A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, Ph.D

The event was co-sponsored by Congregation Or Tzion

About The Event:

Why is Jewish Law important and relevant for us today? Written and oral Torah has been an ongoing adaptive legal system for over 3500 years. Its central institutions have been Justice and Loving Kindness, the Sabbath, and the Temple system. This talk will explore the ideals that have guided and still guide Jewish law in its search to fulfill the Divine will.

About The Speaker:

Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, Ph.D teaches at the Law Faculty of Humboldt University in Berlin and is an adjunct at Fordham Law School in New York. He also taught and consulted with Jewish leadership groups across North America for many years. Rabbi Blanchard is the co-author of Embracing Life and Facing Death: A Jewish Guide to Palliative Care, as well as academic articles, parables, and stories.

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Adina Allen

The event was co-sponsored by:

About The Event:

Join us for an inspiring book talk with artist and educator Rabbi Adina Allen, author of The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom. Creativity offers us a portal to transformation, spiritual connection, and revelation. It is there for us when we feel stuck, divided, or disconnected. When we bring our creativity to the Torah, we can surface new and potent insights that can support us in times of challenge. In her highly anticipated first book, Rabbi Adina Allen delivers a paradigm-shifting and powerfully accessible reading of the Torah as a contemporary guidebook for creativity and invites us to rethink and transform ourselves, our lives, and the world around us.

About The Speaker:

Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, writer, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and the Sacred. She is co-founder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for healing, liberation, and social transformation. Based on the work of her mother, renowned art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina developed the Jewish Studio Process, a methodology for unlocking creativity, which she has brought to thousands of activists, educators, artists, and clergy across the country. A national media contributor, popular speaker, and workshop leader, Adina’s writing can be found in scholarly as well as mainstream publications and on her website at www.adina-allen.com.

*This podcast is sponsored by the Jewish Tuition Organization, known as the JTO. For more information about the Jewish Tuition Organization or to donate*

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon

The event was co-sponsored by BMH-BJ

About The Event:

Composed and sung in different lands from the 3rd or 4th century CE on, piyut is the sung sacred poetry that has accompanied individuals, families, and entire communities in the spiritual journey of life throughout Jewish history and which represents the core of the Jewish people’s spiritual world.

Piyutim are the sacred songs that have made the experience of Shabbat and the Jewish holidays beautiful and holy, both at the synagogue and around the table at home, as well as lifecycle celebrations: the birth of a child, Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and marriage.

*Sources: https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/music/jewish-music/piyut/piyut

About The Speaker:

Roly Matalon is the Senior Rabbi and Rosh Kehillah (Head of the Congregation) of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was educated in Buenos Aires, Montreal, Jerusalem, and New York City. After his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1986, Rabbi Matalon came to BJ and helped revitalize the congregation and turn its focus to prayer, learning, service, social justice, and interfaith cooperation.

Rabbi Matalon’s visionary leadership has had a profound impact on revitalizing Jewish synagogue life in the US and Israel. His involvement in the New York, Jewish, and Israeli communities is broad and deep.

Rabbi Matalon is a founding co-director of the Global Piyut Music project, a partnership with Invitation to Piyut in Israel, which is dedicated to the dissemination of liturgical music from Jewish communities around the world. A student of Arabic and Turkish music, Rabbi Matalon plays the oud (Arabic lute).