As many of you know, I am the Vice President of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, which is this year celebrating its 40th anniversary. It’s an independent educational created by the late Rabbi Joshua Haberman (under the name Foundation for Jewish Studies) in 1983 shortly after his retirement as senior rabbi of Washington Hebrew Congregation, the largest reform congregation in Washington, DC.

Rabbi Haberman, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 98, was – as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency said in his obituary – a “champion of adult Jewish education”. He was a native of Vienna, Austria, and a rabbinical student at the Vienna Jewish Theological Seminary when the Germans moved in and incorporated Austria into Nazi Germany. He was able to leave Vienna after receiving a scholarship offer from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, from which he graduated and was ordained and at which he later earned his PhD in Modern Jewish Philosophy.

Upon his retirement from WHC, a congregant (who to this day remains anonymous) gave him $1,000,000 (about $3 million in today’s money) to do with what he wanted, as long as it was connected to Judaism. Rabbi Haberman, believing that the synagogues of America in the 1980s were not doing all they should, decided to create the Institute to support and encourage adult Jewish education.
Over the past forty years, the Institute has done this in many ways, sponsoring classes, lectures, retreats, and trips among other things. With the coming of the COVID pandemic in 2020, we had to cancel all of our live programming (typically done in partnership with local congregations or Jewish organizations) and put ourselves on-line. By doing that, we discovered to our surprise, that our normal attendance of about 100 at a lecture was now closer to 300 or more, and that half of our audiences were coming from places other than the greater Washington DC area.

Under the leadership of our executive director Matt Silverman, we are now in the final stages of planning our fall (and winter and spring) programming. Just to give you an idea of what lies ahead, here are some of the programs on our only somewhat tentative schedule.

1. A two lecture (and dinner) program with Former Hebrew Union College Chancellor Rabbi David Ellenson on matters of moral complexity during the Holocaust and the work of Rabbi Leo Baeck (in person only – at Washington Hebrew on September 10)
2. The Jewish aspects of the music of George Gershwin with Saul Lilienstein (on line on Sept 27)
3. Jewish perspectives on the planet and the environment (in person and on line on Oct 11)
4. The Jews of Vienna by U. of Md. Prof. Marsha Rozenblit, who is also a member of our Board of Academic Advisors (on line on Oct 18)
5. Photographic Denunciation of Jews in pre-war Nazi Germany by Julie Keresztes (on line Oct 25)
6. Jews during the Civil War in Washington DC (Adrienne DeArmas both in person and on line on Nov 9)
7. A to-be-determined textual study program on Jewish ethics (Rabbi Mira Wasserman on Nov 15 on line)
8. The Rozenwald Schools (a film and panel program on line on Dec 4)
9. A program on how the media operates in the political environment of today’s Israel (Prof. Amit Schejter of Ben Gurion University of the Negev – Dec on line.

This is probably not our full lecture program for the remainder of 2023 and somethings may change a bit, but you can see how much we do and hopefully, you will want to participate (virtually all of these programs are free) in some of them. We are already, by the way, looking to 2024, where we will present stories on the history of the Jews of Cincinnati, on the relationship between science and religion, on Jewish bioethics, on the early Iron Age in Israel and a special series of three programs being given by young scholars recommended by our Academic Advisors.

In addition to the lectures, we are sponsoring multi-session classes this fall on Jonah, the Book of Jubilees, Early translations of the Hebrew bible, Who is the real David?, and the Documentary Hypothesis (i.e., the search for the original biblical authors).

Want to find out more? Look at our spiffy website (www.habermaninstitute.org). You will not only get more complete program listings (some of these not listed yet) and registration information, but access to videos and podcasts of over 100 previous programs, as well as – believe it or not – ways to contribute money to keep us going.

Thanks for paying attention to this post. Now pay attention to the organization.