Upcoming Kaplan Minyan & Tikkun Olam Shabbat
5786 / 2025-2026
Immigration Advocacy Tikkun Olam Shabbat
Saturday, February 14, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Please join us for Tikkun Olam Shabbat on Immigration Advocacy. We will be joined by Sally Pillay from Mami Chelo, Kathy O’Leary from Pax Christi, and Dory Hack and Masiel Rodriguez from Montclair Foundation for Educational Excellence to share the work they are doing in the community and how BK members can get involved. The Tikkun Olam committee will be sharing a handout of volunteer opportunities and upcoming trainings.
Facebook Live | Zoom Password: BNAIKESHET
Supplement & Yahrzeits
Free babysitting is available
Coming soon:
March 21, 2026 - Charles Rosen
April 18, 2026 -Alma Schneider
June 5, 2026 - Pride Kabbalat Shabbat with Out Montclair
Past programs
5786 / 2025-2026
The Press in A Time of Crisis with David Folkenflik
BK member and journalist David Folkenflik has served as media correspondent for NPR News for more than two decades. His reports cast light on the stories of our age, the figures who shape journalism, and the tectonic shifts affecting the news industry. He has reported intently on the relationship between the press, politicians, and the general public, with a focus on the fight over the free flow of information in the age of Trump. David is the author of Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires and editor of Page One: Inside The New York Times and the Future of Journalism.
David joined NPR after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun. He started his professional career at the Durham Herald-Sun in North Carolina and his journalistic career at The Cornell Daily Sun.
Not At the Dinner Table: Race, Religion, + Politics with Megan Black Johnson
Megan Black Johnson offered reflections on her journey as a Black Christian organizer and trainer, her daily work to counter antisemitism and religious bigotry, and the necessity of building power with and between different communities.
In 2024 and 2025, under Black Johnson's leadership, cohorts of BK members participated in "Skin in the Game" - a training series exploring the relationship between racism and antisemitism in furthering white Christian nationalism. Working with co-sponsor Bethany Baptist Church and other Essex Together organizations, BK members engaged in dialogue across differences to establish mutual support among our communities with a curriculum developed by Black Johnson.
Read more about Black Johnson here. For those interested in readings to ground this discussion, we recommend Eric Ward's articles "Skin in the Game" and "You Don't Get to Burn It Down If You've Never Built a Thing."
Finding Your Way In: Personal Pathways to Spirituality in Jewish Space
with Beth Sandweiss
For many people, traditional Jewish services can feel overwhelming, unfamiliar, or simply boring—especially if you don’t know the prayers, don’t connect with God-language, or struggle to find meaning in the structure of the service.
In this talk, Beth will share her own evolving path: what first sparked her interest in Jewish spiritual life and how she explored both within and beyond Jewish institutional frameworks. She’ll reflect on the practices that opened new doors for her—meditation, chant, tikkun middot, reading Torah, and music—as well as the challenges and disappointments she encountered along the way.
Together, we’ll explore how personal spirituality can flourish within, and sometimes outside of, institutional spaces, and how each of us can cultivate a spiritual life that feels authentic, accessible, and truly our own.
Getting to know our Sage Members
With Luis & Vivian Schuchinski, Ellen Kolba, and Peter Herbst
Join us on November 22nd for a Kaplan Minyan which will honor a few of our incredible long-term members. BK has such interesting congregants many of whom have come from such diverse histories. Join four such members as they share a part of their life stories with the congregation during the Shabbat morning service.
Peter Herbst
My wife Vicki and I have been BK members since 1980 when we moved to Bloomfield from Queens. I was familiar with Reconstructionist Judaism and we appreciated that BK's rabbi, Joy Levitt, was a woman. I have served in many capacities at BK, including Bet Midrash teacher, Ritual Committee chair, and Board President. BK is a special place for us, our children, and now our grandchildren. I am a social worker by trade and teach full-time at Montclair State University.
Ellen Kolba
My Jewish education was minimal. We joined BK when it occupied one room in an office building on Valley Road. We had gone to a bar mitzvah there, and our two sons decided they wanted bar mitzvahs. My father had been raised in an orthodox home but had exchanged religion for politics. My mother had had no Jewish education but liked the fact that BK's rabbi was a woman. I was hooked by the classes offered to the community.
Luis & Vivian Schuchinski
We were born and raised in Havana, Cuba. We came to the US in 1960, about two years after the Castro Revolution, and got married in 1962. We are founding members of BK, and in the early years were very involved in BK activities—Vivian as the first VP of Membership and Luis in various capacities, including a term as President. Vivian was a teacher and social worker in the Montclair schools for many years. Luis has participated in our High Holidays services for 45 years. We have different accounts of their Jewish backgrounds.
Kaplan Minyan with Ari Laura Kreith
Art & Resistance: Making Political Theatre In Dark Times
Does art have the potential to repair our world? How can we reckon with our present reality and hold out hope for the future? Ari Laura Kreith will reflect on three history-inspired projects at Luna Stage: Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, based on the arrest of Hannah Arendt by the Gestapo in 1933 Berlin; RIFT, inspired by playwright Gabriel Jason Dean's relationship with his brother, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who has been incarcerated for the past 20 years, and The Ground On Which We Stand, a site-specific performance inspired by the history and legacy of the James Howe House, the first home in Montclair to be owned by a formerly enslaved person.
