Lectures
In person at the Levis JCC Sandler Center
Robert Watson, Ph.D.
Tuesday, April 18, 3:00 pm
The Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials
On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany’s political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.
Each lecture: $25, Gold & Gold Plus Members: $20, Platinum Members: Free
Robert Watson is a professor, author, historian, media commentator and community activist. He joined the faculty of Lynn in 2007 after spending 15 years teaching at universities around the country. He has published over 40 books and approximately 200 scholarly articles, essays and chapters on topics in history and politics and is a frequent media commentator.
Wednesday, January 4, 3:00 pm
Tell me Another: Introduction to Personal Storytelling with Terry Wolfisch Cole (Winner of the Moth Grand Slam)
Ira Glass of This American Life says, “Great stories happen to people who know how to tell them.” Do you want to get better at captivating listeners? Whether you want to tell your story on stage, in a business meeting or college interview, or at the family table, professional storyteller Terry Wolfisch Cole of Tell Me Another will teach you everything you need to know to engage any audience. The session will include an opportunity to hear Terry tell a story as well as tips and techniques for effective storytelling.
Terry Wolfisch Cole is the founder and host of Tell Me Another, a live storytelling show in the Hartford area. She is a Moth GrandSLAM champion whose story of running away from home was featured on the Moth Radio Hour and in Readers Digest. She will share this story with us LIVE. She regularly shares her stories on stage, offers workshops and trainings for a wide range of purposes including fundraising and professional development, and provides one-on-one coaching to speakers.
Monday, January 9, 7:30 pm (Israel 75)
Artists Under Fire: The BDS War against Celebrities, Jews, and Israel with Lana Melman
Hundreds of international entertainers sign up to perform in Israel every year and nearly all are besieged with calls to boycott the Jewish homeland in social and main-stream media. Each of these boycott campaigns spreads vicious lies about Israel to their hundreds of millions of fans and traffics in antisemitic lies stirring up Jew hatred across the globe. Behind it all is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, an anti-Jewish conspiracy network masquerading as a human rights movement.
Entertainment industry insider, Lana Melman, puts BDS on trial and shares the stories of artists, like Scar-lett Johansson, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, Justin Timberlake, and The Rolling Stones, who are being used as pawns in this destructive crusade. In Artists Under Fire: The BDS War against Celebrities, Jews, and Israel, Melman provides Israel supporters with an action plan to stand up to the cultural boycott campaign and will cause its followers to question the motives of their leaders, the company they are keeping, and the consequences of their actions.
Lana Melman is an attorney, a 20-year veteran of the entertainment industry and the CEO of Liberate Art Inc. Since 2011, she has been a leader in combating the cultural boycott (BDS) campaign against Israel working both behind the scenes with the people artists trust the most – their representatives – and in the public discourse.
Tuesday, January 24, 3:00 pm
Cosmetic Queens; Helena Rubinstein & Estee Lauder with Rose Feinberg, Ed.D.
Monday, January 30, 3:00 pm
Cosmic Judaism with Rabbi Barry Silver
Wednesday, February 1, 3:00 pm
Celebrity Chefs with Rose Feinberg, Ed.D.
Rose Feinberg, Ed.D., earned her doctoral degree in education from Boston University. She was a school principal in Massachusetts, as well as a respected lecturer. Feinberg served as an adjunct faculty member at FAU for eight years, teaching graduate courses in curriculum and school administration. She is a well-known lecturer in South Florida Her lectures are extensively researched and her theater training and personality make her a dynamic presenter.
Thursday, February 16, 3:00 pm
Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age with Debby Applegate
Madam is the biography of Polly Adler (1900−1962), the most infamous and influential madam in Jazz Age New York. Her 1953 memoir, A House is Not A Home, sold 2 million books and became a 1963 movie starring Shelley Winters. More than a biography, this is a colorful and unusual history of Jewish life told through the perspective of a “good Jewish girl” from a Russian shtetl who immigrated to Brooklyn, and rose to become “the Female Al Capone” and one of the most renowned Jewish-American women in the 20th century.
