Adult Education and Programming

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There are many ways to interpret our Tanach and its nuances of meaning that are often overlooked. Having completed our close look at Torah this past May, we turn to N’viim / Prophets, beginning with Joshua. New learners are always welcome.

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A continuing lecture-discussion class on contemporary public issues of interest to Jews as citizens. The November 11 session will focus on interpretation of the 2024 election results.

David Zarefsky is the Owen L. Coon Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, specializing in argumentation and the analysis and criticism of American political discourse. He is a former president of the National Communication Association, the Rhetoric Society of America, and the Central States Communication Association. In 2012 he received the Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award from the National Communication Association. David is a past president of Beth Emet.

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Grandparents: Do you wonder about the new role you play within your family? Strive for the strongest relationship possible with your grandchildren? Try to impart your Jewish values and Jewish pride to your grandchildren? Want to speak more openly and naturally with your adult children?

Beth Emet is sponsoring the Peaceful Grandparent Project, an Orot Peaceful Family initiative, offering tools to deepen connections and infuse family moments with sacredness and tranquility, using ancient Jewish wisdom and teachings from mindfulness tradition. . Our program fosters empathy, compassion, and love. The texts are all in English, and the groups are created as safe and welcoming communities for all grandparents, regardless of background or level of literacy with Jewish texts or ideas.

Dr. Jane Shapiro is a proud Bubbie whose identity and experiences as a grandmother inform her approach to teaching and mentoring. She has Beth Emet roots and is a senior educator She has been a teacher to many over the last thirty years, in classes ranging from weekly Torah study to Jewish thought, history and literature. She received her doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2016. in 2017 Jane received an Educators Award from the Covenant Foundation. In 2018 she was featured in an Eli talk on “The Torah of Bubbiehood.” She lives in Skokie with her husband and is also mother to four sons, mother-in-law to three daughters and grandmother to six.

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Speaking from our hearts, finding greater equanimity and balance in turbulent times – not easy to do. We will use poetry, songs and lyrics, Jewish text, and our own experiences to reflect on ourselves, and to explore our reactions to the world around us. This class is open to all and will follow the pattern of Nourishing our Souls. All classes will be virtual. Come with an intent to listen, to learn and to share.

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Beit Shammai v. Beit Hillel—Legends and History. The figures of Shammai and Hillel and the schools named after these figures are foundational to rabbinic Judaism. But what do we know about historical figures and how can we establish fact from fiction? This is a two-class series; registration for one registers you for both sessions.

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From gratitude to blessings and back! A community event! Two concurrent congregational programs bring us into the 2025 year, focusing on blessings in our lives by coauthors Rabbi David Teutsch and Marily Price! While Rabbi Teutsch leads the adults in studying the beautiful blessings from our tradition, Marilyn will gather the Beit Sefer in activities related to blessings in craft and story. The two groups will gather to share what they learn and allow the adult learners to explore the gallery of art and visual brachot from Beit Sefer students.

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On Yom Kippur Day, October 1993, the rabbi’s sermon in our synagogue was the story of the upcoming release next month of the movie “Schindler’s List.” It had been five years since my mother had passed away. At the end of the Rabbi’s sermon, my father leaned over to me and told me something she never did.  It was six words I would never forget – “Your mother was on that list.”

The Difference: The memoir explores what I know of my mother’s teenage life as a Schindler’s List survivor, which confronts Intergenerational Trauma (“Second Generation” holocaust survivor trauma) manifested in racism – how it can begin, what it can do to us –deeply penetrating its familial and social ramifications and how we can reconcile even amidst the reach of darkness. The underlying theme draws upon my mother’s life being saved by Oskar Schindler – a Nazi German, and the irony of how her children grew up.

The story explores my mother’s trauma, primarily resulting from the atrocities she endured during the Holocaust, with her parents and six of seven brothers and sisters who were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.  She deeply inflicted her trauma upon her sons as children but far more critically on my brother through bitter hatred for my German stepmother and all Germans.

Jesse Eisenberg’s new movie that was recently released, “A Real Pain,” which he directed, is a story of Intergenerational Trauma due to the Holocaust. The film hopefully begins to change that there has always been so much shared of survivors’ accounts of the atrocities they lived through in the Holocaust, but not nearly enough of the impact of their trauma upon their children. This is what my brother and I grew up with as children – our mother’s trauma being our trauma.

About the Author: Robert Don has been changing careers from his professional background in senior risk management in corporate banking to becoming a writer. He recently conducted research in both the Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps, where his mother was deported, and is deeply familiar with the Holocaust stories being told. Having lived through this story, he finally wanted to tell the story and is well versed in the details of this time period of the Holocaust.  The Difference would be his debut book.

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Havat Marpe (Healing Space Rishpon), founded in response to October 7, provides multi-dimensional therapies for mental and emotional healing and renewal, a pioneering response to the unprecedented traumas affecting Israelis that continue.

Dr. Ilana Kwartin is the CEO, long-time activist for women’s rights, with degrees in law, psychology, and conflict resolution, which she received after serving as an IDF intelligence unit commander including in Gaza.

Cantor Natalie Young will introduce the program.