FROM OUR LIVING ROOM TO YOURS
Take time out to learn something new, be inspired and stay connected to your community.
Your registration fees help to fund these programs and Commonpoint Queens’ services to the community.
Registration required for each event. Registration is now open! This year, we are excited to offer virtual and in-person speakers.
Upcoming 2022-23 Speakers:
Jen Maxfield
More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories
Monday, May 15, 2023 – 7:00 p.m.
In person at Commonpoint Queens Sam Field Center
Based on her two-decade career as a local TV news reporter in New York City, Jen Maxfield takes readers on a dramatic ride-along with her in the live truck, from the moment she gets the call to head to breaking news, to arriving at chaotic scenes, to knocking on doors of families who are grieving the loss of a loved one. Maxfield revisits ten memorable stories, describing in heartpounding detail how the events unfolded, through the eyewitness perspectives and her own. From a young man who lost both legs in a ferry crash, to an endurance athlete with Stage-Four lung cancer; from a fifth grader on a doomed field trip, to an Ivy League undergrad sentenced to decades in prison, Maxfield introduces readers to unforgettable people who will inspire you with their hopefulness, even when confronting life’s greatest heartbreaks. Returning to the families years – even decades– after their stories were featured on the news gives Maxfield an opportunity to ask the burning question she had always pondered: what happened after the live truck pulled away?
For more information, contact [email protected].
Previous 2022-23 Speakers
Debby Applegate
Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age
Tuesday, September 13, 2022 – 12:00 p.m.
In person at Commonpoint Queens Sam Field Center
Click here to purchase the book
Madam is the biography of Polly Adler (1900−1962), the most infamous and influential madam in Jazz Age New York. Her 1953 memoir, A House is Not A Home, sold 2 million books and became a 1963 movie starring Shelley Winters. More than a biography, this is a colorful and unusual history of Jewish life told through the perspective of a “good Jewish girl” from a Russian shtetl who immigrated to Brooklyn, and rose to become “the Female Al Capone” and one of the most renowned Jewish-American women in the 20th century. Her brothels were underworld salons that catered to everyone from the Vanderbilts and the Rockfellers to Walter Winchell, Frank Sinatra, Desi Arnaz, the Algonquin Roundtable, Dutch Schultz and Meyer Lansky, and, it was rumored, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Michael Twitty
KOSHERSOUL
Thursday, September 15, 2022 – 12:30 p.m.
FREE – click here to register
Join Jewish Book Council and best-selling author Michael W. Twitty in a conversation about identity, food, culture, and intersectionality. Koshersoul is a thought-provoking memoir that looks at the creation of African-Jewish foods as a result of migration and the diaspora. Michael Twitty will be joined by Adeena Sussman, food writer and author of the upcoming book Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals From My Table To Yours.
Jessica Nordell
The End of Bias: How We Eliminate Unconscious Bias and Create a More Just World
Monday, December 5th at 12pm**
Virtual
The End of Bias is a transformative, groundbreaking exploration into how we can eradicate unintentional bias and discrimination, the great challenge of our age. Unconscious bias: persistent, unintentional prejudiced behavior that clashes with our consciously held beliefs. With nuance, compassion, and ten years’ immersion in the topic, Jessica Nordell weaves gripping stories with scientific research to reveal how minds, hearts, and behaviors change. Captivating, direct, and transformative, The End of Bias: A Beginning brings good news. Biased behavior can change; the approaches outlined here show how we can begin to remake ourselves and our world.
In Partnership with JCC Association:
Zach Bodner
Jewish Leadership in the 21st Century
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 – 8:00 p.m.
Virtual – FREE
Click here to register
Join us for a virtual Jewish Leadership Forum event in partnership with the JCC Association of North America on Wednesday, November 2. Zach Bodner, President and CEO of the Oshman Family JCC and author of Why Do Jewish? A Manifesto for 21st Century Jewish Peoplehood, will discuss Jewish Leadership in the 21st Century. Zack’s book “Why Do Jewish?” addresses some of the most important questions of our time for the Jewish people….. How do I live a more meaningful life? How might I feel more connected to others, to the world around me, to the past and the future? In an era when we can choose our own identities, why might we choose to identify as Jews?