Ari is the Artistic Director of Luna Stage. She commissioned/directed the World Premiere of RIFT at Luna in 2024 as well as this summer's Fringe First-winning production at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland; directed Luna's two Off-Broadway production of Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library as well as its upcoming return to West Orange; and conceived/directed The Ground On Which We Stand, which received the Giles R. Wright Award for Excellence in African American History. She is passionate about developing powerful new plays that speak to the most urgent issues of our time. Luna Stage is a professional regional theatre dedicated to creating and producing theatrical work that engages issues of social justice.
BK Field Trip to Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library
Sunday, October 5th at 3:00pm at Luna Stage
Following Ari's Kaplan Minyan on Saturday, there will be a BK field trip to see Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library at Luna Stage. The play is appropriate for teens and adults.
Ari will facilitate a talkback after the show. Buy tickets!
Berlin, 1933. With martial law in effect, political activism has become a capital crime. A young Gestapo officer arrests a graduate student suspected of illegal research. This interrogation promises to be most challenging as he faces the iconic 20th-century thinker Hannah Arendt. Is she innocent? Or an enemy of the state? Inspired by real events, this fantastical drama delves into the life and mind of one of history's most profound thinkers.
5785 / 2024-2025
Kaplan Minyan: Deep Listening , Deep Conflict
Saturday, September 6th from 10:00am - 12:00pm
Our next Kaplan Minyan will be a presentation by Bnai Keshet's Israel, Palestine, Peace and Reconciliation work group.
Yael Silverberg-Urian will share a Devar Torah, then Roberta Elliott and Nathan Goldwasser will facilitate a public dialogue to help us learn how to begin having these difficult conversations., inviting personal, and, hopefully, connecting conversations among our congregants many of whom hold differing beliefs about the war in Gaza.
Facebook Live | Zoom Password: BNAIKESHET
Online Prayerbook, Weekly Supplement, Yahrzeits
Please note that on Kaplan Minyan Shabbats the Torah Service begins around 10:45am, earlier than the usual 11:00am.
Kaplan Minyan with Rabbi Steve Gutow
Saturday, June 7th at 10:00am
Learning How To Treat Each Other—LessonsFrom Ancient Jerusalem
Rabbi Steve Gutow
When we think about the key problems in our society, who would imagine that our most important lessons might well come from Jewish scholars in Jerusalem at the beginning of the first millennium more than 2000 years ago.
The wisdom of these early rabbinic scholars is almost beyond belief—What makes me sad is that the values and decisions made in the religious community in ancient Israel are so on point today yet we can't seem to incorporate them into how we think and progress today. We are stuck in a world where people are content to simply hate each other or, even worse, to not care about each other at all.
Many of us in today’s world do not know how to turn off the venom and anger rules the roost.
Let's discuss how their solution might help us find the answers we need to discern.
Rabbi Steve Gutow is an American rabbi, lawyer, community activist, and Jewish leader. He completed six years as a visiting scholar at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and co-director of the Religious Leadership and Civic Engagement initiative. He formerly served as the president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs - the public policy and community relations coordinating agency of the American Jewish community.
Facebook Live | Zoom Password: BNAIKESHET
Online Prayerbook, Weekly Supplement, Yahrzeits
Past Sessions:
Kaplan Minyan at Pride Kabbalat Shabbat: Arthur Levine Ferrante
Kaplan Minyan: Dr. Jessica Brater
Associate Professor of Theatre at Montclair State University
Kaplan Minyan: Dr. Sarah Emanuel
The apostle Paul as a Jewish follower of Jesus, and modern Jewish-Christian relations
Tikkun Olam Shabbat: Affordable Housing
What can we do to keep housing accessible?
Kaplan Minyan with Margaret R. Sáraco and Alex Polner:
Creative Collaboration as a Lifetime Journey
Kaplan Minyan with Dr. Khyati Joshi:
Racism and Antisemitism in the Context of Christian Privilege in the U.S
Kaplan Minyan with Michael Strassfeld
Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century.
Kaplan Minyan with John Wallach:
Misinformation And Free Speech: A Troublesome Liaison
Joy Levitt:
Toward a more permeable Judaism: The case for conversion and radical welcome
Rabbi Dr. David Teutsch:
Reconstructing Judaism and Israel: A Personal Reflection on the Past, Present, and Potential Future
World Jewry Shabbat
Racial Justice Shabbat
Sally Gottesman:
Getting Proximate: Bringing Jewish Leaders to the West Bank and East Jerusalem
Claire Garland:
Indigenous Culture and Land Rights
Michelle Cameron:
The Uneasy Balance - A Fiction Writer's Take on Assimilation vs. Maintaining Jewish Tradition
Jenny Baum:
Just City, Growing up on the Upper West Side when Housing Was a Human Right
Ariel Goldberg:
Just Captions: Ariel Goldberg Shares Research and Writing from book in progress on Trans and Queer Image Cultures
Miriam Herschlag:
A Montclairite in Jerusalem: Fieldnotes from my inspiring, infuriating, flawed, beautiful home.
Siddhu Nadkarni:
Identity: What is your true identity from a Kabbalistic and Vedantic perspective?
Ari Finkelstein:
Separating Christians from Jews in Late Antique Syria: the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 380s and its Impact on Jews and Judiasm
Roni Yavin:
Did the Baby Cry? Midwifery and Circumcision in the Talmud.
