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Kol Isha: Women Cantors 1920–1975 (VIRTUAL)

Presented by Henry Sapoznik Click here to register. The phrase kol isha (“voice of a woman”) refers to the principle in some traditional Jewish communities which holds that a woman’s singing voice is inappropriate (“ervah“) for men to whom she is not related to hear. In this presentation, the term…...

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Drop-In Book Club: The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross (VIRTUAL)

Facilitated by Jim Van Buskirk Click here to register. Contact the Library to borrow a printed copy or download an electronic copy through the Library’s eBook program at no charge. In this novel of alternative history, which received both the National Jewish Book Award and the Jewish Fiction Award from…...

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How Judeo-Arabic Literature and Culture Shaped Judaism as We Know It (VIRTUAL)

Presented by Miriam Goldstein Click here to register. What is Judeo-Arabic and why is it so important to understanding Judaism today? What we know today as “the Jewish bookshelf” was strongly shaped by an enormous body of texts written in Judeo-Arabic, approximately between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.  Professor Goldstein…...

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Drop-In Book Club: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (VIRTUAL)

Led by Jim Van Buskirk Click here to register. Contact the Library to borrow a printed copy or download an electronic copy through the Library’s eBook program at no charge. An immigrant tale that combines elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology, this inventive historical novel portrays two supernatural creatures…...

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A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg (VIRTUAL)

Presented by Nathaniel Deutsch Click here to register. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has become a symbol for gentrification. It is also home to the largest Hasidic community in the world, a community which is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy in the United States. Nathaniel Deutsch will…...

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The Lost Soviet Yiddish Songs of the Holocaust (VIRTUAL)

Presented by Anna Shternshis Click here to register. During World War II, Kiev-based ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovski and his colleagues collected songs that were being composed in Yiddish by Soviet Jews in response to the War and the German occupation of Ukraine. In 1950, before he had been able to publish…...

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