Faith Kramer
52 SHABBATS: Friday Night Dinners Inspired by a Global Jewish Kitchen
Monday, December 19th at 12pm
Virtual
52 Shabbats: Friday Night Dinners Inspired by a Global Jewish Kitchen invites everyone to honor Shabbat with a special meal on Friday evenings. It has more than 90 modern recipes (including many vegetarian options) that add flavor and meaning to the Shabbat or holiday table. Let 52 Shabbats be your guide if you have ever thought about starting, sharing, or expanding your celebration of Shabbat, or just adding to your Jewish food repertoir. The book’s many essays and stories also explore Shabbat traditions, the Jewish calendar, and the symbolism of foods in Judaism, offer descriptions of Jewish communities around the world, and investigate the global Jewish pantry.
Franki Bagdade
I Love My Kids, But I Don’t Always Like Them
Monday, January 23, 2023 – 7:00 p.m.
Virtual
Parenting challenging children successfully can present obstacles beyond the typical parent’s experience, knowledge, or imagination. Written by an expert with 20 years of experience in observation and study in the classroom and recreational programs, this book focuses on behavioral challenges in children and serves as a guide for parents on how to improve their child’s behavior. Franki Bagdade (M. Ed.), a dynamic and creative consultant skilled in problem solving and out-of-the-box solutions, provides a new approach with simple steps that establish new structures, systems, and strategies in and out of the home to empower your child take responsibility for their own behavior-and allows you to once again enjoy your child.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
Monday, February 6, 2023 – 12:00 p.m.
Virtual
The word shanda is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense 20th-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercelyguarded lies and intricate coverups woven by dozens of members of her extended family. Beginning with her own longsuppressed secret, the story spirals through the hidden lives of her parents and relatives — revealing the truth about their origins, personal traumas, marital misery, abandoned children, religious transgressions, sexual identity, radical politics, and supposedly embarrassing illnesses. While unmasking their charades and disguises, Pogrebin also showcases her family’s remarkable talent for reinvention in a narrative that is, by turns, touching, searing, and surprisingly universal.
Daniel Grunfeld
By The Grace of the Game: The Holocaust, A Basketball Legacy, and an Unprecedented American Dream
Monday, February 27, 2023 – 7:00 p.m.
Virtual
When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive. In By the Grace of the Game, Dan Grunfeld, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family, a delicately interwoven narrative that doesn’t lack in heartbreak yet remains as deeply nourishing as his grandmother’s Hungarian cooking, so lovingly described. The true improbability of the saga lies in the discovery of a game that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together a fractured Jewish family.
David Myers and Nomi Stolzenberg
American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York
Thursday, March 23, 2023 – 12:00 p.m.
Virtual
Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers have written a heavily researched, readable, and exceedingly interesting history of Kiryas Joel, the Satmar Hasidic community established in 1977 within the boundaries of upstate Monroe, New York. It was named for Joel Teitelbaum, its beloved leader, who sought to establish a community of true believers who would live, study, pray, and procreate in a Torah-true environment bereft of modern temptations. KJ has grown from a few hundred residents to nearly twenty-five thousand today, and town authorities anticipate its population will increase to nearly seventy-five thousand by 2035. Although not the first, KJ is unquestionably the most significant Jewish utopian community in America, and it is, as the title of this book implies, not merely a shtetl but an American shtetl, and its history is “an especially fascinating manifestation of American identity politics.”
In commemoration of Yom HaShoah
Tova Friedman
The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 – 12:00 p.m.
