Articles

National Scholar Six Month Report June 1-November 30, 2013

To our members and friends

All of our educational programs and projects continue apace. I sent out my six-month summary last month, and here are some upcoming programs and projects for January:

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals has been co-sponsoring my ten-part series of weekly classes with Lincoln Square Synagogue in the First Book of Samuel (68th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan). Ten Wednesdays from 7:15-8:15 pm from January 29-April 2. Registration for the entire course costs $150, or it costs $20 per class if you register in advance/$25 at the door per class. You can register at lss.org/RabbiAngel.

Some other teaching highlights from February include:

National Scholar One Year Report June 1, 2013—May 31, 2014

Rabbi Hayyim Angel National Scholar, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals [email protected] jewishideas.org

September, 2014

To our members and friends, As we approach the New Year, we look forward to another robust season of educational programming. Here are some of the major highlights thus far in place, and more will continue to develop throughout the year. I will be the Rabbinic Scholar at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City (85th Street between Park and Lexington Avenue) for the coming year. This will involve eight Shabbatot in the KJ community, as well as High Holy Day sermons to their Sephardic minyan on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.

The Kosher Bookworm
The Study of Bible Commentary--Fascinating
by Alan Jay Gerber

This past week the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst hosted one of America's
leading interpreters of the Bible text and commentaries, Rabbi Hayyim Angel.
Rabbi Angel's presentments that Shabbat to a total of over 700 attendees was
both impressive as to their attentiveness of the listeners as well as to the
comprehensiveness of the content of his message. As reflected in his literary
output over the past decade Rabbi Angel's message is to parse the inner workings
of the text of the holy writ, to define to "amcha" the methodology of peshat and
derash, so as to enable the average layperson to better understand the basic

Rabino Alfredo Goldschmidt of Bogota, Colombia, describes his rabbinic work

Israel’s new political reality—with the two main Ultra-Orthodox or Haredi political parties, the Sephardic-based Shas party and the Ashkenazi-based United Torah Judaism, inside the government won’t help the next generation of Haredi young people—in fact, on the contrary, it will perpetuate a broken system. While Shas and United Torah Judaism have negotiated financial windfalls for their constituencies, as well as a pull-back on the demand that Ultra-Orthodox young men serve in the Israeli Defense Force, this old style of conducting business could be harmful to our community’s young people.

The Kosher Bookworm
Pirkei Avot As An Intellectual Challenge
by Alan Jay Gerber

With Shavuot now behind up, we once again commence our learning of Pirkei Avot starting with the first chapter. Thus, it is most opportune to bring to your attention a new commentary by a former classmate of mine at Yeshiva University and the Director of The Institute For Jewish Ideas and Ideals, Rabbi Marc Angel. This commentary entitled, "The Koren Pirkei Avot" features a translation by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and a publisher's preface by Matthew Miller. In this preface Miller asks and answers the following question:

May, 2015

To our members and friends, I hope you are all well.

As summer approaches, we still have several important upcoming Institute programs in store:

On Sunday, June 7, from 10:00am-1:00pm, I will be running our second symposium, co-sponsored by Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan: “Extremely Religious without Religious Extremism: Perspectives within Jewish Tradition.” This symposium will feature three talks: