Eyeing Jews who 'smashed the idols'
The Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado has collaborated with 12 other Boulder and Denver Jewish organizations to present a year-long series of events that examines how Jews have often been at the forefront of social, cultural and political change.
Through lectures, concerts, films, classes and performances, guests from around the world will be coming to the Boulder/Denver metro area to explore who such MoVeRs have been throughout history and what is it about Jewish culture that inspires such radicalism.
Complete details for the series of events can be found at www.jewishmovers.org.
The series launch is Thursday, Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at CU-Boulder’s University Memorial Center 235, with “Smashing the Idols.” Modeled after popular teach-ins from the 1960s, the evening will feature international, national and local leaders in the Jewish community. They will use the story found in Jewish and Muslim tradition of the Biblical patriarch Abraham smashing his father’s idols and launching monotheism as the basis of examining how Jews throughout history have been breaking with conventional wisdom, rebelling against authority and blazing new trails. Who were they? What did they accomplish? What drove them?
Presenters for the evening include:
Elissa Barrett, Executive Director for the Progressive Jewish Alliance in Los Angeles. Founded in 1999, PJA educates, advocates and organizes on issues of peace, equality, diversity and justice. In the past 10 years, PJA has created a new model of Jewish community organizing, and has reinvigorated the progressive Jewish landscape in Los Angeles.
Orly Halpern is a Jewish American Israeli war correspondent. She lived in Baghdad and reported for a year during the Iraq war and covered the second intifada driving her sedan across the West Bank. When she left Iraq, she became the Middle East correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, for which she traveled across the Arab and Muslim world learning about the politics, the people, and their views on Jews and Israel. She developed a particular interest in Jewish communities living among the Arabs. Her many experiences have included spending Passover with the last Afghan Jew in Kabul and living with Bahraini Jews in Manama.
Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm from the University of Colorado’s Chabad
Rabbi Victor Gross from Boulder’s Pardes Levavot, a Jewish Renewal Congregation. Reb Victor serves on the Academic Vaad for the ALEPH Rabbinic Program and is the past Vice President of OhaLaH: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal.
The fall line-up of events for MoVeRs includes the following events:
Friday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m.
Social Justice Shabbat with Jewish Mosaic & special guest, Progressive Jewish Alliance Executive Director, Elissa Barrett
Orbis International House
1818 Gaylord Street , Denver
This Social Justice Activism Salon and Potluck Shabbat dinner will feature visiting scholar Elissa Barrett, director of one of the nation's most innovative Jewish social justice organizations, the Progressive Jewish Alliance. Barrett will engage with attendees in an interactive dialogue and brainstorming session on possible avenues for expanded social justice activism and community collaboration within Colorado’s Jewish community.
Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m.
Out of the Classroom and Onto the Field: Jews & Soccer
Catacombs (below Hotel Boulderado)
2115 13th Street, Boulder
Join Robert Adler Peckerar, assistant professor of Jewish Literature and Culture at CU-Boulder, for an interactive evening that examines the phenomenon of Jewish soccer in central and eastern Europe at the start of the last century—its controversies, politics and importance in understanding the birth of a radically new Jewish culture.
Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m.
Political Powerhouses: Three Women Who Did Not Stand Idly By
CU-Boulder Campus
University Memorial Center
Dennis Small Cultural Center, 4th Floor, Boulder
Join CU Professor Zilla Goodman for a discussion that examines the lives of three remarkable Jewish mavericks: Henrietta Szold, Manya Shochat and Rosa Luxemburg.
Sunday , Nov. 1, at 7 p.m.
Film screening and discussion of “REFUSENIK”
Boulder JCC
3800 Kalmia, Boulder
Introduced by Bill Cohen, founder of Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry with special guest, activist Shirley Goldstein. Talkback with Professors David Shneer (CU-Boulder) and Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto). REFUSENIK is the first retrospective documentary to chronicle the thirty-year movement to free Soviet Jews. It shows how a small grassroots effort bold enough to take on a Cold War superpower blossomed into an international human rights campaign that engaged the disempowered and world leaders alike.
Monday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m.
Between the Shtetl and the Red Hammer: Contemporary Yiddish Music in Russia
University of Colorado at Boulder Campus
University Memorial Center 235, Boulder
Professor Anna Shternshis from the University of Toronto examines a brand-new form of Jewish culture. The post-Soviet period from1993 to today has witnessed some of the most unusual and extravagant performances of Yiddish music in the world. Complete with dancers, elaborate musical arrangements and sophisticated technical support, these performances represent arguably the largest-scale music productions in the history of Yiddish culture. The artists are usually state-trained Soviet performers of classical and popular music, who embrace their Jewish heritage by incorporating Yiddish into their repertoire.
