The College Commons Podcast

Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, HIAS vice president for Community Engagement, provides an overview of the immigration crisis and HIAS' role in helping the stranger. Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, Vice President for Community Engagement, is mobilizing the Jewish community to advance HIAS’ work with refugees in the United States and around the world. Prior to coming to HIAS, Jennie played a catalytic role in building the Jewish social justice movement and the field of Jewish service as the director of the Jewish Life and Values Program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She developed innovative initiatives such as the Selah Leadership Training Program and the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable. Under Jennie’s leadership, the Jewish Life and Values Program also worked to amplify a progressive religious voice in America, advance American engagement in the Middle East peace process, and cultivate the environmental movement and women as agents of change in Israel.

Alana Newhouse, founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, takes us on a thoughtful tour of Jewish journalism, identity and culture. Alana Newhouse is the editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, which she founded in 2009. Before that, she spent five years as culture editor of the Forward, where she supervised coverage of books, films, dance, music, art, and ideas. She also started a line of Forward-branded books with W.W. Norton and edited its maiden publication, "A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward." A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, Alana has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Slate, and others.

Erwin Chemerinsky, founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, discusses the immigration ban, states' rights issues, and the emoluments suit against the President. Erwin Chemerinsky is the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. Prior to assuming this position in 2008, he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and before that was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School from 1983-2004, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He also has taught at DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School. He is the author of ten books, including The Case Against the Supreme Court, published by Viking in 2014, and two books to be published by Yale University Press in 2017, Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and Free Speech on Campus (with Howard Gillman). He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a weekly column for the Orange County Register, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court. In January 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States. Chemerinsky holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.

In this first Bully Pulpit podcast produced for a live audience, Rabbi Marmur discusses Heschel's legacy and the possibility for community leadership. Rabbi Dr. Michael Marmur is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Previously, he served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. In recent years he has taught courses in Theology, Homiletics, and Pluralistic Jewish Education.Born and raised in England, Rabbi Marmur completed a BA Degree in Modern History at the University of Oxford before moving to Israel in 1984.

Join Dr. Mann for a wide-ranging discussion on the influence of Jewish craftsmen in the Medieval period to how Jewish art engages with contemporary art. Professor Vivian Mann is Professor Emerita of Jewish Art and Visual Culture at The Jewish Theological Seminary. For many years Dr. Mann was Morris and Eva Feld Chair of Judaica at The Jewish Museum, where she created numerous exhibitions and their catalogs, among them Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy; Convivencia: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Spain; and, most recently, Morocco: Jews and Art in a Muslim Land. In 2010, Prof. Mann curated the exhibition Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain at the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA).

Rabbi Ellenson examines the tensions of Jews as they moved from seclusion in the pre-modern Jewish world to assimilation and the evolution of Reform Judaism. Rabbi David Ellenson, Ph.D., is Chancellor Emeritus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies (Brandeis University), as well as Visiting Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis. He served as President of HUC-JIR from 2001-2013. Ellenson is a prolific scholar of modern Jewish thought and history with a particular expertise in the emergence and development of Orthodox Judaism in 19th c. Europe. He has also written on Orthodox legal rulings on conversion in modernity, religion and state in Israel, contemporary Jewish movements, Jewish ethics, and emerging trends in Jewish life in North America. His writings include seven solo-authored or edited books and hundreds of articles and reviews, including peer-reviewed pieces and writings for the general public in many media outlets. Among his books are Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah and the Boundaries of Jewish Identity (University Press of America, 1989), Between Tradition and Culture: The Dialectics of Jewish Religion and Identity in the Modern World (Scholars Press, 1994), After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (HUC Press, 2004 and National Jewish Book Award winner), and Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa, co-authored with Daniel Gordis (Stanford University Press, 2012, National Jewish Book Award finalist). The Jewish Publication Society has published a collection of his essays in its “Scholar of Distinction” series with the title Jewish Meaning in a World of Choice: Studies in Tradition and Modernity (2014). Ellenson was ordained by HUC-JIR in 1977 and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981. He holds MA degrees from HUC-JIR and the University of Virginia, as well as the M.Phil. degree from Columbia. He received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary.

