Yahrzeit Torah Study at the JCC

On the yahrzeit of the 18th of Cheshvan, we will be in study at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh from 2:30pm to 3:30pm. Please register here. 

The program will take place in Levinson rooms A and B. You can enter through the typical doors that open automatically on Forbes or Darlington, or you can enter from the ramp from Darlington Avenue in the Levinson patio, which has a direct open entrance into Levinson.

The Daf Yomi, the Parsha Vayera, and Dr. Laurie Eisenberg’s lecture will all take place concurrently from 2:30pm to 3:30pm. You can choose which study you want to participate in when you arrive.

We will be studying the Daf Yomi, a popular cycle of Talmudic study. All over the world, people learn a single two-sided page of Talmud each day with the goal of reviewing the entire 2,711-page text over seven-and-a-half years. One of the most beautiful things about Daf Yomi—Hebrew for “Daily Page”—is the sense of community it fosters: every day, people all over the world are learning the same material, each in their own way. Since the current Daf Yomi cycle began in January 2020, Marty Gaynor and Dan Leger have been studying in the memory of their friend Jerry Rabinowitz, z”l, who was killed on October 27, 2018. They will lead a group study session on the page of the day, Nedarim 18, which discusses the laws of vows. Even those who have never learned Talmud can find relevance in these ancient guidelines for learning how to speak in a more meaningful and mindful way.

The torah portion we will read this week is Parsha Vayera, the portion that was not able to be read on 10/27/18 by Dor Hadash, New Light, and Tree of Life as the attack happened.  Come to study with Dr. Jonathan Zisook. The parsha includes many beloved Torah narratives, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the birth of Isaac and his binding, and the exile of Hagar and Ishmael. Dr. Jonathan Zisook will lead a study session on the parsha and its relevance to contemporary Jewish identity and memory. Zisook is a political and historical sociologist of religion, culture, and post-Holocaust Jewish life. He is currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Sociology.

Dr. Laurie Eisenberg, professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, will also speak about how she launched an effort to preserve and understand the items that were left at the Tree of Life site after 10/27/18. An unexpected field of research and publication emerged in the aftermath of the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in nearby Squirrel Hill. Prof. Eisenberg has undertaken two public history projects associated with the attack and seeks to develop an archive-based course related to preserving the evidence of the 2018 massacre and the public response to it, as well as of the history of the Jewish community in Western Pennsylvania.