Saturday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m.
Celebrating Shlomo Carlebach
Songs, Story and Film: A musical tribute to Shlomo Carlebach
Boulder JCC
3800 Kalmia Avenue, Boulder
Known as Reb Shlomo, ‘The Singing Rabbi’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Judaism,’ Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach is widely considered the foremost Jewish religious songwriter of the 20th century, and he continues to influence rock bands of today. Often considered a radical rabbinic figure, his influence transformed modern Judaism.
Sunday, Nov. 15, at 6 p.m.
“Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How A Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom – and Revenge”
Boulder JCC
3800 Kalmia Avenue, Boulder
Join author Edward Kritzler, a historian and former USA Today reporter who lives in Jamaica, for a fascinating history of Jewish merchants and adventurers who escaped the Spanish Inquisitions at the dawn of the age of exploration.
Monday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m.
Radical Artists: Jewish Art in Diaspora
Co-sponsored by the CU Art Museum
University of Colorado at Boulder
University Memorial Center, Room 235, Boulder
Join Carol Zemel, professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at York University in Canada as she examines what is modern Jewish art? What is its place in our secular, multi-cultural art world? How does it convey Jewish diasporic experience; does it declare or affirm our hyphenated (Jewish-American) identities? Professor Zemel will explore these questions through consideration of work by cutting-edge contemporary artists including Hannah Wilke, Ken Aptekar, and Tobaron Waxman.
The 13 collaborating organizations who worked to make MoVeRs possible are Allied Jewish Federation, Anti-Defamation League, Congregation Bonai Shalom, Boulder JCC, Hadassah, Congregation Har HaShem, Hillel at the University of Colorado, Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual & Gender Diversity, Menorah at the Boulder JCC, Nevei Kodesh, Pardes Levavot, the Program in Jewish Studies at CU, and Soul Food.
MoVeRs is presented with support from Rose Community Foundation, SCFD and the Goldberger Fund for Jewish Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder. For more information, visit www.jewishmovers.org or call 303.492.7143.
Through lectures, concerts, films, classes and performances, guests from around the world will be coming to the Boulder/Denver metro area to explore who such MoVeRs have been throughout history and what is it about Jewish culture that inspires such radicalism.
Complete details for the series of events can be found at www.jewishmovers.org.
The series launch is Thursday, Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at CU-Boulder’s University Memorial Center 235, with “Smashing the Idols.” Modeled after popular teach-ins from the 1960s, the evening will feature international, national and local leaders in the Jewish community. They will use the story found in Jewish and Muslim tradition of the Biblical patriarch Abraham smashing his father’s idols and launching monotheism as the basis of examining how Jews throughout history have been breaking with conventional wisdom, rebelling against authority and blazing new trails. Who were they? What did they accomplish? What drove them?
Presenters for the evening include:
Elissa Barrett, Executive Director for the Progressive Jewish Alliance in Los Angeles. Founded in 1999, PJA educates, advocates and organizes on issues of peace, equality, diversity and justice. In the past 10 years, PJA has created a new model of Jewish community organizing, and has reinvigorated the progressive Jewish landscape in Los Angeles.
Orly Halpern is a Jewish American Israeli war correspondent. She lived in Baghdad and reported for a year during the Iraq war and covered the second intifada driving her sedan across the West Bank. When she left Iraq, she became the Middle East correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, for which she traveled across the Arab and Muslim world learning about the politics, the people, and their views on Jews and Israel. She developed a particular interest in Jewish communities living among the Arabs. Her many experiences have included spending Passover with the last Afghan Jew in Kabul and living with Bahraini Jews in Manama.
Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm from the University of Colorado’s Chabad
Rabbi Victor Gross from Boulder’s Pardes Levavot, a Jewish Renewal Congregation. Reb Victor serves on the Academic Vaad for the ALEPH Rabbinic Program and is the past Vice President of OhaLaH: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal.
The fall line-up of events for MoVeRs includes the following events:
Friday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m.
