This Jewish Community Library event will be taking place virtually via Zoom. Click here to sign up and receive the link.

This auditory and visual tour of the recent Israeli song Orayta by performer Victoria Hanna will engage participants in appreciating and understanding the way an ancient Jewish text can transform itself into a most contemporary genre and appeal to wide audiences, including those who have no background in the Jewish textual tradition.  The language of the song is Aramaic, widely used by Jews in antiquity and still preserved in today’s liturgy.  The lyrics come from the Zohar, the central book of the Kabbalah, the esoteric, mystical teachings of Judaism.  Hanna gives new meanings to this text, bringing it alive, tantalizing listeners to find out more about Kabbalah, and about one of its key figures, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who spent years living hidden in a cave with his son.  During the hour, participants will see and hear the extraordinary Victoria Hanna sing Orayta and see and hear several other demos of old tropes in 21st century garb.

Nechama Tamler teaches (and learns from) adults in a variety of settings; currently she facilitates private study groups on the Peninsula, with a new curriculum she co-designed, ISRAEL BONDS:  Traditional Texts Meet Israeli Pop Culture.  She has been a faculty member of the Florence Melton Adult Mini School at the JCCs of Palo Alto and Greater San Jose. She spent more than two decades on the staff of the Jewish Community Federation and the Bureau of Jewish Education, and subsequently led professional development for synagogue school teachers sponsored by Jewish LearningWorks. She has taught at the Feast of Jewish Learning, Limmud Bay Area, and Bible by the Bay.

Tzippi Zach, a native Israeli, develops innovative programs in Judaism and contemporary Israeli culture, as well as ways to create and strengthen the connections between the Israeli and the Jewish communities in the Silicon Valley. She currently facilitates private study groups, with a new curriculum she co-designed, ISRAEL BONDS:  Traditional Texts Meet Israeli Pop Culture. The program looks at contemporary pop culture productions–music, poetry, film, and TV– as a prism into current trends in Israeli Jewish-secular society. She also developed and facilitates leadership programs at Oshman Family JCC..