January 17, 2008           Thursday, 7:30 pm
Israel Naturally
Speaker: Michal Strutin, Author and Librarian

It’s no accident that Israel has been the center of strife for so many millennia. It’s the connecting point for three continents. Location, location, location also makes Israel one of the most biologically diverse—and beautiful—spots on earth. Take a photographic tour around natural Israel, from the vast Negev Desert and its ruby-colored Eilat Mountains, to the lush, stream-fed preserves of northern Galil.

Travel and environmental writer Michal Strutin will also weave in how Torah and its commentaries taught concern for nature, and will touch on how modern-day Israel is working to honor those concerns. Book sales and signing will follow the lecture.

About the Speaker:
Michal Strutin’s eight books include “Discovering Natural Israel,” two volumes of “Smithsonian Guides to Natural America,” and the prize-winning “Places of Grace: the Natural Landscapes of the American Midwest.” Formerly an editor at Outside and National Parks magazines, Strutin has written for numerous national newspapers and magazines.
A recent South Bay resident and Beth David member, she is also the science librarian at Santa Clara University. Read more about Michal
and her books at www.michalstrutin.com.

February 7, 2008           Thursday, 7:30 pm
The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch
Speaker: Sue Fishkoff, Journalist

They stand on street corners and ask whether you’re Jewish. They light giant Hanukkah menorahs, teach lunch-n-learn sessions on Wall Street, hold free Passover Seders in Nepal and Shanghai, and raise more than a billion dollars a year to fund it all. What motivates the Chabad shluchim, the 5,000 emissaries in more than 70 countries who devote their lives
to encouraging Jews to live more observant lives? How has this hassidic sect become so influential? Above all, how have they managed to attract so many Reform and Conservative Jews?

Sue Fishkoff spent a year and a half traveling across North America, living with Chabad shluchim from Alaska to Boca Raton. She will share some of her adventures, and the insights she gained into how Chabad is filling an emotional and spiritual niche among so many non-observant Jews, and what the rest of the Jewish world can learn from that. Book sales and signing will follow the lecture.

About the Speaker:
Sue Fishkoff is a reporter and editor for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, focusing on American Jewish identity. She is a former staff writer for
the Jerusalem Post, including two years as the paper’s New York correspondent, and is a regular freelancer for national publications including Hadassah Magazine, Reform Judaism and Moment. “The Rebbe’s Army” (Schocken, 2003) is her first book. And no, she is not
a Lubavitcher—although she did put up a mezzuzah for the first time after writing this book!

March 13, 2008              Thursday, 7:30 pm
Yiddish Protest Songs, Russian Miners’ Songs and Children’s Rhymes: On Producing a Compact Disk with the Music of S. An-sky
Speaker: Gabriella Safran, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University

S. An-sky (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, 1863-1920) is known as the author of the play The Dybbuk, but he was also an editor, an organizer, a revolutionary and an ethnomusicologist who studied the Jews of the Pale of Settlement. Stanford professor Gabriella Safran and musician Michael Alpert have recently produced a compact disk that combines wax cylinder recordings of Yiddish folk songs with new performances of the music that An-sky collected and wrote. Listen to the CD, learn about An-sky's dynamic Russian-Jewish cultural world, and find out about the joys and frustrations of music producing.

About the Speaker:
Gabriella Safran is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Director of the Center of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University. She is the author of “Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire” (2000) and the co-editor with Steven Zipperstein of “The Worlds of S. An-sky: A Russian -Jewish Intellectual at the Turn of the Century” (2006). Currently she is writing a biography of An-sky.

April 3, 2008                  Thursday, 7:30 pm
The History of the Jews in San José
Speaker: Stephen Kinsey, History Teacher and Lecturer

From Colonial America through the 19th century, the formation of synagogues in the United States offered Jews an opportunity to maintain and expand their traditions with each other and the coming generations. The Jewish presence in Santa Clara Valley was no different. On this evening we will explore the development of the San José Jewish community in the 19th century and its further growth into the 20th century.

About the Speaker:
Stephen Kinsey and his wife, Lynne, have been members of Beth David since 1978. Stephen is a middle school history teacher. As a Trustee of the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks at the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkeley, he lectures on and leads tours to Jewish Gold Rush cemeteries.

April 28, 2008                Monday, 7:30 pm
Shanghai Experiences of a Jewish ‘Old China Hand’
Speaker: Rena Krasno, Author and former Shanghai resident

Rena's lecture reflects life in multi-cultural Shanghai intimately seen by a Jewish girl born and raised in this amazing city of adventure and international politics where Sephardi, Russian Jews, and later European refugees from Hitler rebuilt their lives. Book sales and signing will follow
the lecture.

About the Speaker:
Rena Krasno was born in Shanghai, China, in 1923. She attended the French Municipal College where she earned her Certificat d'Etudes, Brevet Superieur, Baccalaureate (Philosophy Section). She later entered the Faculty of Medicine at the Jesuit Aurora University (now called Shanghai School of Medicine #2) where she studied for 3 years during World War II. She left Shanghai in April 1949. In her professional life, Krasno worked as simultaneous interpreter for international organizations (UNESCO, ILO, FAO, Olympic Committee, and others) in Europe and Asia. Her working languages are: English and French (active), Russian and German (passive). She also speaks Hebrew and Spanish. Krasno served as Honorary Chancellor of Austria in Seoul, Republic of Korea. In 1984, Rena Krasno collaborated with Orah Elgar to produce an exhibit at the Tel Aviv Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora entitled: The Jews of Kaifeng—Chinese Jews on the Banks of the Yellow River.
This exhibit subsequently traveled to 17 cities in the United States. The author of seven books, she also has been interviewed for several video and film presentations about her experiences in Shanghai during World War II. Her most recent book, Cloud Weavers, published in 2003, was acclaimed by the Washington Post to be “a terrific collection of 23 smoothly told tales from the treasury of Chinese culture.” Two of her books, Strangers Always – A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai and Red Dragon and Blue Cap (about a Jewish boy and a Chinese boy in 12th century Kaifeng), have been translated into Chinese.