Social Justice Shabbat with Jewish Mosaic & special guest, Progressive Jewish Alliance Executive Director, Elissa Barrett
Orbis International House
1818 Gaylord Street , Denver
This Social Justice Activism Salon and Potluck Shabbat dinner will feature visiting scholar Elissa Barrett, director of one of the nation's most innovative Jewish social justice organizations, the Progressive Jewish Alliance. Barrett will engage with attendees in an interactive dialogue and brainstorming session on possible avenues for expanded social justice activism and community collaboration within Colorado’s Jewish community.
Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m.
Out of the Classroom and Onto the Field: Jews & Soccer
Catacombs (below Hotel Boulderado)
2115 13th Street, Boulder
Join Robert Adler Peckerar, assistant professor of Jewish Literature and Culture at CU-Boulder, for an interactive evening that examines the phenomenon of Jewish soccer in central and eastern Europe at the start of the last century—its controversies, politics and importance in understanding the birth of a radically new Jewish culture.
Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m.
Political Powerhouses: Three Women Who Did Not Stand Idly By
CU-Boulder Campus
University Memorial Center
Dennis Small Cultural Center, 4th Floor, Boulder
Join CU Professor Zilla Goodman for a discussion that examines the lives of three remarkable Jewish mavericks: Henrietta Szold, Manya Shochat and Rosa Luxemburg.
Sunday , Nov. 1, at 7 p.m.
Film screening and discussion of “REFUSENIK”
Boulder JCC
3800 Kalmia, Boulder
Introduced by Bill Cohen, founder of Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry with special guest, activist Shirley Goldstein. Talkback with Professors David Shneer (CU-Boulder) and Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto). REFUSENIK is the first retrospective documentary to chronicle the thirty-year movement to free Soviet Jews. It shows how a small grassroots effort bold enough to take on a Cold War superpower blossomed into an international human rights campaign that engaged the disempowered and world leaders alike.
Monday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m.
Between the Shtetl and the Red Hammer: Contemporary Yiddish Music in Russia
University of Colorado at Boulder Campus
University Memorial Center 235, Boulder
Professor Anna Shternshis from the University of Toronto examines a brand-new form of Jewish culture. The post-Soviet period from1993 to today has witnessed some of the most unusual and extravagant performances of Yiddish music in the world. Complete with dancers, elaborate musical arrangements and sophisticated technical support, these performances represent arguably the largest-scale music productions in the history of Yiddish culture. The artists are usually state-trained Soviet performers of classical and popular music, who embrace their Jewish heritage by incorporating Yiddish into their repertoire.
Saturday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m.
Celebrating Shlomo Carlebach
Songs, Story and Film: A musical tribute to Shlomo Carlebach
Boulder JCC
3800 Kalmia Avenue, Boulder
Known as Reb Shlomo, ‘The Singing Rabbi’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Judaism,’ Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach is widely considered the foremost Jewish religious songwriter of the 20th century, and he continues to influence rock bands of today. Often considered a radical rabbinic figure, his influence transformed modern Judaism.
Sunday, Nov. 15, at 6 p.m.
“Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How A Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom – and Revenge”
Boulder JCC
3800 Kalmia Avenue, Boulder
Join author Edward Kritzler, a historian and former USA Today reporter who lives in Jamaica, for a fascinating history of Jewish merchants and adventurers who escaped the Spanish Inquisitions at the dawn of the age of exploration.
Monday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m.
Radical Artists: Jewish Art in Diaspora
Co-sponsored by the CU Art Museum
University of Colorado at Boulder
University Memorial Center, Room 235, Boulder
Join Carol Zemel, professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at York University in Canada as she examines what is modern Jewish art? What is its place in our secular, multi-cultural art world? How does it convey Jewish diasporic experience; does it declare or affirm our hyphenated (Jewish-American) identities? Professor Zemel will explore these questions through consideration of work by cutting-edge contemporary artists including Hannah Wilke, Ken Aptekar, and Tobaron Waxman.
The 13 collaborating organizations who worked to make MoVeRs possible are Allied Jewish Federation, Anti-Defamation League, Congregation Bonai Shalom, Boulder JCC, Hadassah, Congregation Har HaShem, Hillel at the University of Colorado, Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual & Gender Diversity, Menorah at the Boulder JCC, Nevei Kodesh, Pardes Levavot, the Program in Jewish Studies at CU, and Soul Food.
MoVeRs is presented with support from Rose Community Foundation, SCFD and the Goldberger Fund for Jewish Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder. For more information, visit www.jewishmovers.org or call 303.492.7143.