Our scholar in residence program this year is as exciting as ever.  Each scholar will teach three times over the course of a Shabbat.  On Friday night, the scholars speak in a more intimate setting at the home of one of our community members, allowing for much interaction and participation from the community.  The scholar addresses the entire shul from the pulpit on Shabbat morning, and returns to shul for a special Seudah Shlisheet shiur with more time for questions and answers.  Thank you to the Walt family for sponsoring our scholar Dr. Rafael Zarum in January!

For more information, please contact Gail Katz at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

JEREMY DAUBER
December 18 and 19

Dr. Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Associate Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Columbia University and director of its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. He graduated from Harvard University and did his graduate work at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. His first book, Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature, was published in 2004 by Stanford University Press; in 2006, he and Joel Berkowitz edited and translated an anthology of works from the Yiddish theater, entitled Landmark Yiddish Plays. A new book, In the Demon’s Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern, is expected to be published by Yale University Press next year. He is the co-editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literature, and lectures on topics related to Jewish literature and culture around the country.

RAPHAEL ZARUM
January 8 and 9

Dr. Raphael Zarum is Chief Executive and Head of Faculty of the London School of Jewish Studies. He is a graduate of the Jerusalem Fellows Programme at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Israel and has an MA in Adult Education from the Institute of Education in London. Raphael is the creator of the Torah L’Am crash course and is the author of Torat Hadracha and The Jampacked Bible. He led the faculty of the Florence Melton Adult Mini School UK while directing the Text and Values project at UJIA. Dr. Zarum has a PhD in theoretical physics from King’s College London. He is a sought-after Jewish educator in the UK and teaches regularly at international Jewish conferences in Israel, the USA and Europe.

Sponsored by Harold and Brenda Walt.

AVI WEISS
February 5 and 6

Rabbi Avi Weiss is Founder and President of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah – the Modern and Open Orthodox Rabbinical School. He is the Senior Rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a Modern and Open Orthodox congregation of 850 families. He is also National President of AMCHA – the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, a grassroots organization that speaks out for Jewish causes and Israel.  Rabbi Weiss was recently named by Newsweek magazine as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America, describing him as “Orthodox’s leading activist and leader of the Modern Orthodox community.”  Rabbi Weiss has authored three books: Women at Prayer, a halakhik analysis of women’s prayer groups, Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World, and Haggadah for the Yom HaShoah Seder.  He has also had numerous papers, articles and editorials published in journals and newspapers around the world.

RAHEL BERKOVITS
February 19 and 20

Rahel Berkovits is the new principal at Beit Rabban, a non-denominational grade school in New York City. For the past ten years she lectured in Talmud, halakhah and the status of women in Judaism at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. She has spent many years studying Talmud and Jewish texts in both traditional and academic frameworks at such institutions as Midreshet Lindenbaum, The Shalom Hartman Institute, and Hebrew University. She lectures widely in both Israel and abroad on topics concerning women and Jewish law, and has published entries in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Rahel is the editor-in-chief and halakhic editor of JOFA’s Ta Shma Halakhic Source Guide series. She is a founding member of Congregation Shirah Hadasha, a progressive halakhic minyan, which is enriched by both male and female participation in synagogue ritual. Rahel has lived in Jerusalem for the past eighteen years and is the mother of nine-year-old boy/girl twins and a five-year-old daughter.