92Y Video: The Jewish Connection: Yom Kippur with Rabbi David Kalb
Rabbi David Kalb is the Director of Jewish Education for the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at 92nd Street Y. In the video above, he offers a brief introduction to Yom Kippur, as part of his goal to bring Judaism into all aspects of life so that it informs and enhances everyday living.
Learn more about the High Holidays class Rabbi Kalb is teaching on September 13.
92Y Video: The Jewish Connection: Rosh Hashanah With Rabbi David Kalb
Rabbi David Kalb is the Director of Jewish Education for the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at 92nd Street Y. In the video above, he offers a brief introduction to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as part of his goal to bring Judaism into all aspects of life so that it informs and enhances everyday living.
Learn more about the High Holidays class Rabbi Kalb is teaching on September 13.
In conjunction with the new 92Y.org/Worlds campaign, we’ve got lots of fun facts to share with you. We will be doing that on a daily basis, here on the 92Y Blog and on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook!
Here’s today’s fun fact: There are more than 250 beehives in Manhattan. And as of last year, beekeepers in Manhattan are no longer outlaws!
During Rosh Hashanah, it is customary to eat apples and challah dipped in honey, a symbol of the sweetness we hope to enjoy during the coming year. Enjoy honey, apples and Rosh Hashanah at 92Y and 92YTribeca.
Writing in The New York Times last week, Joshua Prager reported an interesting story about Ralph Branca (the Brooklyn Dodger pitcher who gave up the famous home run to New York Giant Bobby Thomson) discovering that his Roman Catholic mother was born Jewish, and that his aunt died in Auschwitz.
“When I had phoned Branca and told him,” Prager wrote after researching the topic, “that his mother, Kati, was Jewish and that thus, according to traditional Jewish law, he and his 16 siblings were, too, the loud man was quiet. But when I had told him of the murder of his uncle, Branca had looked for words. ‘Uh, oh, boy,’ he had said. ‘My mother never mentioned this to me.’”
You might also be interested in the January 10 event at 92nd Street Y, The Hidden Jews of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, many surviving Jews who remained in Poland hid their Jewish identity. Now, a growing number of Poles are rediscovering their families’ concealed Jewish roots. Join members of this re-emerging Jewish community for a fascinating and inspiring account of young Polish Jews reclaiming the heritage that Hitler sought to extinguish.
[UPDATE: The video above, from WTOC news in Savannah, Georgia, is experiencing technical difficulties.]
92Y Havaya International, a unique summer travel and community service program for American and Israeli teens, is wrapping up its fourth consecutive summer. You can follow their adventures on the 92Y Havaya Facebook page.
This year’s group – which includes 14 Americans and 18 Israelis – just finished their culminating project: organizing and leading Camp Lighthouse, a 4-day camp for Savannah, Georgia’s underserved youth. One of Savannah’s local television stations, WTOC, was quite impressed by the Havayaniks’ efforts, as evidenced by this story that aired on the network on Thursday, August 4.
92Y Video: Karina Leading Shababa In Ramat HaSharon In Israel
As friends of 92Y Shababa surely know, Karina and Coco have taken their show on the road, to Israel! Back here in New York City, Rebecca has been leading Shababa at 92Y. Tomorrow, Rebecca will be taking Shababa Saturday to Central Park tomorrow, from 10am - 11:30am in the north of the playground on 96th and 5th. Bring your picnic blanket and snacks!
In the last few years, a former government official named Jeremy Ben-Ami has been trying to change the political dynamic in Washington with a new organization — J Street — that presses Congress and the White House to show more balance. Ben-Ami has just published a book, “A New Voice for Israel,” that is a clarion call for American reasonableness in the Middle East.
“If things don’t change pretty soon, chances are that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will slip through our fingers,” Ben-Ami writes. “As that happens, the dream of the Jewish people to be a free people in their own land also slowly disappears.”
Ben-Ami, who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House, comes from a long line of Zionists, and his ancestors helped found Tel Aviv. But he’s aghast at the way the United States is enabling hard-line Israeli policies that make peace less likely.
Read the op-ed in full at The New York Times. Then mark your calendars for September 20, when Jeremy Ben-Ami and Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast and author of The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, come to 92Y and discuss what it means to be “pro-Israel,” the creation of a viable Palestinian state and the need for strong US leadership to lead the way to a peaceful solution to the ongoing conflict. Tickets are available here.
If you have questions for either panelist, let us know in the comments below. We will submit your questions during the Q&A portion of the event and if it is used on stage, we will provide you with two tickets to an upcoming event, pending availability. So get questioning!
