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Guest Speaker Page!

Mishkon's Adult Education Committee has been working hard to bring a diverse group of scholars, authors, professors, local community members, and all-around smart people to its guest speaker program.

Watch live below or on our YouTube channel for this and more, including livestreams and all previous Guest Speaker sessions!

Recent Guest Speakers at Mishkon - View On-Demand Below

Guest Speaker Rabbi David Stein

Tribalism and the Jewish Experience

Tribalism is the drive to divide human populations into “us” versus “them”. It is a thread that has run through the fabric of Jewish life since biblical times.

This Zoom conversation with Rabbi Dr. David E. S. Stein will take account of relatively recent scientific findings about tribalism as a fluid part of human nature, and how that understanding can shed light on topics of abiding interest to Jews: the Tanakh’s stories and laws, Middle East politics, the cyclical nature of antisemitism, and more. In our discussion, we will look for the rays of hope among the often-overcast sky.

Dr. Nili Alon Amit

Happiness and Well-Being in Jewish Literature

Dr. Nili Alon Amit will explore the concept of happiness or well-being in the Bible up to Israel's pre-state pioneer poets. She will lead us through a historical overview that includes medieval Jewish writings, Kabbalah, and Spinoza. She will reveal how the quest for transcendent knowledge while living a stable life on the ground stands at the core of the human search for happiness or well-being.

Yom HaShoah Program with Dr. Nili Alon Amit

Suitcase of Memory

Mishkon's Preschool and Adult Education Committee hosted a Yom HaShoah presentation by Dr. Nili Alon Amit titled Suitcases of Memory. Dr. Amit is a speaker from the Holocaust Education Center at StandWithUs. She explored how antisemitism can infiltrate education and discussed thoughtful approaches to Holocaust education for young children.

Irvin Ungar

Injustice Illuminated: The Hagaddah and the Nazi Resistance Art of Arthur Szyk

This illustrated presentation pays tribute to the memory of European Jewry through the art of Arthur Szyk, the leading artist for Jewish rescue in America during the Holocaust.

The talk discussed Szyk's famous Haggadah and demonstrates how the artist saw Hitler as the new Pharaoh and the Nazis as the new Egyptians who had come to annihilate his people.

Rabbi Ilana Grinblat

What Pain Teaches us

Rabbi Ilana Grinblat discussed "What Pain Teaches Us: Spiritual Lessons From Two Years of Anguish." How do we heal our bodies, minds, and souls? How can we keep our hopes up when we feel despair? Rabbi Grinblat spoke about her own experience when what was supposed to be a minor medical procedure went awry.

She is the rabbi of Ahavat Torah in Los Angeles and Temple Har Shalom in ldyllwild. Rabbi Grinblat, the author of four books, was ordained at the American Jewish University in 2001 and taught Midrash there for 16 years.

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Philip Terman

Philip Terman read from his new book, The Whole Mishpocha, as well as other poems, on Friday, January 17.

Philip Terman's most recent books of poetry are The Whole Mishpocha (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press, 2024). He co-directs the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo. Terman conducts and coaches poetry workshops.

Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba

The Jews of Uganda

Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba, a proud former Mishkonian, left corporate treasury management to follow her passion for philanthropy and impact making. She is the executive director and co-founder of Tikvah Chadasha Uganda, which engages Jewish communities in the United States and Uganda to work for gender justice, disability access, and educational opportunity as human rights.

Shoshana was recently named by the non-profit organization Elluminate as one of 10 Jewish women entrepreneurial leaders included in The Collective, the organization’s leadership program.

Darrell Blocker

Mishkon member Darrell Blocker, former CIA/USAF Intelligence Officer, will give us an update on the security situation in Israel (December 2023).

He spent a 32-year career in the U.S. Intelligence Community, including 28 years in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after submitting a 1500 word essay on a newly-formed jihadist group known today as Hamas as a part of his CIA employment application.

Darrell retired as senior CIA executive and was awarded the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal in August 2019. He is a subject-matter expert on the Islamic Republic of Iran, counterterrorism, and North Korea, and he worked for six consecutive presidential administrations (Reagan to Trump).

Johanna Drucker

Inventing the Alphabet

UCLA Professor Johanna Drucker will join us for a Zoom presentation on the history of the alphabet. Her recent book, Inventing the Alphabet, analyzes the field of alphabet studies from antiquity to the present.

Her talk will include discussion of mystical and Kabbalistic speculations, antiquarian collections, excavations and discoveries on the presumed Exodus route, and the study of Semitic languages and cultures.