March 20th, 2024, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Our MOST POPULAR and MOST FUN event is back. The in-person event at Adas Israel Congregation will have delicious Latkes and Hamantaschen to enjoy and compare. The live event has an admission charge due to the food expense, but the Zoom mode is free.
It will be conducted at Adas Israel Congregation, 2850 Quebec St NW, Washington, DC 20008 .
Ther humorous and astute Howard Mortman is again the Moderator. And he has a very diverse set of debaters.
Moderator
Howard Mortman has been C-SPAN’s Communications Director since early 2009. He directs media outreach, corporate communications, and public relations efforts for the nation’s only public affairs cable television network.
According to the Washington Post, “Howard Mortman is the sort of person who reads old copies of the Congressional Record for fun. Oh, and for work.”
Howard researches, scripts, and voices the C-SPAN podcast The Weekly. Tapping into C-SPAN’s vast archive of programming, the podcast connects today’s policy and political news to significant historical events.
Mortman’s first book When Rabbis Bless Congress: The Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill was published in October 2020. It is the first-ever academic and historical examination of a little-known tradition in Congress: opening each session of the House and Senate in prayer. Reporting on the research into rabbis who have prayed in Congress, the Washington Examiner calls his project “a remarkable history researched by Howard Mortman.” Kirkus Review calls Mortman’s book “Academically detailed yet esoterically fun.” Mortman has conducted additional research into rabbis in the political process as a Director’s Fellow for the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
With a quarter century of experience, Howard is a seasoned veteran of the Washington media, marketing, and political communities.
Debaters
Dan Freedman has been a senior editor at Moment Magazine since 2020. At the end of 2019, he retired from the Hearst Newspapers Washington Bureau, where he held a number of reporting and editing positions (including a rotation on the White House press pool). Dan grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a household that placed high value on Jewish jokes, humor, and Yiddishisms. He received his B.A. from Rutgers University and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Beryl Neurman is a Jewish Study Center board member and a lawyer for the Department of Labor specializing in retirement and healthcare benefits in private employment benefits law.
Michael Rugel is the Programs and Content Coordinator at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History (NMAJMH). Prior to that he served on the museum’s collections management staff.
He has frequently written about Jews in the American military, and he’s produced a series of videos about them, including descriptions of World War II experiences of American Jewish liberators of concentration camps. He regularly gives presentations about the history of Jews in the American Military at museum programs as well as to local schools, synagogues, community centers and veterans’ groups.
Todd Kliman is an author, essayist, and food writer. He has won two James Beard Awards, including a 2016 MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his autobiography, and is the author of two critically-acclaimed books. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Oxford American, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post Magazine, and NPR online, among others, and has been widely anthologized, including seven times in the Best Food Writing series.
Kliman was previously a food critic, cultural critic and food editor for The Washingtonian, and served as Editor-at-Large for Richmond magazine.
For ten years, he taught literature and writing at American University and at Howard University. At Howard, he was also the editorial director of Chris Rock’s magazine of satire, The Illtop Journal, modeled after The Harvard Lampoon.
He is currently at work on two books: a collection of essays, The Two Hungers (currently out to publishing houses), and an epic about the arrival of conversos to Mexico in the late 16th century.
Copyright © 2024 Jewish Study Center. All rights reserved. Website designed by Addicott Web.