In 2007, Shababa at 92nd Street Y started as a musical Shabbat gathering of a handful of families singing with Karina in a corner of the 92Y lobby. It rapidly became a vibrant, bursting community, where families with young children are a part of an intergenerational, inclusive Jewish experience, as seen in the video below, filmed at Shababa Saturday Mornings:
As mentioned before, we’re pleased to participate in The PJ Library®, a Jewish education and family engagement program supported by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. The program delivers free Jewish books and music every month, free of charge, to families raising Jewish children.
Yesterday, PJ Library delivered its 2 millionth book, hand-delivered by Harold Grinspoon to a child in Brooklyn. Hear more in this segment aired yesterday on NPR’s WFCR station for Western New England.
Just this month alone, PJ Library will be mailing 75,434 books to families throughout North America. What’s more, every month PJ Library is sending 44,000 books to children in 1650 classrooms throughout Israel. In partnership with the Ministry of Education and private philanthropists, the program will more than double for the 2011-2012 school year to reach 100,000 children every month.
We’re proud to be a part of this wonderful and exciting program and have PJ Library subscriptions available free of charge on a first-come, first-served basis to families involved in 92Y programming. Sign up here to start receiving free Jewish books and music every month.
Join The PJ Library® And Start Receiving Free Books!
Did you hear? 92nd Street Y is thrilled to participate in The PJ Library® and we want you to take advantage of this amazing opportunity. The PJ Library (PJ as in pajamas) provides your family with a FREE treasury of Jewish books and music. Every family enrolled in The PJ Library over the next year will receive a monthly gift of a high-quality Jewish book or CD as well as a reading guide to enhance your family’s experience. “In four years,” the Boston Globe reported, PJ Library, “has given away 2 million books.”
As you know, 92Y has long been committed to providing children and their families with the very best in educational opportunities so we are delighted to be able to make 1,000 PJ Library subscriptions available on a first-come, first-served basis to families involved in 92Y programming. This is simply a gift to your family from your 92nd Street Y family. Don’t miss out, sign up here.
Hey Las Vegas, You Can Have The Stamp, We’re Keeping Emma Lazarus
The United States Postal Service recently produced a new Statue of Liberty stamp, but made a small error. The New York Times reported yesterday “...the statue it features is not the one in the harbor, but the replica at the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas.” Hey, these things happen!
It reminded us, did you know Emma Lazarus, who penned “The New Colossus,” (you know, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...") in 1883 and later added to the base of the Statue of Liberty, taught English to Russian immigrants that same year, at what was then our “downtown outpost” located on the Lower East Side?
Here’s a little more info from a December 28, 1883 newspaper clipping we dug up in The American Israelite newspaper:
Miss Emma Lazarus had consented to devote her Sunday afternoons to instructing young Russian Jewesses in the English language at the Down-town branch of the Y. M. H. A. Hereafter the Russian classes as well as the Saturday night will be held at 206 East Broadway instead of the Five Points Chapel.
The Computer Science Department at the College of Management, Academic Studies in Israel made a clever video wishing you a Happy Passover. As you can see above, it consists exclusively of robots having a Seder, even reading the Haggadah!
For a more human experience at 92nd Street Y, there is the Adult Community Seder on April 18 and the Shababa Creative Family Passover Seder on April 19. As well, 92YTribeca hosts Passover Second Seder on April 19 with Rabbi Dan Ain and Rabbinic Intern Adena Kemper.
Aish.com has produced this fun video, “What if Moses had Facebook?”, showing a web-based story of Passover. “FAKE!!!,” a YouTube commenter wrote. “His iGoogle says he’s from Los Angeles @ 0:42. Obviously not the real Moses.”
Rabbi Juan Mejia was here on January 11 for Undoing the Inquisition, featured in the video below around the 6:56 mark. Rabbi Juan Mejia discussed his journey as a descendant of forced converts to Catholocism back to Judaism and to the rabbinate, and his work with others rediscovering their Jewish roots.
And on February 15th, Shi Lei was at 92Y to discuss the Lost Jews of Kaifeng, China. Shi Lei, a descendant of one of the first Persian Jewish families to settle in Kaifeng in the 11th century, shared the fascinating history of this unique community, and his role in beginning to recover the younger generation’s Jewish identity and customs. The Jewish Channel coverage starts around the 3:24 mark.
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The United States Postal Service recently produced a new Statue of Liberty stamp, but made a small error. 
