Adult Jewish Education Program
Adult Jewish Education at the Jewish Community Centre is a program of interactive, seminar-style Adult Jewish learning. Topics include the full range of Jewish experience: belief, philosophy, arts, culture, history, Israel, and the interface between Judaism and the rest of the world. The courses are pluralistic in nature and provide a comfortable and stimulating environment for Jews from all different backgrounds.
Jewish Issues on Film: Changing and Complex Realities
Tuesdays 11:30am-1:00pm: March 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th; and April 2nd & 9th, 2019
Early Bird Special: Register early and save! Please note that places are limited and will be reserved on a ‘first pay, first served basis’. All reservations received and accepted by February 26, 2019 will get a $10 discount. The Early Bird fee for this 6-week course is $99/student (regular fee $109).
Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He regularly teaches film courses at Toronto’s Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre and Ryerson University’s LIFE Institute, among other venues. He has written for a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Jerusalem Report magazine, The South China Post, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and the Canadian Jewish News, and was also the Canadian correspondent for Box Office magazine and Screen International. Shlomo was Director of Programming for the Toronto Jewish Film Festival from 1996 – 2004 and the Chair of the Toronto Jewish Film Society from 2008-11. He is a co-founder of, and writes for, the noted online cultural website Critics at Large (www.criticsatlarge.ca).
Jewish Issues on Film: Changing and Complex Realities
This course will examine how issues pertinent to the Jewish community, including: support for Israel to the effects of the Holocaust; anti-Semitism to inter-faith and inter-religious relationships; and others, have been portrayed in movies from America and around the world. From ‘Exodus’ to ‘Les Patriotes’; ‘A Stranger Among Us’ to ‘Keeping the Faith’; ‘Angry Harvest’ to ‘The Pawnbroker’; we will also look at how those depictions have changed over the years and what they often reveal about the Jewish (and sometimes non-Jewish) creators and stars of these often famous and iconic films.
Some of My Best Friends are Jewish … Still!
Tuesdays 9:30am-11:45am: April 30th and May 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and June 4th, 2019 (with a short break mid-class)
Early Bird Special: Register early and save! Please note that places are limited and will be reserved on a ‘first pay, first served basis’. All reservations received and accepted by April 23, 2019 will get a $15 discount. The Early Bird fee for this 6-week course is $130/student (regular fee $145).
Sonia Halpern is an Art Historian, and teaches in Western University’s Departments of English and Writing Studies, and Women’s Studies and Feminist Research. Sonia has received numerous honours and awards for her teaching, and has been recognized as one of Western’s most “Popular Profs.” She is the author of two collections of poetry, a book of original musical compositions, and multiple academic articles. Her most recent publication reflects her combined interest in issues of Jewish identity and police/correctional institutions, and is entitled “A Yiddishe Cop: Jewish Identity, Police, and Prisoners in Contemporary Law Enforcement,” in The Criminal Humanities, eds. Michael Arntfield and Marcel Danesi (New York: Peter Lang), 2016. Sonia has taught courses for AJE since its inception, and has a passion for offering the Jewish perspective on a variety of art historical periods and styles.
Some of My Best Friends are Jewish … Still!
This course reviews some of the highlights and builds upon the previous AJE course “Some of My Best Friends are Jewish: Non-Jewish Artists and the Jews in their Lives.” Classes will examine brand new selected artist/model relationships in which Jewish figures are key subjects in paintings and photography. Moreover, the course will introduce you to some additional personal relationships between non-Jewish artists and the Jews in their lives. These pairings will reveal the instrumental ways that Jewish individuals contributed to the art-world in a capacity other than as artists themselves.