Bloom Family Lecture Series

TBA is proud to present this year's guest speakers. We hope that you will join us in learning from a wide variety of voices, and we thank the Bloom Family Lecture Fund for supporting congregational learning in our community.

David Kertzer in conversation with Abe Foxman:

The Continuing Controversy over the Vatican and the Holocaust

Sunday, April 28, 2024, 4 PM

We are excited to have Abe Foxman, former head of the Anti-Defamation League, return to Temple B'nai Abraham for a conversation with Dr. David Kertzer about his new book on the Vatican's role in the Holocaust, The Pope at War. Dr. Kertzer was one of the first historians to be granted access to the Vatican archives on the subject.

David I. Kertzer, Dupee University Professor of Social Science Emeritus at Brown University, is currently Research Professor at Brown, where he served as Provost from 2006 to 2011.  His book, The Pope and Mussolini, was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and has been published in eleven languages.  Among his many other books, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award for Nonfiction and has been published in eighteen foreign editions.  He co-founded and served for many years as co-editor of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies.  In 2005 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership. His 2022 book, The Pope at War, based on research in Vatican, Italian, German, French, British, and American archives, tells the story of Pius XII’s relations with Mussolini and Hitler during the Second World War.  Editions have appeared in the U.S., Italy, Germany, and Britain, and are in press in Russia, China, and Spain.

Abraham Foxman is a Bergen County-based lawyer and activist. He served as the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from 1987 to 2015 and is currently the League's national director emeritus. From 2016 to 2021 he served as vice chair of the board of trustees at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City to lead its efforts on antisemitism.

Shabbat Speaker Margalit Edelson:

Palestine into Israel - Witnessing the Making of the Jewish State

Friday, May 24, 2024, 6:30 PM

TBA is proud to welcome Margalit Edelson to speak during Kabalat Shabbat services. She will speak about her experiences growing up in the nascent Jewish state.

Born in what was then Palestine, now the state of Israel, Margalit spent her career as an educator and ran a Montessori Preschool and Kindergarten for 50 years. She lives in Caldwell and travels to Israel as often as she can. She has two children and five grandchildren. 

I Am A Palestinian Jew is her first published book.