Follow search

You have successfully saved search

Jewish Educational Events in New York, NY

Join Jewish Educational Events in New York, NY providing educational opportunities for your community. These events offer learning experiences that honor cultural heritage while helping members of the Jewish community develop new skills and knowledge.
The First Jews of Auschwitz
The First Jews of Auschwitz
Eighty-one years ago, Red Army troops marched through the gates of Auschwitz and confronted the vestiges of the horrific industrial killing factory: the corpses, bones and ashes of more than 1.1 million people slaughtered there and the 7,000 skeletal prisoners who’d proven too ill or weak to be sent off on death marches by Nazis attempting to hide their crimes. To commemorate that day in January 1945, we take you back to the first days of the concentration camp with an interactive event built around the screening of an award-winning documentary film about the first official Jewish transport sent to it, 999: The Forgotten Girls. The young unmarried Slovakian Jewish women on that transport were rounded up by their government with the promise of a few months of paid factory work in Germany, sorely needed income for families whose businesses had been seized and jobs had been taken away. They found neither factory work nor wages: just the agony of slave labor, brutality and starvation at Auschwitz. Weaving together first-person testimony and archival materials, the film tells the long-ignored story of the Slovakian government’s fervor to rid the country of Jews and the young women who managed to survive three years of living hell.

Tuesday, 27, 18.00 - Tuesday, 27, 20.00 New York, NY _$25

Unsilenced: The Women of Genesis
Unsilenced: The Women of Genesis
In the run-up to The Israeli Opera’s performance of Mothers on April 30, we invite you to deepen your understanding of the matriarchs whose stories have been ignored. Join us for an evening of thoughtful conversation with distinguished rabbis and scholars exploring the lives, legacies and lasting influence of the often-overlooked – frequently nameless – women who shaped Jewish history, tradition and biblical narrative.

Wednesday, 29, 18.30 - Wednesday, 29, 19.45 New York, NY _$25

Publish Your Event for Free
Dr. Ronnie Perelis: Crisis and Creativity
Dr. Ronnie Perelis: Crisis and Creativity
Jews thrived within the multicultural society of medieval Spain, creating a rich and dynamic culture of Torah scholarship, poetic and artistic creativity and cutting-edge science and philosophy. But the vital, if uneasy, relationship with their Christian and Muslim neighbors suffered a devastating blow in the summer of 1391, when anti-Jewish riots raged across the peninsula and left thousands of forced converts in their aftermath. The tensions between the newly converted Jews, the conversos, and their Christian neighbors led to the rise of the Inquisition and the eventual expulsion of all Jews in 1492. This lecture will explore how the vibrant Jewish community faced the challenges of religious violence, inquisitorial persecution and expulsion. Ronnie Perelis’s research explores connections between the Jewish and wider Iberian communities with an emphasis on the dynamics of religious transformation within the context of crypto-Jewish life. Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies and director of the International Affairs Program at Yeshiva University, he is author of Blood and Faith.

Tuesday, 19, 19.00 - Tuesday, 19, 20.15 New York, NY _$25

Dr. Jerrilynn D. Dodds: Beyond Tolerance
Dr. Jerrilynn D. Dodds: Beyond Tolerance
Medieval Spain has long been seen through warring lenses: as an idyllic, tolerant society where Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted in harmony — or as a world of unceasing antagonism based on religious animosity. Recently, however, scholars have limned a more complex picture that reflects the diverse political and social contexts in which Jews lived and interacted with Christians and Muslims over seven centuries. That complexity is revealed in the art of and about Spanish Jews. This evening we will explore how it is manifested in the decorative carpet pages of Hebrew Bibles, remarkable Haggadot — some with figural paintings, in the grand synagogues of Toledo and Cordoba, as well as in newly discovered and excavated synagogue buildings. Jerrilynn D. Dodds is a scholar focused on how religious groups form their identities through art and architecture. Former dean and chief academic officer of Sarah Lawrence College, she now teaches art history there and has curated exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Alhambra.