In person at Commonpoint Queens Central Queens
In this heartrending account of a child’s survival during the Holocaust, Tova Friedman, with Malcolm Brabant, chronicles the atrocities she witnessed at Auschwitz, a family secret that sheds light on the unpalatable choices Jews were forced to make to survive, and ultimately, the sources of hope and courage she and her family found to persist against all odds. A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
Previous Summer 2022 Speakers
All speakers are $8 members / $10 non-members
Mark Gerson
THE TELLING: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life
Monday, April 4, 2022 – 1:30 p.m.
Have you ever wondered that there might be something more to Passover, the Seder and in the Haggadah―something that just might hold the secrets to living the life of joy and meaning that you were intended to? Join Mark Gerson, the host of The Rabbi’s Husband podcast and renowned Jewish philanthropist, as he shows us how to make the Passover Seder the most engaging, inspiring, and important night of the Jewish year. Through his book, The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life, we learn how to love the Passover Seder! The Seder wasn’t designed to put your kids to sleep, but is meant to be an experience for families to love, treasure and remember.
Faris Cassell
THE UNANSWERED LETTER: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help
Thursday, April 28, 2022 – 12:00 p.m.
In 1939, as the Nazis closed in, Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to an American stranger who happened to share his last name, begging the American recipient of the letter for help, guidance, and hope. Decades later, Alfred’s letter ended up in the hands of Faris Cassell. Cassell is a journalist, writer and winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award for the Holocaust. Through her book, The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help, Cassell shows her determination to discover an ending to the story of Berger’s letter. Traveling across the United States as well as to Austria, the Czech Republic, Belarus, and Israel, she uncovered an extraordinary story of heart-wrenching loss and unforgettable love that endures to this day.
Ira Rosen
TICKING CLOCK: Behind the Scenes of 60 Minutes
Monday, May 23, 2022 – 1:30 p.m.
When producer Ira Rosen walked into the 60 Minutes offices in June 1980, he knew he was about to enter television history. His career catapulted him to the heights of TV journalism, breaking some of the most important stories in TV news. But behind the scenes was a war room of clashing producers, anchors, and formidable 60 Minutes figures. Two-time Peabody Award-winning writer and Emmy Award winning producer Ira Rosen reveals the intimate, untold stories of his decades at America’s most iconic news show in Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes. It’s a 60 Minutes story on 60 Minutes itself!
Based on decades of access and experience, readers are taken behind closed doors to offer an incisive look at the show that invented TV investigative journalism. Filled with surprising humor, charm, colorful detail, and unforgettable personalities that battled for prestige, credit, and the desire to scoop everyone else in the game. Rosen dives into the dynamics of top correspondents such as Diana Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Anderson Cooper as well as revelations of some of 60 Minutes’ most sensational stories. Highly entertaining, dishy, and unforgettable, Ticking Clock is a never-before-told account of the most successful news show in American history.
David Page
FOOD AMERICANA: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories Behind America’s Favorite Dishes
Monday, June 20, 2022 – 1:30 p.m.
What is American cuisine? What national menu do we share? What dishes have we chosen, how did they become “American”, and how are they likely to evolve from here? Author David Page brings us Food American: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories Behind America’s Favorite Dishes, a fascinating exploration of how America created a national cuisine from the foods of many other countries. Page is a two-time Emmy winner that changed the world of food television by creating Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Before that, as a network news producer, he traveled America and the world covering the biggest stories‚ and indulging his love for terrific food. He’s passionate, engaging, humorous, and he has fascinating stories to tell.
Food Americana is the inside story shows how generations of Americans have formed a national cuisine with tastes from all over the world in an engaging and entertaining combination of food culture and pop culture. Also included is Jewish-specific content such as the fascinating story of bagels and lox‚ from behind the counter at Russ & Daughters appetizing store on the lower east side, to Marvin Lender describing the history of Lender’s Bagels, to Mel Brooks reminiscing about lox as a once-a-week treat as a child. And there’s also the real backstory of Jewish love for Chinese food!