Rabbi Gottlieb discusses contemporary technologies for the transformation and extension of pathways for Jewish learning. Rabbi Owen Gottlieb, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Interactive Games and Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the founder and lead researcher of the Initiative in Religion, Culture, and Policy at the RIT MAGIC Center, the Institute’s state of the art research laboratory and game studio. In 2010, Rabbi Gottlieb founded ConverJent: Jewish Games for Learning. Gottlieb’s mobile augmented reality game Jewish Time Jump: New York was nominated for Most Innovative Game by the 10th Annual Games for Change Festival in 2013. Current projects include a strategy card-to-mobile game to teach medieval religious legal codes, beginning with Maimonides Mishneh Torah. The digital prototype of the game is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Rabbi Gottlieb and William Braniff (University of Maryland) also recently presented on Video Games and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) at the Games + Higher Education + National Impact conference in Washington D.C. Rabbi Gottlieb’s interdisciplinary work spans cultural anthropology, games for learning, media and game studies, history and religious education, and the learning sciences. He holds an A.B. From Dartmouth College, M.As from USC School of Cinematic Arts, and HUC-JIR (where he was ordained in 2010), and a Ph.D. in Education and Jewish Studies from NYU. Rabbi Gottlieb is a member of the CCAR, the International Game Developers Association, and the Writers Guild of America, West.

Worship and prayer are at the center of Jewish life. Cantor Sacks explores how we can continue to create meaningful and transformative worship experiences through music and song. Cantor Sacks serves as the Senior Cantor of Temple Emanuel in Denver, Colorado. Raised in New York, Cantor Sacks was ordained as a cantor in 2007 from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). She was a recipient of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship in Jewish communal leadership and earned several awards as a cantorial student for Traditional Hazzanut, Talmud, and Midrash. Cantor Sacks holds a B.A. in Jewish Studies and Music from Harvard University where she was active in Harvard Hillel and music community service programs. From 2007-2012, Cantor Sacks served as the Associate Cantor at Central Synagogue in New York, where she focused on worship, education and young professional engagement. Cantor Sacks was also a faculty member at Mechon Hadar, an educational institute that empowers Jews to create and sustain vibrant, practicing, egalitarian communities of Torah learning, prayer, and service. Cantor Sacks is currently the chair of the HUC-JIR Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music Alumni Association and the vice-chair of the HUC-JIR Council of Alumni. Cantor Sacks is married to Elias Sacks, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Cantor Sacks, Eli, and their son Charlie live in Denver.

Law professor and author, Eric Segall, investigates central myths about the Supreme Court and its judges. Eric J. Segall is Kathy and Lawrence Ashe Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law. Prior to his joining the College of Law faculty, he clerked for the Honorable Charles A. Moye, Jr. (1983-1985) and the Honorable Albert J. Henderson, Jr. (1985-1987), after which he engaged first in private practice with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (1986-1987) and subsequently in public service at the United States Department of Justice (Federal Programs Branch, Civil Division, 1987-1991). Segall is a scholar of constitutional law. He has published "Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges" (Praeger, 2012), over thirty articles and reviews in law reviews, and numerous editorials, essays, and blog posts on pressing issues of legal and constitutional concern.

American and Israeli Jews diverge in ways fundamental to their native soil. Join Alan Cooperman in a discussion of the light it shines on the Jewish American experience. Alan Cooperman is director of religion research at Pew Research Center. He is an expert on religion’s role in U.S. politics and has reported on religion in Russia, the Middle East and Europe. He plays a central role in planning the project’s research agenda and writing its reports. Before joining Pew Research Center, he was a national reporter and editor at The Washington Post and a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1982 and started in journalism at the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass. He is an author of Mormons in America, Muslim Americans, the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, “Nones” on the Rise and A Portrait of Jewish Americans. He also was the primary editor of Global Christianity and Global Restrictions on Religion. He has appeared on numerous media outlets, including NPR, BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the NewsHour, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC and C-SPAN.