Limmud Bay Area Experience 2015

A century ago, Jewish newspapers gave a beleaguered immigrant population a sense of community solidarity, and helped them become Americans. How has the role of the Jewish media changed since then? Is it keeping pace with the evolving needs of America's Jews? Join J. Editor Sue Fishkoff in a freewheeling conversation about the Bay Area's Jewish community publication; this is your chance to tell her what you'd like to see in its pages and online. 

From Shimon Bar-Kochba and David Alroy to Shabbetai Zevi, Jacob Frank and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, this class will explore how the concept of the Messiah has changed over thousands of years and look at how various would-be messiahs have had major impacts on Jewish history. 

How does one find the right path for oneself in life? How does one find a community? And how do these two endeavors influence each other? This class looks at four texts - one by Rumi, a second by the Slonimer Rebbe, a third by Mordechai Kaplan and  the last by Ari Shavit - that students have used to create structures for themselves for grappling with these dilemmas. This class will model "My Open Book," a methodology that uses texts and life coaching to achieve personal breakthroughs.

“But I am neither Jewish,  nor Gay, nor Disabled- why should I care?” This statement is  a substantial  challenge for Holocaust  education in the 21st century for Generation Y and non- Jewish constituencies.  In this session we will discuss the challenges, yet focus on educational models and curricula that work, to empower us all, to teach and remember, what must never be forgotten!

The historical fear, the fear that intermarriage will destroy us, is no longer politically correct to express. The popular message from interfaith-friendly organizations is, “Most Jews are mean. If we could just be nice (the code word is “welcoming”), all the interfaith couples would chose to raise Jewish children. Oh, and of course, we’re nice.”
What is the subtle message that we don’t realize we’re giving? How are our repressed fears coming out in ways that repel the interfaith population? If we truly did not fear intermarriage our communication about it and with interfaith couples would be confident, honest and helpful. Let’s talk about how to get there.

Across the spectrum of medical specialties from psychiatrists to family practitioners, doctors enforced racist Nazi ideology at the expense of their integrity. Instead of taking the Hippocratic Oath at the conclusion of medical school, each physician pledged personal allegiance to Adolph Hitler. They violated the moral imperative to “do no harm” to patients in their practices and to subjects in their medical research. Nazi doctors joined the SS in the highest ratio among all the professions during the Third Reich and were among the first to “Aryanize” fully their profession (remove Jews from their ranks). Rather than “pawns” in enforcing racist ideology, requiring extermination, they were proactive “pioneers” in devising starvation rations for ghettos and camps and in perfecting the technology that resulted in the gas chambers.

Warsaw, Odessa, New York, Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo: in the 19th and 20th century, seemingly every major Jewish center had a corresponding underworld. This class will examine Jewish criminal organizations in Eastern Europe, New York, and South America as well as various responses from the organized Jewish community to the problem of Jewish criminality.

In eras of extremism and challenge, such as the generation following the destruction of the Temple (Mishna), The Golden Age of Andalusia (Maimonides), and European Judaism (Heschel) we find resilience.  We will look at texts and discuss what we can learn about ourselves in our own time and lives.

Find out some significant details about Lincoln and his relationships with Jews throughout his life, the perceptions of Lincoln by the Jewish community of his time, and what they can teach us about our life as Jews today. We will be reading some primary source documents and utilizing some excerpts from the new book by Dr. Gary Zola, We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, A Documentary History.