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“Judaism as a Civilization”, The Hanukkah Gift to the Jewish People and World that Keeps on Giving

Sunday, December 10, 2023 - 3:00 pm EST

Our second of a three-part series in honor of the 40th Yahzeit of Mordecai Kaplan and the 90th anniversary of Judaism as a Civilization!

In appreciation of the enduring impact of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s thought and writings on our Jewish Community, we invite you to join us on Sunday, December 10 for a webinar, “Judaism as a Civilization”, The Hanukkah Gift to the Jewish People and World that Keeps on Giving, cosponsored by The Kaplan Center, Reconstructing Judaism , the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, and the Jewish Publication Society.

This webinar will feature Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., Dr. Elias Sacks, and will be moderated by Rabbi Jeffrey Schein.

Learn more about this program from the speakers.

Meet The Speakers

Rabbi Deborah Waxman,

THE FIRST WOMAN RABBI to head a Jewish congregational union and a Jewish seminary, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., became president and chief executive officer of Reconstructing Judaism in 2014. Since then, she has drawn on her training as a rabbi and historian to be the Reconstructionist movement’s leading voice in the public square.

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Dr. Elias Sacks is the Director of The Jewish Publication Society. Previously, he served as Director of the Program in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (2017), as well as articles on medieval and modern thinkers including Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Jacob Taubes.
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Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Schein, the Kaplan Center’s Executive Director and Senior Education Consultant, is also currently director of “Text Me: Judaism and Technology,” a joint project of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland and The Covenant Foundation.  He was previously director of the Adolescent Initiative and Special Projects for the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland.  For twenty years prior to that, he was a professor and director of the Education Department at the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies in Cleveland.  He also served as the senior consultant to the “Lekhu Lakhem” project of the Mandel Jewish Center, a major initiative to change the Jewish character of eighteen JCC camps across North America through the professional development of their directors.  For seventeen years he served as the education director and then senior consultant for Jewish education to the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, the congregational organization of the Reconstructionist movement.  He also served on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for nine years.

The Reconstructionist Network

Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement

Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis

Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues

Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives

The Reconstructionist Network