Join us on Sunday September 18, 2022 for a special program in honor of Dr. Rachel Korazim, winner of CSP's second annual "Maimonides Award for Excellence in Jewish Education" for her work in bringing Israeli poetry to life. In conversation with Basmat Hazan, a noted Israel theater director, playwright, author and educator, award-winning author Ruby Namdar will discuss his sources of inspiration, his new-found relationship to the great Jewish-American authors of the previous generation and the rewards--as well as the challenges--of living in one language while…

Siberia is a giant region of Russia that extends from the Ural Mountains in the West to the Pacific Ocean in the East. Usually, it is only assosiated with frost, snow, prisons and woods. The first Jews in Siberia were those exiled from Moscow as early as the 17th century. Next to arrive were Jewish soldiers who were sent to serve in Siberia by the Russian Tsar Nicolas I. Some Jews even came to Siberia by their own choice trying…

This overview presentation – also known informally as “Israeli Society and Economy 101” – offers the most up-to-date findings on key social policy issues in Israel, including education, welfare, labor markets, healthcare, and macroeconomics, and the demographic shifts that affect all of these areas. This presentation addresses how Israel’s social and economic landscape has changed over time, how it compares with other developed countries, and how trends differ between Israel’s diverse population groups. It is the Center's most widely requested…

In recent years, there's been a revival of interest in Golda Meir, both in the US and in Israel. A new movie about Golda is due to be released this summer starring Helen Mirren, and a TV series produced by Barbra Streisand is in production. In Israel, after many decades of deliberate disregarding her term of office as a prime minister her legacy as a state’s woman and labor minister is being re-examined and gaining recognition. Furthermore, in contemporary pop…

While Jewish ritual objects and images are most surely “Jewish”, in most instances the source of style and image that define them have roots in the non-Jewish world. Join us on March 23rd at 10:00 AM PST/1:00 PM EST for examples of this phenomenon from the private collectoion of renowned Judaica collector William Gross. American by birth and Israeli by choice since 1969 and with degress from Harvard University in history and business, William Gross has been a collector, researcher,…

The name “Canaan,” which derives from the Bible and from ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern records, generally refers to the region of present-day Israel, western Jordan, Lebanon, and coastal and southern Syria and is more or less equivalent to the modern term “Levant.” Ancient texts from the region indicate that its population was of Semitic origin. The earliest mention of Canaan and Canaanites dates from the eighteenth century BCE, but the terms are now often applied to the region and…

In the hours following the attacks in Israel by Hamas terrorists, much of the world expressed great sympathy for Israel. And yet, almost as soon as Israel began to strike back, a lot of the attention and rhetoric shifted to the suffering in Gaza resulting from the bombs; and the affection for Israel began to subside. The images coming out of Gaza are disturbing and it’s easy to understand how they reinforce the rhetoric that Israel is acting ruthlessly and…