Kaplan Minyans

Upcoming Kaplan Minyan & Tikkun Olam Shabbat

5786 / 2025-2026

Getting to know our Sage Members
Saturday, November 22nd from 10am - 12pm
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.

January 3 - TBD

March 21 - TBD

April 18 - TBD

Pride Shabbat with Out Montclair
Friday, May 1st from 10am - 12pm

(Description coming soon)

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. 

Facebook Live    |   Zoom (Password: BNAIKESHET)
Online Prayerbook, Weekly Supplement, Yahrzeits

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 7^th 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.