Debby Applegate is a historian whose first book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Tuesday, February 21, 3:00 pm
Black History Month: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr. with Rabbi Barry Silver
Tuesday, March 14, 3:00 pm
Great Ukrainian Jews with Leah Polin
Leah Polin is a frequent lecturer in the Chicago and South Florida on wide variety of topics including Jewish women, biographies of major Jewish figures, Jewish history, Israel and current events. She has organized Jewish Heritage Tours to many interesting and exotic countries and is a frequent traveler to Israel.
Thursday, March 23, 3:00 pm
How Hatikvah Became the Israeli National Anthem with Ira Epstein (Israel 75)
Ira Epstein, Ph.D., co-author of “The Proficient Reader,” served as professor and chairperson of the Communication Skills Department at LaGuardia Community College, C.U.N.Y. and directed the college’s Technology Learning Center. In addition to his academic life, he worked as a musician performing in the Catskills, recorded with Tayku, a Hebrew jazz/rock ensemble, taught music to children in summer camps, and toured with Theodore Bikel and Herschel Bernardi in the ’70s as part of a UJA program. Most recently, he has been lecturing to adults on comedy, music and the music of Israel. He continues to speak at synagogues, senior centers, JCCs, libraries and elderhostels and at meetings of national organizations such as The National Council of Jewish Women, Hadassah and B’nai B’rith. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. and his Ph.D. from Fordham University.
Tuesday, March 28, 3:00 pm
From Start Up to Scale Up Nation: Israel Saves the Planet with Leah Polin (Israel 75)
Thursday, April 20, 7:30 pm
Fighting Back: Stan Andrews and the Birth of the Israeli Air Force with Jeffrey Weiss
Fighting Back is about Stan Andrews, an assimilated American Jew and World War II veteran who in 1948 became one of the first fighter pilots in the Israeli air force. The book follows Stan’s short but dazzling life, including his transition from a brilliant student and talented artist into a daring bomber pilot in the Pacific during WWII, his post-war studies and romance in Los Angeles, and then his dramatic and unexpected decision to fight for a Jewish state. In Israel Stan served in the country’s first fighter squadron, performed high level liaison work under an assumed name, and then served in a bomber squadron before disappearing in a dramatic bombing raid. Along the way we experience. Stan’s inner turmoil and journey – from a highly assimilated Jew whose identity was rekindled by 1940s antisemitism into the person who made the dramatic and fateful decision to fight for a Jewish state. The book has received advance praise from, among others, Dan Senor (co-author of Start-Up Nation) and Yossi Klein Halevi (author of Like Dreamers). Fighting Back is Jeff Weiss’s second book. He is also the co-author of I Am My Brother’s Keeper (Schiffer Military History, 1998), which tells the story of American and Canadian volunteers in all branches of the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 War of Independence. He is featured in the 2014 Nancy Spielberg documentary Above and Beyond. Jeff is passionate about fitness and is an Ironman and ultramarathoner.
Monday, April 24, 3:00 pm
Women on the Front Lines: Inside the Combat Units of the IDF with Debbie Zimelman (Israel 75)
"Women on the Front Lines" is a full-color photography book exploring the lives of women who serve in the Israeli army’s combat units. "Women on the Front Lines" is the first and only book offering an insiders’ view, sharing an intimate glimpse of these young women’s lives. The photographs are accompanied by descriptions – in the soldiers’ own words – of their fears, challenges, and accomplishments. The book is a culmination of five years of photographing and interviewing female soldiers from over 20 IDF units. Debbie has been a portrait photographer in Israel for 25 years, where she resides.
Monday, April 24, 7:30 pm
The Israeli Declaration of Independence; A Behind the Scenes Analysis with Jack Rosenbaum (Israel 75)
Jack Rosenbaum M.Ed has been educating students and adults in South Florida since the 1980's. He directed the local March of the Living for many years. He has educated thousands of Jewish learners between the ages of 1 and 100, as a teacher and administrator, including six years as the camp director at our own Levis JCC in the 90's.
