The States of Jewish Belief

Thursday, March 29 (7:30pm)
Leventhal-Sidman JCC
333 Nahanton Street, Newton, MA 02459
Contact Phone Number: 617-965-5226

JCC member, students and seniors: $12; Nonmember: $15

Hot Buttons, Cool Conversations lecture series, with Art Green, Allan Nadler and Avi Shafran. Moderated by Leonard Fein.

Jewish beliefs—from the most fervently Orthodox to the determinedly secular—are magnificently inconsistent. Is there a core Jewish belief system? If so, who create it, and who is responsible for maintaining it? And how does the system attach to individual Jewish identity construction and observance?

Art Green, Rector of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, is recognized as one of the world’s preeminent authorities on Jewish thought and spirituality. His most recent book is Radical Judaism, published in 2010 by Yale University Press.

Allan Nadler, Director of the Drew University Jewish Studies Program, has served as rabbi of Canada’s largest and oldest traditional synagogue, Shaar Hashomayim and of Boston’s Charles River Park Synagogue. He is widely recognized for his critical analysis of Hasidic Judaism. He is currently completing a book on heresy in traditional Jewish theology.

Avi Shafran is Agudath Israel of America’s Director of Public Affairs and editor-at-large of Ami Magazine, a weekly publication serving the Orthodox Jewish community. He has written widely for the Jewish and general press and is the author of several books including Migrant Soul, the true story of a mixed-race convert to Judaism.
Hot Buttons, Cool Conversations is conceived and produced in collaboration with Leonard Fein (pictured), who will moderate each forum. The founding editor of Moment Magazine and Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, Fein’s 900+ essays, articles and columns have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation and The Jewish Daily Forward.