
Yeshiva University, Podcasts Exploring Talmudic Disputes by Rabbi Dr. Nachman Cohen, New York
Twelve lectures delivered by Rabbi Dr. Nachman Cohen of Yeshiva University and the Torah Lishmah Institute exploring significant themes in the Talmudic disputes between R. Yochanan and Reish Lakish were produced in podcast form with the support of Targum Shlishi. The lectures complement Cohen’s Encyclopedia of Talmudic Disputes and Perspectives: R. Yochanan and Reish Lakish (volumes 3 and 4, Torah Lishmah Institute, available for purchase through the Institute). “It is the goal of the Encyclopedia to study the jurisprudential perspectives of the rabbis of the Talmud through an in-depth study of their legal and aggadic statements,” explains Cohen. “These lectures and the corresponding volumes of the Encyclopedia investigate the weltanshauung of R. Yochanan and Reish Lakish.” The series of lectures develops the theme that R. Yochanan’s perspective was that of a tzaddik from birth who had an encyclopedic mind while Reish Lakish was a ba’al teshuvah and an out-of-the-box thinker. Nachman Cohen is director of Torah Lishmah Institute, founding rabbi of Young Israel Ohab Zedek of North Riverdale/Yonkers, chairman of the Board of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, and an adjunct professor at the Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University. All twelve lectures are available as free downloads from YU Torah Online

Spring 2012 Judaic Studies Program Lecture Series, Florida International University, Miami, FL
The Spring 2012 Judaic Studies Program Lecture Series at Florida International University featured an event almost every week of the spring semester, beginning in early February. The talks ranged widely in topics. Highlights included:
- David Menashri, one of Israel’s foremost authorities on Iran, leading a seminar on
contemporary Israeli-Iranian relations. - Damian Setton’s lecture Transformations in the Argentinean Jewish Community: The Rise of New Social Actors.
- Calvin Goldscheider’s lecture Ethnicity and Religion in Israeli Society: Why it Matters in America.
- Screening of the film Dolphin Boy followed by a discussion with the film’s producer Judith Manassen-Ramon and FIU’s Maria Pienkowski, both doctoral candidates in psychology.
- A discussion between former US Senator and Ambassador Richard Stone and a panel of FIU experts on the implications of cleaning up the Jordan River.

SAR Academy, Names Not Numbers, Riverdale, NY
SAR Academy, a Modern Orthodox day school, encourages students’ individuality and creativity, and creates an environment in which students are challenged to reach their potential and guided to take risks as they develop their academic skills. Targum Shlishi is supporting Names Not Numbers, an oral history project by SAR’s eighth grade students. Students are conducting videotaped oral histories with individuals connected with the Second World War—Holocaust survivors, Second World War veterans who liberated the camps, survivors who then immigrated to pre-1948 Israel, and the children of survivors. The goal is to create a documentary film based on the interviews.

Targum Shlishi, Website, Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg
Conceived, created, and funded by Targum Shlishi, this website in progress will be both an introduction and a tribute to the work of Rabbi Dr. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg. Rabbi Greenberg’s rich career encompasses his work as a renowned scholar, a beloved teacher, a developer of several institutions core to the life of the American Jewish community, a congregational rabbi, and an author. The issues that have informed much of his work are: the Holocaust, post-Holocaust theology, and Israel; the challenges posed to Judaism by the modern world; and the significance of Jewish-Christian dialogue. The heart of the site will be a robust selection of digitized, downloadable audio lectures delivered by Rabbi Greenberg at venues throughout the country over several decades. Complementing the audio lectures will be selected video lectures and lecture texts as well as a representative sampling of his writing, ranging from scholarly investigation to opinion pieces. Note: the website launched in 2013.

Targum Shlishi, Jewish Sages of Today Website & Teacher’s Guide
Working on the premise that we are motivated by the meaningful accomplishments of others, Targum Shlishi produced the book Jewish Sages of Today: Profiles of Extraordinary People (Devora Publishing and Targum Shlishi) to bring to readers’ attention the remarkable achievements of several individuals who are doing important work in the Jewish world. During 2012 Targum Shlishi launched a companion website that complements the book with a wealth of content, including samples of each sage’s work (lectures, songs, paintings, writing, etc.) and audio excerpts from original interviews conducted for the book. The rich materials on the website include a robust section on each of the people in the book along with an innovative Teacher’s Guide adaptable for students in grades seven through university and adult school students. The Teacher’s Guide was created to be flexible and adaptable to a wide range of classroom settings and for teachers to pick and choose what works for them. The foundation has posted the Teacher’s Guide on the website for easy accessibility. As part of the website, all profiles can be downloaded for educational purposes. The sages profiled are: Yossi Abramowitz; Rachel Azaria; Michael Berenbaum; Mira Brichto; Ruth Calderon; Debbie Friedman; Yitz and Blu Greenberg; Judith Hauptman; Laurence Hoffman; Tobi Kahn and Nessa Rapoport; Aaron Lansky; Daniel Libeskind; Shalom Lipskar; Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi; Hankus Netsky; Robert Pollack; Dennis Prager; Gary Rosenblatt; Susan Weidman Schneider; Alice Shalvi; Michael Steinhardt; Adin Steinsaltz; Joseph Telushkin; Avivah Zornberg; and Efraim Zuroff.

