Sandbox

In June 1954, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Lewis Strauss revoked the security clearance of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer who had been the scientific leader of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. Physicist/Rabbi Jack Shlachter will explore how their respective Jewish identities may have contributed to the revocation.

Maurice Shohet will discuss growing up in Baghdad and why his family and most other Jews had to flee. In 1940 there were about 140,000 Jews in Iraq but now only 3 Jews remain.

This class will provide a glimpse into the glories and tragedies of Iberian Jewry, its many new beginnings, and effects of its destruction felt to this day. Rabbi Dr Shlomo Pereira is Education Director of Chabad of Virginia and distinguished professor of Economics at William & Mary College.

Experience the deep spiritual significance of this mystical holiday and join Kabbalistic expert Jay McCrensky in an authentic, but virtual, Tu b’Shvat kabbalistic seder with music, singing, discussion, and learning.

Learn the basic concepts and applications of Kabbalah to Jewish practice and observance, to Shabbat, to celebration of the Holidays, to wedding rituals, to repentance and to our understanding of sin.

Dona Gracia Nasi was born only 13 years after the forced conversions in Lisbon. But she became the center of the Jewish struggle to survive and strive in the 1500s Europe. She was instrumental in developed a type of “Underground Railroad”, Bible printing in the vernacular, and establishing Jewish community in the Land of Israel.

Before World War I Vienna had one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. Their Jews assimilated into Austro-German culture, but retained a large measure of Jewish identity through religious institutions, Zionism, Jewish nationalism, or ethnic solidarity. The class will also evaluate the extent the play Leopoldstadt may have been great theater but not good history.