Tuesday, 14, 19.00 - Tuesday, 14, 20.15 New York, NY _$25

Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein: Family Papers
Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein: Family Papers
After their expulsion from Spain, thousands of Sephardic families made their way to the bustling port of Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, becoming the majority of the city’s residents by the early 16th century. Among them was the sprawling Levy clan and, over the centuries, as leading publishers and editors, the family chronicled modern Sephardic life across the empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew borders and transformed the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Relatives soon emigrated, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the family, as it did close to 90 percent of the Jewish population of Salonica. This session, based on Stein’s award-winning Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century, will trace an emblematic Sephardi journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s Family Papers was named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times Book Review. Professor of History and Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA, she is author of nine other books and has won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Jewish Book Awards.

Tuesday, 17, 19.00 - Tuesday, 17, 20.15 New York, NY _$25

New Year, New You With Rabbi Mark Wildes
New Year, New You With Rabbi Mark Wildes
Join us for this 6 part series with Rabbi Mark Wildes, diving more deeply into the relationship with yourself, others & those from the past

Wednesday, 07, 19.00 - Wednesday, 07, 22.00 New York, NY _$25

"The Wandering Jew in Israel, 1952-1955", with Yair Mintzker
Join IIJS for an illuminating lecture with Professor Yair Mintzker, “The Wandering Jew in Israel, 1952–1955,” on Monday, April 20, at noon ET, at 617 Kent Hall. The origin of the expression “Wandering Jew” is a mysterious pamphlet published anonymously in German in the year 1602. The pamphlet describes in great detail the story of a Jew named Ahasversus, who lived at the time of the Second Temple and was cursed by Jesus to eternal wanderings after refusing to help him as he was led to Calvary. For more than four hundred years, many otherwise reliable witnesses have claimed to have met the Wandering Jew in person. Though appearing in different times and places, he is always described in the same exact way. The lecture recounts one of the most recent apparitions of the Wandering Jew. It took place in Israel of the early 1950s. Yair Mintzker is Professor of European History at Princeton University. He is a specialist in the history of early modern and modern Germany, and the author or editor of five books and many articles in the field. His latest monograph, I, Wandering Jew (Princeton UP, 2016), combines history and memoir to retell the legend of the Wandering Jew across five centuries. Mintzker’s previous book, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss (2017), won the National Jewish Book Award in History and was chosen by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2017.

Monday, 20, 12.00 - Monday, 20, 13.00 New York, NY _$25

Dr. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz: Echoes of Our Ancestors
Dr. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz: Echoes of Our Ancestors
Like language, food and history, sound is a key catalyst of cultural transmission: “sontinuity,” as Dr. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz calls it. In this talk, she will explore how sound has helped maintain the political, economic and social histories of Sephardi communities from the 15th-century expulsion into the modern era. A renowned performer and scholar, she will use voices, music and instruments to demonstrate sound’s power to pass along culture and will discuss how 16th-century printed songbooks, orally transmitted musical memories, print media and early recordings helped establish the sonic archive of Sephardi selfhood. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz explores how tradition has been transmitted in the Sephardic diaspora. An internationally renowned performer of Sephardi repertoires, she is Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and founder/director of KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive.

Tuesday, 17, 19.00 - Tuesday, 17, 20.15 New York, NY _$25

Dr. Jonathan S. Ray: The Golden Age of the Jews of Spain
Dr. Jonathan S. Ray: The Golden Age of the Jews of Spain
Medieval Spanish Jewry, whose ranks included celebrated courtiers, doctors, poets and philosophers, represents one of the most fabled societies in the annals of the Jewish people. Yet the Spanish Inquisition and subsequent expulsion remain among the most devastating events in our history. To shed light on those extremes, this lecture will explore the realities of daily life for medieval Jews, which was often far different, and perhaps far more familiar, than centuries of nostalgia, pride, hope and guilt would suggest. An expert on Jewish life in medieval Spain, especially on the coexistence of Jewish, Christian and Muslim societies and the expulsion, Jonathan S. Ray holds a chair in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and is author of three books.