Mandel Center, Brandeis University, Turn It and Turn It Again: Studies in the Teaching and Learning of Classical Jewish Texts, book edited by Jon A. Levisohn and Susan P. Fendrick, Waltham, MA
Scheduled for publication in 2013, Turn It and Turn It Again: Studies in the Teaching and Learning of Classical Jewish Texts (Academic Studies Press) is the first publication from the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. It is a collection of pieces that explore the teaching of biblical and rabbinic literature and grew out of conferences held by the Mandel Center. The collection addresses a need in Jewish education—while the study of classical Jewish texts is robust, there has not been a great deal produced on the practices and purposes of such study and aspects of teaching this material. This volume is intended to be a resource for those who teach Jewish texts in all contexts—day schools, summer camps, adult education, synagogues, universities, and yeshivot.

Mizel Museum, Artist Workshops with Siona Benjamin, Denver, CO
Targum Shlishi is helping to fund two artists’ workshops to be held at Limmud Colorado’s 2013 conference. These workshops, a collaboration between Mizel Museum and Limmud Art Committee, present the painter Siona Benjamin’s The Jews of India both at the conference and in a special one-day program for middle and high school students at Denver’s Jewish Day School. It is expected that the workshops will reach more than three hundred youth and adults. Siona Benjamin, originally from Bombay and now living in the United States, produces work that reflects her background of growing up Jewish in India. Her paintings combine imagery of her past and present, resulting in a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings and Sephardic icons. Her work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Tulane Hillel, Shabbat Dinners, New Orleans, LA
Tulane Hillel’s mission is to serve as a Jewish resource on campus committed to empowering students to make Jewish connections, building dynamic communities, and generating excitement about Jewish life. The organization offers religious, cultural, spiritual, and educational programming to address the needs of the more than twenty-five hundred Jewish college students in New Orleans (at Tulane, Loyola, and the University of New Orleans). Tulane Hillel’s free Shabbat dinners are popular events that typically draw almost two hundred students weekly. There are two services held simultaneously (Reform/Renewal and Conservative/Carlebach) prior to the dinner.

Targum Shlishi, Grants for Dissertations on Jewish Studies Topics
Targum Shlishi awarded grants to support research for dissertations on topics related to Jewish Studies to twelve doctoral students studying at universities in the United States and Israel. This is the sixth year in which the foundation has supported dissertation research. Nearly one hundred students from almost forty universities in the U.S., Europe, and Israel applied for grants this year. The grants were awarded at two different levels of support: four grants of $2,500 and eight of $1,000.
The awardees receiving grants of $2,500 are: • Mihály Kálmán, Shtetl Heroes: Jewish Self-Defense from the Pale to Palestine, 1871–1929, Harvard University (Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Jewish Studies Program) • Michael A. Figueroa, Music and Monumentality in Jerusalem, 1967–present, University of Chicago (Ethnomusicology) • Eliashiv Fraenkel,Meetings and Conversations of Sages in Stories Regarding Halakhic Background in the Babylonian Talmud, Bar Ilan University (Talmud) • Amy M. Smith, Rebuilding and Remembering: Women and the Family Life of Holocaust Survivors in Displaced Persons Camps, the United States, and Israel between 1946 and 1960, Yale University (Religious Studies, Judaic Studies Program)
The awardees receiving grants of $1,000 are: • Seth Appelbaum, The Encounter Between Classical Political Philosophy and the Jewish Legal Tradition: A Reading of Maimonides’ Introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah and the Eight Chapters, Tulane University (Philosophy) • Vanessa J. Avery, Jewish Vaccines Against Mimetic Desire: Rene Girard and Jewish Ritual, Hartford Seminary (joint program with the University of Exeter) (Theology) • Gali Drucker Bar-Am, Am I Your Dust? Representations of the Israeli Experience in Yiddish Prose (Israel, 1948–1968), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Yiddish Studies) • Jessica Marin Elliott, The Changing Status of Converted Jews in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Northern France, University of California, Santa Barbara (History) • Karen Frank, Jewish Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Perugia, University of California, Santa Barbara (History) • Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Conceptions of Time and Rhythms of Daily Life in Rabbinic Literature (200-600 CE), Princeton University (Religion) • Rachel Rothstein, The Next Chapter: Polish Jewishness since 1968, University of Florida (History) • Yehuda Seif, Charity and Poor Law in Northern Europe in the Thirteenth Century, University of Pennsylvania (Religious Studies)