Make new friends, learn something new, create community with your fellow 70s+ community at TBA!
Mondays from 10:00 AM-12:00 PM at Temple Beth Am.
Enjoy coffee/tea and conversation on campus! We will invite speakers to address the group on various topics every few weeks.
Monday, September 29- Presentation by Eden Swimer
Scottish Missionaries’ Adventures in the Holy Land, 1884-1929
In 1884, Scottish missionaries arrived in Palestine hoping to convert Jews but instead found meaning in its sacred landscape and Jewish scholarship. This talk explores the lived experience of Scottish Protestants in Palestine, why their mission endured despite receiving few converts, and why it later declined in the interwar years.
Eden Swimer, born in Yerushalayim and raised in London, earned his MA from Edinburgh University and MPhil from Cambridge University in History. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling, swimming, and playing mah jongg.
October 20 – At Vitoria author Marcia Selz will speak about her book. AT VITORIA is a story of how medieval Jewish physicians saved many Christian lives during an epidemic, and how Vitoria’s Town Council took an oath to preserve the Jewish cemetery when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. The succeeding generations of Vitoria’s Christians kept this oath for almost 500 years. While touring in Spain, Marcia Riman Selz learned about the remarkable story of Vitoria’s medieval Christian and Jewish communities. It grabbed her.
You may purchase the book HERE, or at this event and Marcia will be happy to sign your copy.
November 1- Author Wanda Peretz
Wanda Peretz has spent the past decade immersed in the artistry of Poland’s “Lost Wooden Synagogues.” In 2018, she led a “Hiddur Mitzvah” Adult Coloring Project with 70 members of TBA’s Library Minyan, transforming the alcove above the Torah reading table in the Dorff Nelson Chapel into an homage to this vanished tradition.
That summer of communal creativity inspired her to write a narrative poem, which became the foundation of a six-year remote collaboration with Russian-Israeli artist Boris Shapiro. Together they created a unique picture book, The Ceiling, which transports readers back 300 years to follow Israel and Isaac, two itinerant Jewish artists commissioned to paint the ingeniously re-engineered ceiling of the wooden synagogue in a town called Gwoździec.
Wanda now returns to TBA and Pressman Academy—working with middle school students, the JLC, and Seniors in Sync—to explore and reimagine the vibrant floral designs, fantastical animals, and Hebrew prayers that once adorned these extraordinary sanctuaries.
