e-TiM: Online Program
e-TiM: Adventures in American Judaism II
Wednesdays, January 15 - March 19 (10 weeks)
11:00am Eastern time, 6:00pm Israel Time
January 15: The Grand Union Hotel and Its Jewish "In-Crowd"
In 1877, the prominent Jewish businessman, Joseph Seligman was refused entry to the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York. But the actions of his nemesis, Henry Hilton, had to do with more than just antisemitism. For Hilton and his hotel, Seligman's fault was he wasn't the "right type of Jew."
January 22: The "Excommunication" of Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
In the late-1980s, the Modern Orthodox rabbinical establishment launched a "heresy trial" to decide whether Rabbi Yitz Greenberg ought to be counted amongst its ranks. The fraught episode betokens the anxieties of American Orthodoxy during this pivotal period.
January 29: Herman Wouk's God
First published in 1959, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Herman Wouk's This is My God caused a sensation among Jews and non-Jews. It also called into question who was the most fitting person to represent the Jewish faith in the post-World War II era.
February 5: Sandy Koufax Revisited
In 1965, Sandy Koufax refused to pitch Game 1 of the World Series. But how this well-known episode is remembered in the American Jewish mind is different than how it played out sixty years ago.
February 12: The Great Nineteenth Century Purim Ball Revival
In the 1860s, a group of young Jews helped bring about a Jewish religious revival, first in New York, and then across North America, through a little known and little appreciated Jewish holiday: Purim.
February 19: Behind the Laughter: American Judaism and its Purim Shpiels
How did the Purim Shpiel migrate to the United States? And how did it become a fitting annual activity for otherwise-straight-laced yeshiva students? The story is a good (and funny) one.
February 26: Basketball Politics, Yarmulke Wars, and the Dynamics of Halakhic Change
In the early-1980s, two Jewish day schools in Chicago took a high school basketball league to court for the right to play basketball while adorning kippot. The testimony and judgment suggests a lot about the American Jewish expectations of external religious pride, identity, and sports.
March 5: Agunot and American Jewish Policy Making
The "chained wife" and "recalcitrant husband" is perhaps the most discussed and thorniest matter of Halakah in the American Jewish public square. The decades-long work to "solve" the issue is an important history of religious self-reflection and human rights.
March 12: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the Unorthodox Optics of Women's Talmud Study
In 1977, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik delivered the inaugural Talmud shiur at Stern College for Women. His work before and after to spearhead a democratization of Torah learning placed the Rav in a minority group. His careful arguments to support women's Talmud study reconsidered the usual language of Orthodox Judaism.
March 19: Mitzvah Merchants and the Creation of a Jewish Children's Culture
From Brachos Bees, to Gedolim Cards, the Yeshiva World has borrowed from a uniquely American-style of education to support its own children's religious growth and appreciation for religion.
