During this time of grief and heartbreak, we will gather as a community on Zoom to kindle the lights of Hanukkah together, seeking comfort, strength, and hope in each other’s presence and in our shared sense of purpose. Hanukkah reminds us that we are all lamplighters; for a few minutes each weeknight of Hanukkah, join us as come together to dispel the darkness and shine a little more light into our world.
6 Weeknights. 6 Kavanot for light in a time of darkness. 5-5:10 p.m. EST | Zoom
UPDATE: Rabbi Or Rose has had to travel unexpectedly and is unable to host tonights Hanukkah Zoom series. In his place will be Rabbi Justin David, Dean of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College, with a kavanah for the first night of Hanukkah.
tonight’s HOST: rabbi Or rose
Rabbi Or Rose, Director of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College, will lead us in candle lighting and a kavanah from Jerusalem on the first night of Hanukkah.
Rabbi Or Rose is the founding director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College. Before assuming this position in 2016, he worked in various administrative and teaching capacities at Hebrew College for over a decade, including serving as a founding faculty member and associate dean for Informal Education of the Rabbinical School. Rabbi Rose was also one of the creators of CIRCLE, The Center for Interreligious & Community Leadership Education, cosponsored by Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School (2007-2017) and has taught for Hebrew College’s Me’ah Classic program.
In addition to his work at Hebrew College, Rose has taught for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, The Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and in a variety of other academic, religious, and civic contexts throughout North America, and in Asia, Europe, and Israel.
A Conversation with Israeli Changemakers Shir Nosatzki and Hanan Alsanah
Please join us for an inspiring evening with Israeli change agents Shir Nosatzki and Hanan Alsanah. In the aftermath of 10/7, Nosatzki and Alsanah joined forces to establish a shared volunteer-led Arab and Jewish center, which provides hundreds of humanitarian relief parcels of food and other crucial equipment every week to Jewish and Arab families in Israel who were harmed by the hostilities.
The Center echoes the ever-growing importance of the message that Arabs and Jews in Israel are not only partners in pain and loss, but also in the efforts to rebuild the country after the traumatic events of October 7. It has become a beacon of light, trust, hope, and solidarity between the two communities striving for a safe and peaceful future in Israel.
Shir Nosatzki has been a prominent civil society leader and changemaker for over a decade. She was one of the leaders of the 2011 Israeli social justice protests—the largest mass protest in the country at the time. Since January 2023, Shir has been one of the organizers of the weekly protests, the largest and most sustained mass protest movement ever to take place in Israel. Shir is also the Co-Founder and Director of Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?—an Israeli NGO advancing Jewish-Arab political partnership. Its creative and provocative social media campaigns have reached millions. Nosatzki won the Dror Prize for Social Change, was elected by The Marker newspaper as one of the most influential people on social media in Israel, and by Maariv newspaper as an emerging young leader, and is today the recipient of the NIF’s 2023 Guardian of Democracy prize.
Hanan Alsanah is a Bedouin mother of 4 and a lawyer working with Itach-Maaki – Women Lawyers for Social Justice. She has been working for women’s rights for the past two decades, with emphasis on Bedouin women’s empowerment. She is an activist and social entrepreneur and holds a Bachelor of Laws (LL.M.) degree. She has worked in the Negev’s unrecognized Bedouin villages, as co-director of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality and director of education and community development at Sidreh organization, and has established the first women’s community center in an unrecognized village in the Negev. In 2005, Alsanah was the first Bedouin woman representative at the UN’s CEDAW committee, advocating against gender discrimination, leading to the publication of a report on Bedouin women regarding matrimonial law, employment, housing and home demolitions.She has also recently been selected to head the women’s council of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel.
Please join to celebrate the 2023-2024 Dignity Project Fellows on March 3 at Hebrew College in Newton, MA. Fellows will share insights and reflections from their interreligious and cross-cultural journey together.
This fellowship program is designed to train 20 outstanding high school sophomores, juniors and seniors from Greater Boston to serve as interreligious and cross-cultural leaders, with the capacity to engage the diversity of our city (and broader society) with thoughtfulness, skill, and care.
