Events & Activities

Events & Activities

ESRA’s community provides people of different age groups with different social and cultural activities targeted to their interests and needs, while also coming together through national activities that suit everyone.
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Saints and Fools with Bonita Posen

רביעי, 7 דצמבר 2022 at 10:30

Zichron Ya'akov

ESRA members NIS 25 | Non-members NIS 35

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ESRA Five Towns Branch
Isaac Bashevis Singer and Isaac Leib Peretz could not have been more different in their lifestyle, philosophies and writing but they had a consensus on the line blurring the difference between a fool and a saint. When was a fool a saint and when was a saint a fool? There's Singer's Gimpel and there's Peretz's Bontshe, and in between there's a rabbi who crept out of his house at dawn to collect wood to make a fire. Who is the saint and who is the fool; a saintly fool or a foolish saint? Both writers debate the choices we make because of the situations we find ourselves in and both of them claim that great wealth can be a distraction from making a harsh world a more benign world. As Sholom Aleichem used to ask at the end of a tale "So who was right?" You can decide!
 
Bonita Posen's remarkable teaching career began with adolescent girls in the care system, and then into the British prison education system where she soon discovered how illiteracy and innumeracy made crime the easy option. She was awarded a scholarship to initiate an innovative scheme in which prisoners who were literate and numerate tutored prisoners who weren't. Bonita made Aliya in 2000, and soon began giving seminars in all sorts of venues. She started to read the Yiddishists and delighted in their wit and wisdom and their sophistication.
 

Registration: Click on the register link above or contact the Booking Office at 09-9508371 (ext 2).
Address details will be given after registration.

Proceeds support ESRA Education and Welfare Community projects to strengthen Israeli society. Read more

Event tags:
Lecture