בואו
ניפגש
We miss
you.
Come learn with us, your kehillah in Jerusalem.
Five panel conversations exploring our core values featuring prominent members of the community.
We miss seeing you at Shira Hadasha and are excited to connect virtually. We look forward to seeing you in person at Shira Hadasha very soon.
Join us for a summer series of Zoom conversations featuring our kehilla’s experts.
Sign up for as many panel discussions as you would like (three are in English and two are in Hebrew). Zoom links will be provided upon registration.
Suggested donation is $18 per session or $180 for sponsorship in honor of or in memory of a loved one.
We can’t wait to see you!
Your donation is matched, thanks to two generous donors! For ever dollar you donate, we get three.
1. The 2020 Orthodox Feminist: A New Model?
Moderator: Barbara Sofer
With Professor Tova Hartman, Rabbi Daniel Sperber & Rahel Berkovits
Monday, July 27 | 20:15 Jerusalem | 1:15 pm EDT | in English
Thanks for coming!
2. קהילתיות בשעת משבר (Community in a Time of Crisis)
Moderator: Dr. Renana Ravitsky Pilzer
With Aliza Lavie & Lior Nathan
Monday, August 3 | 20:15 Jerusalem | 1:15 pm EDT | in Hebrew
Thanks for coming!
3. The Silver Linings of Virtual Communities
With Ilana Kurshan, Professor Gil Troy & Wendy Singer
Wednesday, August 5 | 20:15 Jerusalem | 1:15 pm EDT | in English
Thanks for coming!
4. Shira Hadasha Niggunim
Featuring High Holiday melodies.
Moderator: Rabbi Dr. Avital Hochstein
With David Aisenthal, David Behrman & Dr. Naomi Cohn
Thursday, August 13 | 20:15 Jerusalem | 1:15 pm EDT | in English
Thanks for coming!
5. זוגיות ושווין ובית כנסת (Who Says Relationships Can’t be Equal?)
Moderator: Dr. Ronit Irshai
With Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar & Dr. Meir Ben Shachar
Tuesday, August 18 | 20:15 Jerusalem | 1:15 pm EDT | in Hebrew
Thanks for coming!
Schedule
Please note that all sessions are at 20:15 Israel time and 1:15 pm EDT.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 | In Hebrew
זוגיות, שוויון ובית כנסת (Who Says Relationships Can’t be Equal?)
Moderator: Dr. Ronit Irshai
With Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar & Dr. Meir Ben Shachar
Monday, August 3, 2020 | In Hebrew
קהילתיות בשעת משבר (Community in a Time of Crisis)
Moderator: Dr. Renana Ravitsky Pilzer
With Aliza Lavie & Lior Nathan
Monday, July 27, 2020 | In English
The 2020 Orthodox Feminist: A New Model?
Moderator: Barbara Sofer
With Dr. Tova Hartman, Rabbi Daniel Sperber & Rahel Berkovits
Thursday, August 13, 2020 | In English
Shira Hadasha Niggunim
Moderator: Rabbi Dr. Avital Hochstein
With David Aisenthal, David Behrman & Dr. Naomi Cohn
Wednesday, August 5, 2020 | In English
The Silver Linings of Virtual Communities
With Ilana Kurshan, Gil Troy & Wendy Singer
Our Featured Speakers
David Aisenthal is a software engineer and has been an active member of Shita Hadasha since its founding.
David Behrman hails from Sunderland and has a BA and MA from UCL and Cambridge University in history. In 1992, he and his wife made aliya to Israel. They live in Jerusalem with their four children. David teaches at the Masorti and Horev high schools in Jerusalem, and has also taught on a teacher exchange program at the Ramaz School in NYC. He has been a guide in Poland for Camp Ramah since 1997, and has guided groups for March of the Living and for the Ramaz School. Since the age of 19, the spiritual highlight of his year has been leading services at a synagogue in a London.
Dr. Meir Ben Shahar was born in Jerusalem. He studied and received His Ph.D. in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He teaches at the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University and Sha’anan College. His primary research interests are historical consciousness in ancient Judaism, rabbinic literature, Second Temple literature and Josephus.
Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar is a senior lecturer at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, Israel, teaching courses in research methods, communication, religion, and gender. Her doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was entitled Ultra-Orthodox Women and Mass Media in Israel – Exposure Patterns and Reading Strategies. She was a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow and a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. She worked on a study that analyses women’s cultural-religious praxes. Dr. Neriya Ben-Shahar researches the mass media from the perspectives of religion and gender. Her most recent research project addresses the tension between religious values and new technologies among Old Order Amish women and Jewish ultra-Orthodox women.
Rahel Berkovits is a senior faculty member at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where she has been teaching Mishnah, Talmud and halakha for over twenty years. Rahel lectures widely in both Israel and abroad especially on topics concerning women and Jewish law and a Jewish sexual ethic. She is the Halakhic Editor and a writer for Hilkhot Nashim the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s Halakhic Source-guide Series, recently published by Maggid Books. Rahel is one of the founding members of Shirah Hadasha, and serves on their halakha committee. In June 2015, Rahel received Rabbinic Ordination from Rabbis Herzl Hefter and Daniel Sperber.
Professor Tova Hartman scholar and social entrepreneur, is the Dean of Humanities at the Kiryat Ono Academic College. She was formerly Professor of Gender Studies and Education at Bar Ilan University, specializing in gender and religion, and gender and psychology. She is the author of a book on Jewish and Catholic mothers, titled Appropriately Subversive, as well as a book on the crossroads of Jewish Tradition and modern feminism, titled Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Women’s Studies in 2007. Hartman most recently authored Are You Not a Man Of God? Devotion, Betrayal and Social Criticism in Jewish Tradition. She is a founder of Kehillat Shira Hadasha.
Rabbi Dr. Avital Hochstein is President of Hadar in Israel, she is the co-author of Women out – Women in: The Place of Women in Midrash (Yedioth Ahronoth 2008), and one of the founders of Kehilat Shirah Hadashah in Jerusalem.
Dr. Ronit Irshai is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and lecturer in the gender studies program at Bar Ilan University. She was a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School during the academic year of 2007-2008. Her research focuses on religious feminism, gender and Jewish Law (halakhah), philosophy of halakhah, bioethics, and feminist jurisprudence and its relation to Jewish law. Her first book: Fertility and Jewish Law – Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature was published by Brandeis University Press in 2012.
Ilana Kurshan is the author of If All the Seas Were Ink, published in 2017 by St. Martin’s Press. She has translated books of Jewish interest by Ruth Calderon, Benjamin Lau, and Micah Goodman, as well as novels, short stories, and children’s picture books. Her book Why Is This Night Different From Other Nights was published by Schocken in 2005. She is a regular contributor to Lilith Magazine, where she is the Book Reviews Editor, and her writing has appeared in The Forward, The World Jewish Digest, Hadassah, Nashim, Zeek, Kveller, and Tablet. Kurshan is a graduate of Harvard University (BA, summa cum laude, History of Science) and Cambridge University (M.Phil, English literature).
Dr. Aliza Lavie is the Chairperson of The Herzl Center and Museum. She is a public figure, lecturer and author. She served as a Member of Knesset from 2013-2019 in the 19th and 20th Knessets and chaired the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. Her public activities focus on issues relating to social and gender equality, religion and state, strengthening the connection between Israel and the Diaspora and cementing the image of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. Lavie is a senior lecturer in communications and one of the leading figures in the discussion on Judaism and Culture. She strives to return connection and unity to the Israeli discourse and to lessen the tribe mentality. In her books, Lavie highlights the role of women in Jewish History and attempts to take from the past practical insights to the present reality and to bring them to the public domain. Her book, Jewish Women’s Prayers, is an international best seller and won the National Jewish Book Award.
Lior Nathan is the Deputy Cabinet Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat of the Prime Minister’s Office, Jerusalem. His responsibilities include: assisting the Cabinet Secretary in running cabinet meetings; coordinating the work of the central ministerial committees; responsible for the ties between the Cabinet and the Knesset; responsible for the Secretariat’s human resources.
Rabbi David Levin-Kruss is a Jerusalem-based teacher of Torah. David is director of Jewish Education for JDC-Europe, adjunct faculty at the Pardes Institute and founder of My Open Book, a methodology that uses Jewish and general texts combined with life-coaching techniques to achieve personal breakthroughs. David is moderating the panel in a personal capacity. Levin-Kruss holds a B.A. and Teachers’ Certification in English Literature and Jewish Thought from Hebrew University. He also served in the IDF's Spokesperson's Unit, and received rabbinic ordination from the Joseph and Gwendolyn Straus Rabbinical Seminary. He is a graduate of the Jerusalem Coaching Institute.
