Open Beit Midrash, our pioneering, informal Tuesday night learning academy, prepares for a new year, with our first course starting on October 16. Students explore Jewish texts, from the Bible to modern Hebrew poetry and their relevance to contemporary personal and social issues. The faculty includes some of the most talented and sought-after adult Jewish educators in the country. Our first course is Bar Kochba: Rebel, Failure, Hero with Dr. Aaron Koller, October 16, 23 and 30. Download the new Open Beit Midrash brochure with full course descriptions.
For more information contact Joy Fallek.
Register Now.
Join us for a spirited stroll through Green-wood Cemetery
Sunday, October 28, 1:00 – 3:30pm, 500 25th Street at 5th Avenue
Pre- and post-Jewish perspectives on death and remaining connected to deceased loved ones provided by Rabbi Jason Gitlin
We will join Green-wood Historic Fund’s Spirited Stroll. Registration is required and the cost is $20 for members of Green-wood and Brooklyn Historical Society / $25 for non-members. Email
Rabbi Jason to let us know you will be joining or for more information. Register now.
Weekly open play and music from 9:00am – 12:00pm for families with kids age 4 and younger. Sundays through March 2019
Join us with your infants, toddlers and preschoolers to enjoy a big open place to play. It is a terrific venue for parents to spend time with friends and meet new people over coffee, bagels and fruit. Includes two music sets each session led by program director and song leader Lauren Demby. Register for sessions now!
Free, leader-led discussions on the third Thursday of every month, November through June
Kick Off Event in conjunction with The Institute for Living Judaism in Brooklyn, The History of Zionism with Professor David Myers, Chair in Jewish History, UCLA, former President and CEO of the Center for Jewish History in Brooklyn
Sunday, November 4, 4:00 – 6:00pm, KSS Community Room, $15 at the door
First regular monthly conversation: Thursday, November 15, 10:30am, KSS Chapel
Topic: The Changing American-Jewish Commitment to Israel
Contact [email protected] for more information.
Every year 26 outstanding North American teens are selected as Bronfman Fellows. The highlight of the Fellowship is a free, transformative and intellectually adventurous summer in Israel where fellows engage in thought-provoking study and conversation and make lifelong friends with a pluralistic group of peers. Applicants mush be in 11th grade, self-identify as Jewish and live in the U.S. or Canada. The deadline to apply is November 30. For more information please contact Ava or call 518-475-7212. Click here to apply now.
Rabbi Sam Weintraub
A message from Rabbi Weintraub
“Hello. This is G-d.” Listening around Rosh Hashanah
We’ve all blurted it out at times. We have stood at the bedside as a dear one passed away, or witnessed the birth of our child, or seen a breath taking vista while hiking, or experienced the peak of sexual ecstasy, and cried “Oh G-d! Oh G-d!”.
Then, almost as soon as it’s out, what the Rabbis called kateigor, our internal, prosecuting attorney chimes in: “What, that old man in the sky with a beard that you stopped believing in years ago! C’mon,with all the suffering in the world, you still believe in that! The G-d who commands this and forbids that! You take that seriously!”
All the objections, all the theological discussion and intellectual reflection about G-d has its place. But fundamentally the challenge is not one of the intellect. We have, more immediately, our experience, moments of rage or wonder or bliss that bring us close to the Center of the Universe and cannot be denied.
Unless you have a regular spiritual practice, it’s likely that after these experiences you go back to default, the world of meetings and deadlines and payments and promotions and dinners and parties and hobbies and exercise. G-d is Alive and Present in all of this, but we don’t have the tools to access Her. So our wonder or rage or yearning, what my teacher Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, of blessed memory, called “the pull toward the All”, go on. But when we feel it, we first try to ignore it. If it remains persistent, we reach for a pill or go to the fridge or plan our next weekend “get away”.
We come together on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur because that stubborn G-d voice inside us, what our tradition calls our neshama, our soul, won’t let us settle. The soul inside us is a spark of G-d, and as G-d endlessly renews life, so we have an inner urge for inventiveness, for meaning.
Read Rabbi Weintraub’s full message
Rabbi Weintraub’s Reflections on Social Issues
Restoring a Moral Agenda to America: The Poor People’s Campaign
Me’avdut L’cherut – From Slavery to Freedom
“To Work and to Preserve” Judaism and the Environment
Spirituality and Politics, Social Change, and my Trip to Israel
Michael Brown and Eric Garner – A Jewish Perspective
Torah text, the Tribe of Dan, Ferguson and Baltimore
