Shabbat Speaker and Dinner: Richard Kreitner
Friday, October 30
Shabbat Service 6 p.m.; Dinner to follow
Join author Richard Kreitner as he discusses the dramatic history of how American Jews reckoned with slavery through the story of six prominent Jews who shaped the conflicts of the time. Among them are the rabbi whose fiery abolitionist sermons drew a mob’s threats, and Judah Benjamin, the Jewish lawyer who became Jefferson Davis’s most trusted advisor. Kreitner demonstrates how the Exodus story and the memory of Egyptian bondage cut two ways for American Jews, some invoking it to justify staying quiet on slavery, others to demand its abolition.
Richard Kreitner is the author of Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War and the Fight to End Slavery, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Based in Beacon, NY, he is the author of numerous books and a contributor to The New York Times, The Nation, Hudson Valley Magazine and several other publications.
$40 TSTI Members; $50 Non-Members.
If you’d like Mr. Kreitner to sign a book for you, just purchase a copy in advance from a retailer or Bookshop.org.