Adult Education

Weekly Parsha Class with Rabbi Ariella and Rabbi Jacob 
Fridays 12:00-1:00 pm in the CBI Library
In person only. Drop in; no registration required.
Join Rabbi Ariella and Rabbi Jacob for a discussion of the weekly Torah portion.  All are welcome, no prior knowledge or experience required. Each session will stand alone, feel free to come whenever it works for you.  And please feel free to bring your own lunch! 

In this two-part course, Nina Sitron will provide an overview of Jewish genealogy and Paula Ressler will offer a personal account of her genealogical research. They also will introduce the audience to CBI’s new Genealogy Havurah as well as the Western Massachusetts Jewish Genealogical Society.

April 8: “Climbing Your Family Tree”

Nina will introduce the audience to what’s possible to discover when exploring one’s family history, including an array of resources available for doing genealogical research, what is unique in the field of Jewish genealogical research, the myths that people believe about researching their families, obstacles people might encounter, and how to break through what might appear to be “brick walls.”

Nina Sitron is President of the Western MA Jewish Genealogical Society. She has actively engaged in researching her family history for over 30 years, and is committed to supporting the research of people who are curious about their families’ histories. As a Genetic Counselor for Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, Nina helped people use their medical family history to deal with health issues.

April 15: “Genealogy Matters!”

Paula will share her life-changing genealogical adventure, learning about her beloved maternal uncle, a working-class adult who emigrated to the U.S. from Vienna in 1935. Extended family who didn’t leave were murdered in 1942. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is archiving Paula’s research that includes a story rarely told: an eye-witness account about growing up in desperate poverty in Europe, living through Nazi violence against the Jews in Vienna before the Anschluss, and continuing to struggle for survival post-immigration.

Paula Ressler is author of Dramatic Changes: Talking About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity through Drama; and co-author, with Becca Chase, of Meaningful Encounters: Preparing Educators to Teach Holocaust Literature. She is a former director of English Education and associate professor emerita of English, Illinois State University.

The Memory of History in Ancient Israel
An 8-part class beginning on April 22, 7:30-9:00 pm in the Water Building, taught by Rabbi Ben Barer
Class if free, courtesy of a generous grant from Hadar. 
All are welcome no Hebrew or Jewish text background needed. 
Participation at all sessions is required. Register here. 

The Jewish tradition offers a variety of rituals and traditions aimed at supporting meaningful and deliberate dying, death and mourning experiences. We have two primary goals with this 4-part series. 1) We aim to help participants deepen their knowledge of Jewish death and mourning rituals and customs so that they feel better equipped to engage with these traditions in their own lives. 2) We hope to promote greater discourse and engagement in our community around the topics of death and dying.

Rabbi Jacob Fine has been part of the CBI community for the past 13 years. While he remains scared of dying, he is working to become more comfortable with the inevitable. He is drawn to the question of how we integrate awareness of death into our daily lives as a spiritual practice and feels that one of the most important features of community is how well we support one another through the stages of dying, death and mourning. Becky Tucker: Becky (she/her) is a registered nurse working in elder care and hospice, a student in ALEPH’s Rabbinic Pastor Program, and a member of the wonderful CBI community. She is grateful for the humbling gift of supporting individuals and their loved ones throughout the aging and dying process. Through her work and ongoing learning, she strives to embrace a more intimate, spiritual, and even joyful relationship with death and its lessons about life, both personally and communally.

The Mysterious Healing Power of the Mourner's Kaddish
Thursdays, May 1, 8, 15 7:00-8:30 pm in person & on Zoom Registration Required

Nothing brings us together in community like the tug to say Mourner's Kaddish. We scramble to get a minyan for those who need to say it; never are we so reverent. Yet, how well do we understand not just the meaning of the words of kaddish but also what it is meant to be doing, what is its action? In this mini-course, we will explore the text of kaddish, its historical development, and what it means to the heart. Expect surprises!

Rabbi Andrew Hahn, Ph.D. holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary and ordination from the HUC-JIR. He has taught widely in the adult Jewish learning setting, at rabbinical schools and in the academic world. He was resident faculty at Clal: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.

Bread and Roses: How Jewish Women Shaped Early 20th Century Activism
Tuesdays, May 6, 13, 20, 27, 7:00-8:30 pm on Zoom Only (link included in registration confirmation) Registration Required

This four-session course will focus on Jewish women's political organizing that grew out of women-led grassroots neighborhood movements in immigrant, working-class New York City in the early 1900s. Using primary sources in English, short readings, and other multimedia resources drawn from the archives, we will trace the arc of Jewish women's political organizing from the kosher meat boycott of 1902 to the "Uprising of the 20,000" in 1909, the largest strike by women to date in American history; and Jewish women's activism in the Communist movement during the Great Depression. We'll learn the life stories of women such as Clara Lemlich Shavelson, Rose Pastor Stokes, and June Croll Gordon, and examine the ways in which Jewish women understood their political commitments, and their own privilege, in relation to other ethnic and racial groups.

Jennifer Young is an educator, writer, and historian. She has worked at the Tenement Museum, the New-York Historical Society, and the YIVO Institute, and currently works at the Yiddish Book Center.

Dan Bolles of SevenDaysVT describes Lewis Franco as a central Vermont musician who has kept the spirit of swing alive for nearly two decades with swagger and cool. Inspired by Jewish songwriters like Berlin, Gershwin, and Rodgers & Hart, Franco sees their music as shaped by Jewish values and a search for belonging. This perspective drives his YouTube series, Franco the ReJewvenator, and his 2023 album, On the Sidelines. Through titles like "Say, Don't You Remember Yip Harburg?" and "Just Pretend I Wasn't Lorenz Hart," Franco connects their experiences of cultural outsiderhood with his own upbringing in Atlanta during the Civil Rights era. His concerts blend music, storytelling, and humor to explore these themes. 

Professor Mark Auslander
"Mourning across borders: honoring the voices of the lost" --- Read the transcript of this talk here.
January 14, 2024

Professor Omar Bartov
"Weaponizing Language: Misuses of Holocaust Memory and the Never Again Syndrome" --- Fill out this form to receive the recording link.
February 28, 2024

Laurie Sanders
"History of the Northampton Alms House" --- Watch the Zoom presentation here.
February 4, 2024

Rabbi David Seidenberg
"Jews and Indigenousness" --- Watch the livestream recording here.
March 11, 2024