Registration is now open!:
For more information, contact [email protected].
Previous Spring 2022 Speakers
Mark Gerson
THE TELLING: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life
Monday, April 4, 2022 – 1:30 p.m.
Have you ever wondered that there might be something more to Passover, the Seder and in the Haggadah―something that just might hold the secrets to living the life of joy and meaning that you were intended to? Join Mark Gerson, the host of The Rabbi’s Husband podcast and renowned Jewish philanthropist, as he shows us how to make the Passover Seder the most engaging, inspiring, and important night of the Jewish year. Through his book, The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life, we learn how to love the Passover Seder! The Seder wasn’t designed to put your kids to sleep, but is meant to be an experience for families to love, treasure and remember.
Faris Cassell
THE UNANSWERED LETTER: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help
Thursday, April 28, 2022 – 12:00 p.m.
In 1939, as the Nazis closed in, Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to an American stranger who happened to share his last name, begging the American recipient of the letter for help, guidance, and hope. Decades later, Alfred’s letter ended up in the hands of Faris Cassell. Cassell is a journalist, writer and winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award for the Holocaust. Through her book, The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help, Cassell shows her determination to discover an ending to the story of Berger’s letter. Traveling across the United States as well as to Austria, the Czech Republic, Belarus, and Israel, she uncovered an extraordinary story of heart-wrenching loss and unforgettable love that endures to this day.
Ira Rosen
TICKING CLOCK: Behind the Scenes of 60 Minutes
Monday, May 23, 2022 – 1:30 p.m.
When producer Ira Rosen walked into the 60 Minutes offices in June 1980, he knew he was about to enter television history. His career catapulted him to the heights of TV journalism, breaking some of the most important stories in TV news. But behind the scenes was a war room of clashing producers, anchors, and formidable 60 Minutes figures. Two-time Peabody Award-winning writer and Emmy Award winning producer Ira Rosen reveals the intimate, untold stories of his decades at America’s most iconic news show in Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes. It’s a 60 Minutes story on 60 Minutes itself!
Based on decades of access and experience, readers are taken behind closed doors to offer an incisive look at the show that invented TV investigative journalism. Filled with surprising humor, charm, colorful detail, and unforgettable personalities that battled for prestige, credit, and the desire to scoop everyone else in the game. Rosen dives into the dynamics of top correspondents such as Diana Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Anderson Cooper as well as revelations of some of 60 Minutes’ most sensational stories. Highly entertaining, dishy, and unforgettable, Ticking Clock is a never-before-told account of the most successful news show in American history.
David Page
FOOD AMERICANA: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories Behind America’s Favorite Dishes
Monday, June 20, 2022 – 1:30 p.m.
What is American cuisine? What national menu do we share? What dishes have we chosen, how did they become “American”, and how are they likely to evolve from here? Author David Page brings us Food American: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories Behind America’s Favorite Dishes, a fascinating exploration of how America created a national cuisine from the foods of many other countries. Page is a two-time Emmy winner that changed the world of food television by creating Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Before that, as a network news producer, he traveled America and the world covering the biggest stories‚ and indulging his love for terrific food. He’s passionate, engaging, humorous, and he has fascinating stories to tell.
Food Americana is the inside story shows how generations of Americans have formed a national cuisine with tastes from all over the world in an engaging and entertaining combination of food culture and pop culture. Also included is Jewish-specific content such as the fascinating story of bagels and lox‚ from behind the counter at Russ & Daughters appetizing store on the lower east side, to Marvin Lender describing the history of Lender’s Bagels, to Mel Brooks reminiscing about lox as a once-a-week treat as a child. And there’s also the real backstory of Jewish love for Chinese food!
