HUC-JIR/NY Participates in Day of Solidarity with Women of the Wall
The HUC-JIR/NY community joined together in support of a North American day of Solidarity with Women of the Wall during mincha services on Thursday, December 17th. Students and faculty shared personal experiences and reflections on Women of the Wall. Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson, Director, Women's Rabbinic Network. and Rivka Haut, Women's Tefillah Network, organized this North America-wide day of solidarity, saying: "The arrest of Nofrat Frenkel for wearing a tallit at the kotel on Rosh Hodesh Kislev compels us to raise our voices and engage our communities in joint action. With this national grassroots initiative, we will express our support for the rights of the Women of the Wall to assemble at the Kotel and to pray there with dignity, in safety and in shared community."
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Leadership Institute for Congregational School Educators Symposium
Over 60 congregational school educators were in attendance at HUC-JIR/NY on December 9th for a Symposium organized by the Leadership Institute for Congregational School Educators. Professor Jo Kay, Director of the New York School of Education led the morning workshop on "The Landscape of the Jewish Family: It's Implications for Family Education." This session addressed the following questions: What does it mean to be "forgotten" and who in our congregational communities fall into this category? What does the Torah say about "forgetting" and "remembering"? What can the text teach us about our responsibility to these populations? When we add the unique racial, cultural and religious challenges faced by today's families to the issues of those who are "invisible" amomg us, what might we be doing to support and nourish these families both inside and outside congregational walls? And finally, what are some modern commentaries on the concept of the erev rav (a mixed multitude) having left Egypt? How can we use these new understandings to support our work with the changing Jewish family. Several participants led workshops for their colleagues, including "Chanukah Myths and Legends," "Supervision and Three-Minute Walk-Throughs," "Curricula for High School Students," and "Effective Ways to Communicate."
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Israeli Educators Attend Peoplehood Program at HUC-JIR/NY
Israeli educators and educators from Westchester's Partnership 2000-International Connection Program visited the New York campus on December 10th for a learning session on Jewish Peoplehood, taught by New York School of Education faculty Dr. Lisa Grant and Professor Jo Kay. The participants shared their understandings of peoplehood, and studied the peoplehood perspectives as articulated by several educational professionals from Israel and the United States. The reflected on a Yehuda Amichai poem as it related to peoplehood and developed new personal definitions. The program concluded with an overview of "frameworks for strategic thinking about Jewish peoplehood," which had been commissioned by the NADAV Fund. A tour of the Agam windows in the Petrie Synagogue, followed by Curator Laura Kruger's tour of "I.B. Singer and His Artists" and Mirta Kupferminc: Wanderings" at the HUC-JIR Museum offered yet another perspective on the cultural expressions of Jewish peoplehood.
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Faculty/Student to Present at First International Conference on the Purposes and Practices of Israel Education
  
Dr. Lisa Grant, Dr. Steven M. Cohen, and Melissa Zalkin Stollman, a 5th-year rabbinical student and Mandel Fellow, will present at the First International Conference on the Purposes and Practices of Israel Education, to take place on December 20-22 in Jerusalem. Dr. Grant will present on "Integrating Israel into the Life of a Synagogue." Dr. Cohen will present on "Intermarried & Indifferent or Active & Alienated: Alternative Obstacles to Israel Engagement among Younger American Jews." Dr. Grant will chair a session on "Sociology or Ideology - What is Missing in Israel Education," with Dr. Cohen as a presenter. Stollman will present her Capstone Thesis from the New York School of Education program, entitled "Infusing Reform Zionism into the Synagogue." Organized by The Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University and MAKOM - The Israel Engagement Network, the conference is committed to reconsidering the fundamental philosophical and practical questions of Israel as a crucial concern to contemporary Jewish life. Please click here for the conference program: http://virtualmelton.huji.ac.il/course/view.php?id=8.
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Upcoming Events at HUC-JIR
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Services at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem
Dec. 17 at 8:30 am: Led by Jason Rodich; Sermon: Jeremy Simons
Dec. 18 at 8:30 am: Led by Hannah Rubin-Schlansky; Sermon: Kelly Levy
Dec. 21 at 8:30 am: Led by Tlalit Shavit; Sermon: Esteban Gottfried
Dec. 26 at 9:30 am: Led by Rabbi Michael Marmur and Cantor Tamar Havilio
Dec. 28 at 8:30 am: Led by Naama Dafni; Sermon: Hayim Shalom
Jan. 2 at 9:30 am: Led by Rabbi Naamah Kelman and Cantor Tamar Havilio
Please click here for the Fall/Spring/Summer Calendar of services
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Lectures Presented by the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology
The Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology announces its annual lecture series in Hebrew, designed to present the results of recent archaeological research to the general public in Israel. The next lecture will be on December 31 at 5 pm and features Yosef Garfinkel on "Khirbet Qeiyafa: Judah from the Time of King David." The lecture series is supported by the Fellner Foundation and its Trustee, Frederick L. Simmons. Admission is free.
