she has taken in finding the hidden communities of Orthodox and LGBTQ+ people, starting with Maimonides account of women in his midst. 

Miryam is Founder and Executive Director of Eshel, a national organization that supports LGBTQ+ Orthodox individuals and their families. Miryam is the editor of Keep Your Wives Away From Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires (North Atlantic Books, May 2010) a collection of writings about the challenges and joys of LGBTQ+ Orthodox Jews. Previously, she was the national program director of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, Coordinator of LGBT programming at the JCC Manhattan, and the first social worker at Footsteps. 

January (Exact Date TBD): Abraham v. Joshua: The Torah of the stranger v. the Torah of genocide with David Seidenbeg

The intra-Jewish culture wars of today go all the way back to the Bible, where the Torah of kindness to the stranger--Abraham's Torah--directly conflicts with the laws to wipe out the Canaanite nations--Joshua's Torah. But this is not a battle between two equal camps: there is evidence that the Torah of kindness to the stranger is the original Torah, and the Torah of ethnic cleansing is a revanchist effort to change or subvert the purpose of the covenant itself. We will wrestle the conflict as it appears in Scripture and learn about evidence of its historicity. 

Rabbi David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org, the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World, and the organizer and facilitator of Torah Warriors weekly Torah study, and the Prayground Minyan.