Barbara Sofer is the Israel Director of Public Relations and Communications for Hadassah. She is a prize-winning journalist and author who lectures frequently to Jewish and general audiences. She speaks about Israel, Judaism, women's issues, and spirituality. She is a popular columnist in the Jerusalem Post, a journalist and novelist. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Women’s Day, Reader’s Digest, and Parent’s to name a few. She has also served as contributing editor for Inside Magazine and editor of Ohr Torah Stone Newsbriefs. Barbara is the author of Kids Love Israel, Israel Loves Kids, Shalom Haver, Goodbye-Friend (Karben) written with Rachel Rabin, and The Thirteenth Hour, a novel, which received wide critical acclaim, published by Dutton, Penguin and Keter Publishing, in Hebrew, and llan Ramon, Israel’s Space Hero, (Lerner) a children’s biography of the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. As the liaison from Hadassah’s projects to the foreign press, which included such top tier media programs as Sixty Minutes and Nightline, she contributed to the CNBC program Jerusalem ER, which won a 2003 Emmy Award. The positive press exposure was a key factor in Hadassah Medical Organization’s nomination for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. Her most recent book, with Holocaust survivor Rena Quint, is A Daughter of Many Mothers.
Rabbi Daniel Sperber is a British-born Israeli academic and Modern Orthodox rabbi. He is a professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and an expert in classical philology, history of Jewish customs, Jewish art history, Jewish education, and Talmudic studies.
Dr. Renana Ravitsky Pilzer is Educational Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Center for Israeli-Jewish Identity. She works to define the program’s educational direction and the integration of the Institute’s philosophical-pluralistic approach in the program’s curricula and teaching. Renana has studied and worked at the Institute for many years in different capacities. Among her positions, she served as the co-director of the Melamdim School for Teacher Training, and for the past several years as the head of the Beit Midrash at the Midrashiya Girls High School, leading an experiment to develop the school’s Orthodox feminist curriculum. She continues to fill roles at the Midrashiya and as a Kogod Center research fellow.Renana’s academic interest focuses on Jewish thought and Midrash. She received her doctorate in Midrash and Gender in the Bar Ilan University Gender Studies Program. Renana is a graduate of and former teacher in the Elul Beit Midrash and is one of the founders and leaders of Kehilat Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem.
Wendy Singer is Start-Up Nation Central’s Executive Director, following a 23-year career at AIPAC. During the last 16 years, Ms. Singer served as Director of AIPAC’s Israel Office, and was previously a registered lobbyist for AIPAC on Capitol Hill. Singer also worked for five years as a legislative aide in the House and the Senate.
Professor Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and a popular commentator on politics and other issues. He is Professor of History at McGill University. Troy is the author of nine books, and the editor of two. His latest book, written with Natan Sharansky, called Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People has just been published. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, and other major media outlets. He writes regular columns for The Daily Beast and The Jerusalem Post.
Dr. Naomi Cohn Zentner is an ethnomusicologist interested in the intersections between Ashkenazi music and the Israeli sphere, blended prayer services, and domestic musical traditions. She is the head of the MA program in Jewish music at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. Last year she was a visiting scholar at Oxford University's Centre of Hebrew and Judaic Studies as part of an Advanced Seminar on Early modern Jewish music. She is also a lecturer at the cantorial department of Hebrew Union College and is head of the Ashkenazi track at "Ashira Tehilot" program for training prayer leaders at the Schechter Rabbinic Seminary.
Sponsors
We are deeply greatful to all those who have sponsored Shiurim.
General Sponsors
Debra Kaplan
Joel and Sandy Meyers
Saul Singer
The 2020 Orthodox Feminist: A New Model?
