Jewish Religious Movements with Rachel Greenblatt

Date: February 26, March 12, March 26, April 9, April 23, April 30 from 7:30 - 9:00 PM


Where: Vilna Shul Offices, 6 Beacon Street, Suite 205, Boston, MA 02108 [view map]
jewish_religious_movements.jpg

We commonly hear the newest spiritually-oriented Jewish organizations and educational institutions describing themselves as “post-denominational.”  Where did Jewish denominations come from? Join the Vilna Shul's adult learning series to look at the European origins of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements that would come to dominate Jewish communal life in mid-twentieth century America, Mordecai Kaplan’s Reconstructionist movement, and later, the Renewal movement.  Gain a deeper understanding of how these building blocks of Jewish communal structures were built and took the shapes they did, helping individual learners to distinguish what they see as “wheat from chaff” in their current functioning.

About Rachel Greenblatt:
Rachel L. Greenblatt has taught at Dartmouth College, Harvard and Wesleyan Universities. She holds a Ph.D. in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and B.A. in History from Cornell. She has also studied biblical and rabbinic text at the Pardes Institute and at Matan - the Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Study, both in Jerusalem. Rachel’s scholarship focuses on the cultural and social history of Jews in central and eastern Europe. She is author of *To Tell Their Children: Jewish Communal Memory in Early Modern Prague* (Stanford University Press, 2014), which incorporates a wide variety of material and textual sources in reconstructing the ways in which Prague’s early modern Jews—women and men, young and old—told their own stories of their communal past and familial histories.

In partnership with Hebrew College's Open Learning Circles program. 

Vilna and Hebrew College will never turn anyone away for inability to pay. If you would like to attend but finances are of concern, please email Director of Communications and Community Outreach Lynne Krasker Schultz at lynne@vilnashul.org.