The celebratory gathering will include music, dance, writing, visual art, storytelling and reflection on our core values of hospitality, empathy, humility, authenticity, and interconnection.
We look forward to inviting you and your families, friends, and teachers into the unique community we have built together. All ages are welcome to this community event.
This year’s topic, “A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century,” will be delivered by Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Viterbi Family Endowed Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies, & Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA.
For centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. When 20th century wars changed the borders around them, the Levys were transformed from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members spread out from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. Whole branches were nearly eradicated in the Holocaust. Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the family’s correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe.
Our Speaker
Prize-winning historian of Sephardic Jewry, Sarah Abrevaya Stein serves as Director of the Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies, and Professor of History at UCLA. She is the author and editor of ten award-winning books including Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (2019) and Wartime North Africa: A Documentary History, 1934-1950 (2022).
Registration
This year’s lecture will be on Zoom and is free.
JGSGB Members
Members of the JGSGB need not register. They will receive the Zoom link automatically on the morning of the program.
Non-members Click here to receive the Zoom link. If you do not receive an email with the link to the program within 15 minutes, please check your spam folder.
Beyond the news and disturbing images of college campuses riven by conflict, we must also consider the question, “How are the kids doing?” Join Rabbinical School alumni Rabbi Getzel Davis `13, Campus Rabbi for Harvard Hillel, and Rabbi Seth Wax `13, Jewish Chaplain and Williams College Jewish Association advisor at Williams College, in conversation about how Jewish college students are managing during this stressful time and the ways they are being supported.
About the Instructors
Rabbi Getzel Davis `13 received his Bachelor’s Degree from Brandeis University and his rabbinical ordination from Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, where he also received a Masters in Jewish Education. He recently took on the role of Campus Rabbi at Harvard Hillel after serving there for ten years as a rabbi, educator, and a Harvard University Chaplain. He is also the advisor for the Student Conservative Minyan, teaches regular classes, and counsels students, faculty, and community members. Getzel loves teaching Hebrew College Open Circle Jewish Learning classes and has a certificate in Family Systems Therapy through Therapy Training Boston
Rabbi Seth Wax grew up in the Boston area and has been on a search that has brought him through Jewish communities and Buddhist monasteries to Harvard Divinity School and the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College before coming to Williams College in the summer of 2017. He has a special interest in exploring how to live a meaningful, engaged life that is infused with learning, contemplation, community, and deep interfaith engagement. Before coming to Williams, he was the rabbi at Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights, NY.
Hebrew College’s new Soul Sounds Series brings master Jewish musicians from the Boston area and around the world for intimate musical conversations at Hebrew College. Part concert, part participatory singing, part prayer.
For our first program, we are pleased to welcome musician and prayer artist Yahala Lachmish from Kehillat Zion in Jerusalem.
Meet the Musician: Yahala Lachmish
Yahala Lachmish is a musician, cantor and payytanit, singer, conductor and actress. She holds a B.A in Composition from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and is co-head of the Sephardic track of the Ashira Tehilot Program for Musicians and Cantors at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem.
Yahala has been on stage since childhood and now performs as a solo artist, in various ensembles (Tandu, Tahrir, Voca Shabbat and more) and with orchestras. She is musical director and co-head of Prayer in Jerusalem’s Zion community, lectures and leads services at Midreshet Beit Prat (previously known as Ein Prat), teaches Biblical trope and leads workshops on piyyutim (Jewish liturgical poems.)
tonight’s HOST: rabbi Or rose
Rabbi Getzel Davis `13 received his Bachelor’s Degree from Brandeis University and his rabbinical ordination from 
Rabbi Seth Wax grew up in the Boston area and has been on a search that has brought him through Jewish communities and Buddhist monasteries to Harvard Divinity School and the 
Hebrew College’s new Soul Sounds Series brings master Jewish musicians from the Boston area and around the world for intimate musical conversations at Hebrew College. Part concert, part participatory singing, part prayer.
Yahala Lachmish is a musician, cantor and payytanit, singer, conductor and actress. She holds a B.A in Composition from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and is co-head of the Sephardic track of the Ashira Tehilot Program for Musicians and Cantors at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem.