Diane Schneider – In memory of my brother, Jerry Schneider גרשון ברוך בו שמואל ויהודית, a lifelong champion of women’s rights
Esther Abramowitz – In loving memory of my Abba Stanley Abramowitz who loved Shira Hadasha; Lorraine Skupsky
Steven and Judy Klitsner – In memory of Irving Freistat z'l
מוריה וירון צ'רקה – לזכר הסבתא והסבא שושנה ומשה אבי-שלום יודקוביץ' ז"ל
קהילתיות בשעת משבר (Community in a Time of Crisis)
דפנה ברבן – לזכר 350 מעפילי ספינת מפקורה שהוטבעה בט'ז אב 5.8.44 על ידי צוללת גרמנית בדרכם לארץ, וטבעו בשנית בתהום הנשייה של הזכרון הלאומי. ביניהם ניספו דודי ,וילי כ"ץ וארוסתו יהודית גוטרר, יהי זכרם ברוך. (מצ"ב דף מדפנה עם יותר פרטים על הסיפור)
Jen and Esteban Klor – In loving memory of Jen’s grandmother, Ruth Cohen, z”l
The Silver Linings of Virtual Communities
Avigayil Bar Asher and Shalhevet Bar Asher – In memory of our grandfather, Rabbi Mendel (Chaim Menachem) Lewittes, whose yahrtzeit is on Tu B’Av
Shari Mendes – In memory of Vera and Martin Greenwald, our parents, who had the vision the plant seeds in this neighborhood for us
Lori Gilman – In honor of Robbie Fein’s 65th Birthday
Shira Hadasha Niggunim
Henry Wertheimer – In memory his wife, Ruth Wertheimer z"l
Tova Hartman and Marc Brettler – In honor of the Shira Hadasha Gabaim
David, Karin, and Lielle Shmueli-Kaufman – In memory of Ita Kaufman z"l who loved the singing at Shira Chadasha
FAQs
1. What is Shira Hadasha? We are a community of observant men and women in Jerusalem who came together to create a unique synagogue experience that values the rich textures of communal singing and encourages participation in all parts of our community. We are deeply committed to four core values: Halacha, Feminism, meaningful tefilah experiences and Kehillah. We are pleased that so many people continue to be inspired by our services, and we are honored that congregations in Israel and around the world have been established based on the model and principles of Shira Hadasha.
2. Is there a way for me to get involved beyond this? We would love to hear your ideas for programs, shiurim, fundraising and community outreach and would love for you to initiate and/or be involved in these programs in Israel and/or abroad. Please be in touch with us: office@shirahadasha.org.
3. How do I register and/or donate? See the registration form and donation options below.
4. What are the donations going toward? Donations will go toward helping members in need during this difficult time, helping to keep Shira Hadasha afloat financially during this period and continuing our programming and community outreach.
5. Have more questions? Please contact us: office@shirahadasha.org.
Register
Please fill out the below form to register for our online sessions. Everything is free, with a suggested donation of $18 per session. You can also sponsor one or more sessions starting at $180 in honor or in memory of someone close to you.
Please share with your friends and family. We can’t wait to see you with us online!
If you have any trouble registering, please contact us at shiurim2020@shirahadasha.org.
Make a Donation
Your contribution makes a difference and is appreciated greatly by our community. Donations will go toward helping members in need during this difficult time, helping to keep Shira Hadasha afloat financially during this period, and continuing our programming and community outreach. You can also sponsor one or more sessions starting at $180 in honor or in memory of someone close to you.
Feel free to donate in shekels or US dollars. Both are tax deductible. USD donations are processed by American Friends of Shira Hadasha (tax ID 27-1329273), a 501(c)3 non-profit, registered with the IRS. Shekel donations are processed by Shira Hadasha (tax ID 580392082), a 46(א) non-profit, registered with the Israeli Government.
Suggested donation is $18 per session or $180 for sponsorship in honor of or in memory of a loved one.
If you have any trouble making your donation, please contact us at shiurim2020@shirahadasha.org.
Fill out the form below to make a suggested donation for one or more sessions.
If you have any trouble making your donation, please contact us at shiurim2020@shirahadasha.org.
Fill out the form below to make a suggested donation for one or more sessions.
If you have any trouble making your donation, please contact us at shiurim2020@shirahadasha.org.
Click the donate button to donate securely is USD via PayPal, where you will be able to enter your preferred donation amount. You can also make your donation monthly, ensuring your ongoing support.
If you have any trouble making your donation, please contact us at shiurim2020@shirahadasha.org.
Click the donate button to donate securely in Israeli Shekels via PayPal, where you will be able to enter your preferred donation amount. You can also make your donation monthly, ensuring your ongoing support.
If you have any trouble making your donation, please contact us at shiurim2020@shirahadasha.org.
Thank you for your support!