Special Events

ENDOWED LECTURES

CARL STEINBAUM
Jerusalem, Jerusalem

with James Carroll
 Friday, March 2
5:45 p.m. Qabbalat Shabbat Service
6:30 p.m. Lecture

We are honored to have as our guest speaker, James Carroll.  His topic will be From 'Temple' to 'Israel': A Christian Reflects at Temple Israel. (A play on "Temple Israel," but a talk on the significance of the Temple in Jewish-Christian conflict, from 70 CE to 1948 to today).  After the lecture, we invite the congregation to an Oneg with a Q & A.

James Carroll, "one of the most adept and versatile writers on the American scene today" (Denver Post), is the author of ten novels and seven works of non-fiction, including the National Book Award winning An American Requiem; the New York Times bestselling Constantine's Sword, now an acclaimed documentary; House of War, which won the first PEN-Galbraith Award; Practicing Catholic, which Hans Kung calls "brilliantly written, passionate, and vivid." His most recent book is Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World, which was named a 2011 Best Book by Publishers Weekly. He lectures widely, both in the United States and abroad.

James Carroll is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University, holder of the 2011 Alonzo L. McDonald Family Chair at Emory University, and a columnist for the Boston Globe. 

Carroll was born in Chicago in 1943, and raised in Washington where his father, an Air Force general, served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Carroll attended Georgetown University before entering the seminary to train for the Catholic priesthood. He received BA and MA degrees from St. Paul’s College, the Paulist Fathers’ seminary in Washington, and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. Carroll served as Catholic Chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer.

Carroll's memoir, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us, received the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction and other awards. His book, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, published in 2001, was a New York Times bestseller and was honored as one of the Best Books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and others. It was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and won the Melcher Book Award, the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award, and National Jewish Book Award in History. 

James Carroll lives in Boston with his wife, the novelist Alexandra Marshall. Visit his website.

FEINBERG
Negotiating About Jerusalem

with David Matz
Friday, May 4, 2012

Of all the very difficult issues to negotiate between Israel and Palestine, Jerusalem is the most difficult. The sensitivity of holy sites, the symbolism of Jerusalem itself, and the factual complexity of dividing or sharing a city all make negotiation a very difficult process for reaching an agreement. Still, with no negotiated solution there will be no peace. This lecture will focus on these difficulties, and on how Jewish Jerusalemites see the problem and the possibilities.
Bio: David E. Matz is the founder, and until January 2010 was the Director, of the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution at UMass Boston. He is also an active dispute intervenor. Professor Matz has focused his work on the techniques of mediation and negotiation, and on the relationship of these to the workings of organizations and courts. He has done this primarily in the United States and Israel. In the United States, he has led in the development and use of assessment tools for court mediators, trained mediators, judges, and engineers. In Israel, he was central in developing policy and practice for the Israeli Ministry of Justice and Supreme Court in integrating mediation into the judicial system.

RUDOLPH H. AND SARA G. WYNER TBD, Spring 2012

If you have questions, please contact Sue Misselbeck at 617-566-3960 x117.