Adult Education

Adult Education Program 2012-13

Israel and Us: Our Congregational Response to a Charged and Complex Relationship.
Our relationship with Israel, particularly as American Reform Jews, is fraught with mixed feelings.  Too often we avoid discussion of the political and religious complexities that confront us.  Concerned by the erosion of our connection to Israel, we are in the midst of three years of Adult Education focused upon Israel, as both people and place.  How are our identities as Jews informed by our relationship to Israel?  And how may we fulfill our obligation to promote the values of Reform Judaism among other Jewish communities, and in particular, among Jews living in Israel?

Year 2: Democracy and Nation Building
For more than 60 years, Israel has labored to survive in what is often a hostile environment, while at the same time balancing the tensions between being both a Jewish and democratic republic.  Building a nation, with populations as diverse as Arab Israelis, Eastern European secular Zionists, Palestinians, Jews fleeing from a multitude of different countries, and Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, while trying to remain "democratic" and secure, is fraught with complexity and danger.  We will explore in depth, and in multiple ways, these complexities this year.

Join us: we invite you to continue our congregational conversation through the Shalom Hartman Institute's iEngage curriculum; study with Yehuda Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute and with his father, Dan Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel; learn from representatives of J Street, AIPAC, New Israel Fund, the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) and the David Project about ways you can get involved with supporting a democratic and Jewish state; participate in a conflict negotiation role play led by Professor David Matz; explore models of  Palestinian and Israeli non-violent responses to the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; assess ancient claims to the land of Israel and the utopian vision of the Deuteronomists; and travel to Israel with Rabbis Friedman and Zecher.

Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Is Negotiation the Right Approach?
with David Matz
3 Mondays (7-9:00 p.m.) and 1 Saturday, April 22, 29, May 6, and May 11,
Free for members of Temple Israel, $25 for non-members.
Enrollment is limited to 20 participants.

This course will focus on negotiation as a set of techniques for resolving a long term, complex, and deeply felt conflict.  We will discuss the history of the conflict, the success and failure of past negotiations, and the major negotiation techniques that can and have been used.  We will also use one large role-play to experience and demonstrate the strengths and limits of negotiation as an approach.

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 one of three founding principals of The Mediation Group (TMG), a non-profit conflict resolution firm in Brookline, established in 1985He 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 Israel, he played a central role in developing policy and practice for the Israeli Ministry of Justice and Supreme Court in integrating mediation into the judicial system.  Professor Matz was our 2011 Feinberg Lecturer.

This course is supported by the Carole Diamond Education Fund.