Kaplan Minyan, Tikkun Olam, Scholars in Residence
KAPLAN MINYAN
The Bnai Keshet Kaplan Minyan is named for Reconstructionist Judaism founder Mordecai Kaplan, who sought to create a Jewish framework for discussions of ethics, culture, history, and current events. They are designed for people who enjoy a communal Shabbat and want to enrich their understanding of Jewish peoplehood in an alternative, less traditional setting.
TIKKUN OLAM SHABBAT
BK's Tikkun Olam Committee plans and curates a series of Shabbatot about pressing social justice issues. After a spiritual and educational approach to each issue, we take action together as a community following Shabbat. The action could be anything from signing a petition, to calling legislators, to attending a protest (if there happens to be one), or anything in between. Our Shabbatot have included Climate Justice, Reproductive Justice, Disability Awareness & Inclusion, and Refugee Justice. Please contact Jessica Brater to get involved in planning.
Upcoming Sessions
5785 / 2024-2025
Scholar in Residence Dr. Sarah Emanuel
Saturday, September 28th
Adult Bet Midrash at 9:00am
Devar Torah at ~11:00am
Who was the apostle Paul? What did he have to say about Jesus and Judaism? In this talk, Dr. Sarah Emanuel will share her understanding of Paul as a Jewish follower of Jesus. But she will also share her fears about some of her findings for modern Jewish-Christian relations. While the first part of her talk will focus on her own analysis, the second part will open up space for communal discussion.
Sarah Emanuel is Assistant Professor of New Testament Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. Her
work attends to the diversity of ancient Judaism, including its relations to the early Jesus movement and the construction of New Testament texts. Dr. Emanuel has published a number of books and articles, including Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome (Cambridge University Press) and Trauma Theory, Trauma Story: A Narration of Biblical Studies and the World of Trauma (Brill). At Bnai Keshet, she will be sharing the work of her current book project, Wrestling with Paul: The Apostle, His Readers, and the Fate of the Jews, which discusses how scholars have consistently made sense of the apostle Paul in relation to how they have made sense of Jews. She argues, for example, that New Testament scholars in a post-Holocaust world have sanitized Paul's writings so as to make him "good" for modern Jews and a guilty Christian conscience.
Past Sessions:
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.