Music Between Cultures: The Sounds of Jewish America with musician Joe Alterman

Throughout the 20th century, Jews have always contributed to American popular music, from Irving Berlin to Carole King and beyond. But according to musician Joe Alterman, executive director of Neranenah Concert & Culture Series, the Jewishness of the music is defined by its story and not necessarily its melody. Part performance, part storytelling, Alterman, shares great American music with its fascinating Jewish stories woven in.

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Health care for all in Mali: A Jewish Call to Action with Drs. Ari Johnson and Jessica Beckerman

To address the child and maternal mortality crisis in Mali, Dr. Ari Johnson and Dr. Jessica Beckerman co-found Muso, a non-profit advancing child and maternal health which has developed a new, proactive model of universal health care in Mali. Today, Muso provides health care to more than 370,000 people and the communities it serves have achieved rates of child mortality lower than that of any country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Johnson and Beckerman join Moment Senior Editor George Johnson, who also happens to be Ari’s dad, for a conversation about the health care crisis in Africa and how the couples’ Jewish commitments have motivated and energized their inspirational work.

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Tom Gjelten and Robert Siegel

Uyghurs in China: An Inconvenient Genocide with journalists Tom Gjelten and Robert Siegel

The Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority concentrated in the Xinjiang region along China’s western border, have faced discrimination, detention, and genocide at the hands of the Chinese Communist authorities. And yet most countries-including the U.S.-have largely remained silent. Tom Gjelten, a former NPR international and domestic affairs correspondent and Robert Siegel, Moment special literary contributor and former senior host of NPR’s All Things Considered, explore why, and how the situation recalls inaction in the face of Nazi persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, how discrimination against the Uyghurs became Chinese policy, and what can be done. Gjelten recently wrote about the Uyghurs as part of Moment‘s Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative, which examines prejudice and discrimination worldwide.

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She's Gone infographic

She’s Gone – Shedding Light on Domestic Violence

Well before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Israeli artist Keren Goldstein created the art installation She’s Gone which features the clothing of Israeli murdered victims of intimate partner violence. Goldstein and She’s Gone co-director and designer Adi Levy, along with Rachel Louise Snyder, award-winning author of No Visible Bruises, are in conversation about why assaults against women have been recorded in greater numbers worldwide since the start of the pandemic, what can be done about it and how the exhibit She’s Gone is protesting the global phenomenon of gender-based murder performed by spouses and other family members. Dr. Shoshannah Frydman, Executive Director of the Shalom Task Force shares how the Jewish community is helping to combat and prevent domestic violence and available resources.

This program is sponsored by Moment Magazine and is in partnership with The Moment Gallery, Remember the Women Institute, She’s Gone, Strongin Collection and in cooperation with the Embassy of Israel.

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Dr. Ruth

Becoming Dr. Ruth with Ruth K. Westheimer and Tovah Feldshuh

Ruth K. Westheimer has led a remarkable life. Long before she became a world-famous sex therapist, she escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport to Switzerland and was a teenage sharpshooter in the Haganah. As a young woman she studied and taught at the university in Paris before making her way to the United States—and “becoming Dr Ruth.” She is in conversation about how to live life to the fullest with Tovah Feldshuh, the six-time Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor who plays her in the Off-Broadway show Becoming Dr Ruth. Westheimer and Feldshuh are joined by Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein.

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Asylum City actress and book author with Sarah Breger

Behind the Scenes of Israeli Hit Show “Asylum City” with actress Hani Furstenberg and co-creator Liad Shoham

Asylum City, the critically acclaimed and popular Israeli series starring Israeli-American actress Hani Furstenberg, is set in the underworld of refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv. Based on the bestselling novel by lawyer turned author Liad Shoham, the series follows a young police officer named Anat (played by Furstenberg) who is investigating a murder. While trying to find the assassin, she exposes a complex web of political corruption, organized crime and exploitation. Asylum City was nominated for six Israeli Academy Awards. Furstenberg and Shoham (known in Israel as the Jewish John Grisham) are in conversation with Moment editor Sarah Breger.

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Anita Diamant

The Wonderful World of Anita Diamant. Period!

Anita Diamant’s latest book, Period. End of Sentence, which “explores the cultural roots of menstrual injustice,” goes boldly where no writer has gone before. The New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent is in conversation with Amy E. Schwartz, Moment’s Book and Opinion editor, about misogyny, her books—both fiction and nonfiction, her writing process, as well as her connection to Judaism that led to her founding the Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh.

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Oh I Remember the Black Birch playwright Velina Hasu Houston

Oh, I Remember the Black Birch: Play Reading and Talkback w/ Velina Hasu Houston & Keren M. Goldberg

This program is part of the 2021 Moment Theater Festival.

In the Autumn of 1941, 18-year-old Brina Berman, a Jewish Polish young woman from Warsaw, finds herself alone in Kobe, Japan, having traveled halfway across the world following the Nazi invasion of her hometown and murder of her family. Thus unfolds a little-known true story of what happened to Jewish refugees when Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara was stationed in Kovno, Lithuania and wrote transit visas to Japan, saving thousands of Jews who were running from the advancing German army. Seen through her many struggles in Kobe, Brina is surprised to find an established Jewish community and nurturing Japanese residents and organizations working to support the arriving Jewish refugees.

The cast, director, and playwright of Oh, I Remember the Black Birch discuss their new original play about a young Jewish woman struggling in a new country and finding community during the Holocaust. Playwright Velina Hasu Houston is also in conversation with producer and dramaturg Keren M. Goldberg about the journey of Oh, I Remember the Black Birch which is inspired by true events.

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Why 1973, 1977, 1989 & 1993 are Critical Years at the end of the 20th Century with Deborah Dash Moore and Robert Siegel

From Watergate, the assassination of Allende in Chile and the Yom Kippur War to the election of Menachem Begin, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the march for Soviet Jewry and the signing of the Oslo Accords, a lot happened in the world in 1973, 1977, 1989 and 1993. Join American Jewish historian, Deborah Dash Moore, editor-in-chief at The Posen Library for a discussion about these events and the impact they had on the Jewish community. Moore is in conversation with Robert Siegel, Moment special literary contributor and former senior host of NPR’s All Things Considered.

This program is a continuation of Moment’s time symposium where we explored the most important years in Jewish history and is cosponsored with The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization.

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Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon

QAnon’s Antisemitic Roots with Mia Bloom, Sophia Moskalenko and Sarah Posner

In their new book Pastels and Pedophiles, cybersecurity expert Dr. Mia Bloom and Dr. Sophia Moskalenko, a psychologist specializing in radicalization, show how much the recent QAnon movement owes to antisemitic tropes and, most notably, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Bloom and Moskalenko are in conversation with journalist Sarah Posner, author of UNHOLY: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump.

This program is part of Moment’s Antisemitism series supported by the Joyce and Irving Goldman Foundation.

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Zoominar about RBG’S Brave and Brilliant Women

RBG’S Brave and Brilliant Women with Nadine Epstein and Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt

Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein, author of RBG’s Brave & Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, is in conversation about the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her favorite female Jewish role models with Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, the Washington DC rabbi who was friends with Justice Ginsburg and officiated at her funeral.

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