SPARK! – Ignite Your Jewish Learning

SPARK! – Ignite Your Jewish Learning

Allow yourself to dive into our tradition and SPARK your imagination. We want EVERYONE to take part in a new, innovative community-wide Jewish learning experience.  Let your heart be moved by Torah; be open to a transformative and mind opening experience.  Join your friends, rabbis and guest teachers for three nights of SPARK, a powerful Jewish learning offering of Congregation Emanu-El. Our evening will begin with schmooze time for participants to mingle and nosh together, followed by one hour engaged in of one of four hot topic SPARK study sessions with rabbis and leading guest educators.The evening will be followed by a community-wide keynote address or seminar with special scholars/speakers.

STAY TUNED FOR MARCH 2018

HERE IS WHAT WE OFFERED IN SPARK 2017

The Good Old Days: Buying and Selling American Jewish Nostalgia

Today, American Jews make, buy, and sell nostalgia, a sentimental longing for a past that cannot be recovered. This course will examine how American Jews express nostalgia for eastern European Jewish immigration history and connect to it emotionally through visiting historic American synagogues, buying children’s books and dolls, and consuming trendy interpretations of Ashkenazi cuisine.

Educator: Rachel B. Gross is the John and Marcia Goldman Professor of American Jewish Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. She writes and teaches about American Jewish food and popular culture. She is currently working on a book that examines the religious nature of contemporary nostalgic representations of American Jewish immigration history. She received her PhD from Princeton University.

Ethical Fitness

In ethics, it’s usually the big issues — capital punishment, lifeboats, euthanasia — that get all the attention. However, being a good person in the real world of jury duty, time-share offers, and Internet bargains poses more frequent challenges to our consciences and our society. Being an ethical person is not about having ready-made decisions; rather it is a byproduct of a process that requires training and practice. Strive for “ethical fitness” through a “workout” with “personal trainer” Rachel Brodie.  Lively conversation and text study guaranteed to make you a better person (or at least an even more thoughtful one)!

Educator: Rachel Brodie is a Jewish educator who works primarily with adult learners and specializes in designing and facilitating professional development opportunities for other Jewish educators. Currently, Rachel teaches Jewish literature, history, and ethics at a wide variety of San Francisco Bay Area institutions and serves as a scholar-in-residence around the country.

Judaisms: A Twenty-First -Century Introduction to Jews and Jewish Identities.

Jewish identity is probably not what you think it is, and likely never was, contends Aaron J. Hahn Tapper. In these sessions, we will explore the multifaceted, complicated, age-old, and ever-changing ideas of what it means to be a Jew, including how this group is understood as a culture, ethnicity, nation, nationality, race, religion, and more.

Educator: Aaron Hahn Tapper, PhD (photo:Barbara Ries © 2013) is the Mae and Benjamin Swig Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, the founding Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, and the Chair of the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he has been since 2007. A member of Class XV of the Wexner Graduate fellowship, he graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Psychology, received an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book, Judaisms: A Twenty-First-Century Introduction to Jews and Jewish Identities (UC Press, 2016) looks at the millennia-old Jewish communities using the lenses of Social Identity Theory and Critical Diversity Studies.

Together, With Love, We can Change The World: Talmud Study as a Counter-Cultural Rebellion

Deep-dive into the universe of the Talmud. Our task will be twofold: First, we will study three different texts from the Babylonian Talmud that will be moving, provocative and relevant in their own right. Next, we will explore what the Talmud and process of engaging it means for us in our world today: How can this ancient text, with its seemingly strange logic (or lack thereof), be a powerful spiritual and communal resource?  No experience needed, just be ready to have fun and think big. Original text and translations provided.

Educator: Our very own, Rabbi Jason Rodich, who is particularly interested in issues of social justice, Jewish thought, Israel engagement and youth development. A recipient of a Wexner Graduate Fellowship for his rabbinical studies, Rabbi Rodich was also awarded the Rubin Memorial Prize for Scholarly Writing and the Samson H. Levey Prize for Outstanding Student in Rabbinic Literature.

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Seminar Speakers – 8:00 – 9:00pm:

March 21 – Prof. Marc Dollinger in conversation with Ilana Kaufman, from the JCRC

Jews and Race: The Changing Color of American Jewry

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March 28 – Emanu-El Scholar, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

“’God was in this Place and I, i did not Know.’” A very close reading of Genesis 28:16.

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March 14 – Tad Taube and Shana Penn

Learn more about the museum, its history and its goals and join us for an evening of study and discussion.

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This program is part of the Madeleine Haas Russell Institute of Jewish Learning, co-sponsored by