Previous Winter 2022 Speakers
Eric Weiner
THE SOCRATES EXPRESS: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers
Monday, January 10, 2022 – 12:00pm
Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train, Weiner journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between, to reconnect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Simone de Beauvoir and twentieth-century Paris, Weiner’s chosen philosophers and places provide important signposts as we navigate today’s chaotic times. In The Socrates Express, Weiner, a former foreign correspondent for NPR, invites us to voyage alongside him on his life-changing pursuit of wisdom and discovery as he attempts to find answers to our most vital questions.
Daniel Sokatch
CAN WE TALK ABOUT ISRAEL?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted
Monday, January 24, 2022 – 12:00pm
Can We Talk About Israel? is an attempt to grapple with a century-long struggle between two peoples that both perceive themselves as (and indeed are) victims. And it’s an attempt to explain why Israel (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) inspires such extreme feelings – why it seems like Israel is the answer to “what is wrong with the world” for half the people in it, and “what is right with the world” for the other half. We will have the opportunity to hear from Daniel Sokatch, the Chief Executive Officer of the New Israel Fund, as he asks whether there is any other topic about which so many intelligent, educated, and sophisticated people express such strongly and passionately held convictions, and about which they actually know so little?
Black History Month Event
Andrew Feiler
A BETTER LIFE FOR THEIR CHILDREN: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America
Monday, February 7, 2022 – 12:00pm
This is a story of how two very different people came together to make a difference in the world. Julius Rosenwald, born to Jewish immigrants, rose to lead one of the world’s largest retailers – Sears, Roebuck & Company – and Booker T. Washington, born into slavery, became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with Black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for African American children. Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools built during 1912-1937 across 15 states, approximately 500 survived. To tell this story visually, Andrew Feiler drove 25,000 miles, photographed 105 schools, and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, and preservationists. A fifth-generation Georgian, Feiler will share some of the photographs capturing interiors and exteriors, schools restored and yet-to-be-restored, and portraits of people with compelling connections to these schools.
Anne Sebba
ETHEL ROSENBERG: An American Tragedy
Monday, March 7, 2022 – 10:00 a.m.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union in the 1950s despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky and was based on the perjury of her own brother. With Ethel’s profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him despite government pressure, and then faced the death penalty. We will hear from Anne Sebba about new evidence that recently surfaced on Ethel Rosenberg through the revelation of prison letters Ethel exchanged with her husband, her lawyer, and her psychotherapist over a three-year period while in confinement. We will learn more about Ethel’s struggles with the social mores of the 1950s, longing to be a good wife and perfect mother to her two small boys while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, antisemitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Anne Sebba is a prize-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent.
Women’s Month Event
Tracy Walder
THE UNEXPECTED SPY: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World’s Most Notorious Terrorists
Monday, March 21, 2022 – 12:00 p.m.
Tracy Walder, a Jewish American woman recruited by the CIA straight from her sorority at the University of Southern California, tells a thrilling tale of clandestine meetings in clandestine locales with spies and embedded civilians from other countries and of following trails across North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple attacks. She watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell looked over her shoulder. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for weapons of mass destruction. In The Unexpected Spy, Walder shares the riveting story of her tenure at the CIA, and later, in counterintelligence at the FBI.
Previous Fall 2021 Speakers
Raffi Berg
RED SEA SPIES: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort
Monday, October 4, 2021 – 1:00pm
In the early 1980s on a remote part of the Sudanese coast, a new luxury holiday resort opened for business. Catering to divers, it attracted guests from around the world. Little did the vacationers know that the staff were undercover spies working for the Mossad – Israel’s intelligence agency. Red Sea Spies, written by longtime BBC Middle East Editor Raffi Berg, tells the true story of what began with one cryptic message pleading for help and turned into a secret evacuation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews in refugee camps, spiriting them to Israel. These events inspired the recent Netflix drama The Red Sea Diving Resort.