Please click here for the full lecture schedule
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Spotlight on HUC-JIR's Programs and
Research Resources
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Singer's Artists - Jewish Press
In the last twenty years or so a creative relationship to text, narrative or non-visual motifs has gained legitimacy if not primacy in the visual arts. Under the watchful guidance of director Jean Bloch Rosensaft and the curatorial skill of Laura Kruger, the Hebrew Union College Museum casts one of its current exhibitions into this ideational fray. "Isaac Bashevis Singer and his Artists" is in its curious way an exposition on the illustrational as a contemporary motif. Among the more than 150 original illustrations shown here many are, not surprisingly, for his children's books. While the vast majority of his work was for adults, Singer once quipped that he also wrote for young people because "they still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins and other such obsolete stuff." It is clear that the artists assembled here are believers too.
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Nu, Is It That Obvious? - Jerusalem Post/NY Edition
It's not a stereotype: New York Jews really do talk faster. They also interrupt more and argue more - and are more likely than non-Jews to be told they have an "aggressive" style of speaking. Their manner of speech is so well-known - and apparently so widely embedded - that Jews in other parts of the country are more likely than their neighbors to be told they sound like New Yorkers. These and other findings are the results of the Survey of Jewish American Language and Identity, an online poll and statistical analysis released earlier this month by scholars at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. Conducted by Prof. Sarah Bunin Benor, a sociolinguist, and Prof. Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist, the survey examined the speech patterns, word choices and other idiosyncrasies of Jewish-American speech, comparing responses among subsets of the Jewish population, and between Jewish and non-Jewish respondents.
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Rabbinic Students Visit New Community Jewish High School - Jewish Journal
Eight rabbinic students and three faculty members from HUC-JIR recently went back to high school to get a lesson on vision-guided leadership. The rabbinic students from New York and Los Angeles, all in their final year, visited New Community Jewish High School (NCJHS) in West Hills as part of their participation in the Mandel Fellows program, which aims to help them create community based on vision.
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Challah as Hanukkiah - Forward
Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder writes: This year Hanukkah starts and ends on a Friday night. This happy happenstance gives me two opportunities to create one of my favorite holiday treats – the challah hanukkiah, literally a menorah made of challah.
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Rabbi says her battle for equality was won long ago - Riverdale Press
Female rabbis are "old news." The woman who said that, Riverdale Temple's Rabbi Judith Lewis, is partly responsible for making it true. Ordained in 1980, she says only five women preceded her to the pulpit. Rabbi Lewis says that now, about half of students at Hebrew Union College are women and she can't think of a Reform congregation in the New York area that hasn't recently had, or currently has, a female member in its clergy. "I think that we're so past issues of women's roles that it's like 'been there, done that.' We take it for granted. It's such a central element of who we are," Rabbi Lewis said.
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Founded in 1875, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the nation's oldest institution of
higher Jewish education and the academic, spiritual, and professional development center of Reform Judaism.
HUC-JIR educates men and women for service to American and world Jewry as rabbis, cantors, educators, and
communal service professionals and offers graduate and post-graduate degree programs for scholars of all faiths.
With campuses in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, New York, and Jerusalem, HUC-JIR's scholarly resources comprise
renowned library, and museum collections, the American Jewish Archives, biblical archaeology
excavations, research centers and institutes, and academic publications. HUC-JIR invites the community to an array
of cultural and educational programs that illuminate Jewish history, culture, and contemporary creativity, and
foster interfaith and multi-ethnic understanding.
Visit us at
www.huc.edu.
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CET (Cincinnati's Public Television Station) features a video about the American Jewish Archives' Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise online exhibition. "This important exhibition enables all users to search almost the entire collection of Wise's writings including his books, letters, and editorials," says Dr. Gary Zola, AJA Director, who is interviewed about key documents spanning Rabbi Wise's career and mission to establish Hebrew Union College and advance the Reform Movement. 
