Monday, April 12, 2021 | 7:30 –  9:00 PM EST
The Holocaust and Jewish History
Speaker: Michael Berenbaum, Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, and Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University
Learn more and register here. 
This program is free and open to the public. Register to receive the Zoom link.

Synopsis: Every Jew understands that the Holocaust was a formative event in 20th-century Jewish History, in the history of 20th-century humanity, with implications that carry well into the 21st century. Yet, many questions can be asked about the place of the Holocaust in Jewish History.
• Is the Holocaust Jewish History or German History? Is it the aberration of the Jewish experience in the diaspora? In exile? Or is it, its ultimate expression?
• What is its impact as a formative event…? On the content of Jewish faith? On Jewish relations with the non-Jewish world? On the establishment of the State of Israel?  Where, if anywhere, is a consolation to be found? And should we only consider how Jews were killed or also how they lived?
Join us for a lecture that will seek to place the Holocaust in the context of Jewish History. We will address these questions, and several more while being mindful of our unique moment in history – standing in the presence of the last survivors, yet a distance of 76 years from the event – at the moment of transition between lived history and historical memory.

Montgomery Art Association
Monday, April 12, 2021 | 7:30 –  9:00

The Bender JCC is proud to partner with Montgomery Art Association as they present “Our Stories,Our Journeys” on Monday, April 12th from 5:00-6:00 pm. The online exhibition focuses on “journeys,” whether a literal trip or an emotional journey. All of the 37 submissions are accompanied by a paragraph from the artist describing the journey depicted. The show runs until May 31.
See the full show at https://montgomeryart.org/ourstoriesas

Monday, April 26, 2021 |  7:30 – 9:00 PM EST
Insiders and Outsiders: The Jews of Virginia
Speaker: Phyllis K. Leffler, Professor Emerita, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia
Learn more and register here. 
This program is free and open to the public. Register to receive the Zoom link.

Synopsis: Jews have been both insiders and outsiders in America as antisemitism ebbs and flows, often in direct relationship to the virulence of white supremacy and racism. American Jews have been defined both as white and non-white, sometimes welcomed among the dominant elites and sometimes restricted and shunned both as non-white and religiously as outsiders. In Virginia and across the South, where the distinction of color has been the force for so much discrimination and differentiation, Jews were (and sadly today) are particularly vulnerable.

Leffler’s talk focuses on the Jews of Virginia as a microcosm of Jewish experiences across the South, and in many cases, across the nation. It is a story of colonial-era Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and nineteenth-century immigrants who arrived initially from the Germanies and later from Poland and Russia. It is a story of involvement in business, government, the arts, and education. It is a story of educational attainment and economic success. It is often a story of assimilation and an acceptance of the status quo and norms of the white societies of privilege they embraced. But it is also a story of discrimination and exclusion in times when white supremacy rears its ugly head.

The Virginia story is the story of America in many respects. How does this dual reality help us understand Jewish history – the place of immigrants, the acceptance of the so-called other, and the American mosaic of diversity?