Harold Koplewicz
THE SCAFFOLD EFFECT: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, and Secure Kids in an Age of Anxiety
Thursday, October 14, 2021 – 7:00pm
This is a free event, but registration is required
Just as sturdy scaffolding is needed when building a structure that then comes down once the structure is stable and built, good parenting provides children with steady, warm, emotional nourishment on the path toward independence. Never-ending parental problem-solving and involvement can have the opposite effect, enabling fragility and anxiety over time. World-renowned child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz will explain how to prevent and counteract the anxiety and emotional fragility prevalent in children and teenagers today, introducing a new parenting philosophy and strategies that give children the tools to flourish on their own.
Ami Ayalon
FRIENDLY FIRE: How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy
Monday, October 18, 2021 – 12:00pm
Retired Admiral Ami Ayalon, a former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, shares his own thoughts and philosophy about what Israel needs to do to achieve relative peace and security and to sustain itself as a Jewish homeland and a liberal democracy. In Friendly Fire, Ayalon shares his deeply personal journey of discovery, seeking input and perspective from both Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own and from each other. Join us, along with Prof. Mark Rosenblum who will moderate the discussion, to hear how Ayalon has come to realize that the sustainable and democratic Jewish homeland for which he repeatedly risked his life can only be realized side-by-side with a Palestinian state whose citizens have genuine hope for their own bright future.
A former Flotilla 13 (Israel’s navy SEALS) commando, a commander of the navy, cabinet minister, Knesset member, Ami Ayalon was the recipient of the Medal of Valor, Israel’s highest military decoration.
An expert on the Middle East, Prof. Mark Rosenblum is Director of the Ibrahim Student Leadership and Dialogue Middle East Program with Queens College, and Director Emeritus of the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Understanding.
Kristallnacht Event
Gwen Strauss
THE NINE: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
Monday, November 1, 2021 – 12:00pm
The Nine tells the story of nine women under thirty who joined the resistance during World War II and eventually became a close-knit group of friends. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain, and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo, subjected to a series of French prisons, and deported to Germany. Gwen Strauss shares with us the true story of her great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led this band of female resistance fighters on a daring escape from a German forced labor camp and a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII back to Paris.
Leah Garrett
X TROOP: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II
Monday, November 15, 2021 – 12:00pm
In June 1942 the Third Reich had cast a horrific shadow across Europe. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff formed an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who had escaped to Britain – a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, mostly from Germany and Austria, who had to take on fake British names and personas. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat to deliver decisive blows against the Nazis, this top-secret unit became known as X Troop. Acclaimed scholar Leah Garrett draws on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members of X Troop, and follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back, to British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp – the scene of one of the most dramatic rescues of the war.
Previous Summer 2021 Speakers
Moriah Amit
TRACING YOUR ROOTS AT HOME, LEVEL II: Online Research Beyond the U.S.
Monday, July 12, 2021 – 12:00pm
Are you interested in learning more about your family’s history prior to their arrival in the U.S. or about a branch of your family that never emigrated to the U.S.? In this interactive online presentation, Moriah Amit, Senior Genealogy Librarian at the Center for Jewish History’s Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute, will show you how to broaden your family history search beyond the basic databases to specific online resources for places of origin worldwide. In addition, learn tips for finding and requesting records from your country of origin that are not available online. While this is designed as a follow-up to the Center’s genealogy basics session, first-time participants are welcome. This workshop is geared toward people of all religious/ethnic backgrounds.
Scott Shane
FACTS OR FAKES? Navigating the News in an Age of Disinformation
Monday, August 16, 2021 – 12:00pm
During this time of mass media, how do we differentiate between what is fact and fake? Is COVID-19 part of a secret plot to make a fortune by selling vaccines? Did Trump’s lawyer plot with Russian spies to hack the Democrats? Are Fox and MSNBC reporting on the 2020 election from different planets? Former New York Times reporter Scott Shane will examine recent case studies in online disinformation, using real images and video clips, and discuss how to separate truth from fabrication.
Sponsorship opportunities available. For more information, please contact Judy Vladimir at [email protected] or 718-225-6750 ext. 345.
Below are highlights from some of our past series.