Tuesday, 20, 19.00 - Tuesday, 20, 20.15 New York, NY _$25

Van Jones’ Black-Jewish Helix of Hope
Van Jones’ Black-Jewish Helix of Hope
For generations, the Black-Jewish alliance served as the backbone of American progress toward becoming a more perfect union. Black American dedication to justice for all coupled with Jewish commitment to tikkun olam sparked the formation of the NAACP, won critical courtroom victories, energized the civil rights movement and forged what Van Jones calls “the double helix of hope.” The fraying of that alliance has jeopardized the efforts of both communities, as well as the entire nation, animating Jones to imagine a renewed covenant between Black leaders, Jewish leaders and leaders who are both Black and Jewish. As we mark Black History Month, we are proud that the CNN host, political analyst and world-class activist joins our Friday night service to discuss what we have built together, the importance of partnership in these perilous times and his work as founder of the EXODUS Leadership Forum.

Friday, 20, 18.00 - Friday, 20, 19.45 New York, NY _$25

Latest Events

The First Jews of Auschwitz
The First Jews of Auschwitz
Eighty-one years ago, Red Army troops marched through the gates of Auschwitz and confronted the vestiges of the horrific industrial killing factory: the corpses, bones and ashes of more than 1.1 million people slaughtered there and the 7,000 skeletal prisoners who’d proven too ill or weak to be sent off on death marches by Nazis attempting to hide their crimes. To commemorate that day in January 1945, we take you back to the first days of the concentration camp with an interactive event built around the screening of an award-winning documentary film about the first official Jewish transport sent to it, 999: The Forgotten Girls. The young unmarried Slovakian Jewish women on that transport were rounded up by their government with the promise of a few months of paid factory work in Germany, sorely needed income for families whose businesses had been seized and jobs had been taken away. They found neither factory work nor wages: just the agony of slave labor, brutality and starvation at Auschwitz. Weaving together first-person testimony and archival materials, the film tells the long-ignored story of the Slovakian government’s fervor to rid the country of Jews and the young women who managed to survive three years of living hell.

Friday, 20, 18.00 - Friday, 20, 19.45 New York, NY 0.00

Unsilenced: The Women of Genesis
Unsilenced: The Women of Genesis
In the run-up to The Israeli Opera’s performance of Mothers on April 30, we invite you to deepen your understanding of the matriarchs whose stories have been ignored. Join us for an evening of thoughtful conversation with distinguished rabbis and scholars exploring the lives, legacies and lasting influence of the often-overlooked – frequently nameless – women who shaped Jewish history, tradition and biblical narrative.

Friday, 20, 18.00 - Friday, 20, 19.45 New York, NY 0.00

Dr. Ronnie Perelis: Crisis and Creativity
Dr. Ronnie Perelis: Crisis and Creativity
Jews thrived within the multicultural society of medieval Spain, creating a rich and dynamic culture of Torah scholarship, poetic and artistic creativity and cutting-edge science and philosophy. But the vital, if uneasy, relationship with their Christian and Muslim neighbors suffered a devastating blow in the summer of 1391, when anti-Jewish riots raged across the peninsula and left thousands of forced converts in their aftermath. The tensions between the newly converted Jews, the conversos, and their Christian neighbors led to the rise of the Inquisition and the eventual expulsion of all Jews in 1492. This lecture will explore how the vibrant Jewish community faced the challenges of religious violence, inquisitorial persecution and expulsion. Ronnie Perelis’s research explores connections between the Jewish and wider Iberian communities with an emphasis on the dynamics of religious transformation within the context of crypto-Jewish life. Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies and director of the International Affairs Program at Yeshiva University, he is author of Blood and Faith.

Friday, 20, 18.00 - Friday, 20, 19.45 New York, NY 0.00

Cities in New York
See All Cities
Other Communities
See All Communities