Community Events
Events listed here are hosted by our community partners and are not sponsored by Temple Israel unless noted.
We encourage you to reach out directly to the event organizers with any questions.
JCRC Youth Fellowship for Jewish Identity and Leadership
Now through September 24*
Application and Information for JCRC Youth Fellowship
For 11th and 12th graders. Applications for the 2026-2027 school year are now open.
Upon successful completion of this prestigious and competitive fellowship, participants will earn a $1,000 stipend.
JCRC Youth Fellowship for Jewish Identity and Leadership is a single school year program designed to empower Jewish high school juniors and seniors to explore and embrace their history, develop leadership skills, and cultivate a deep sense of pride, meaning and joy in their Jewish identity. Through a comprehensive series of interactive learning sessions, participants will gain a nuanced understanding of Jewish history, culture, and values, while also learning how to articulate their own narratives and advocate for their community. The Fellows will meet monthly throughout the school year. There will be homework assignments and a capstone project.
*Applications are due by September 24, 2026. Applicants will be notified of their status by October 4, 2026. Rolling admission until filled. Space is limited and the program may fill before application deadline.
PRISMPALOOZA: Community Block Party and Battle of the ‘Burbs Food Drive
Saturday, October 3, 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
PRISM, 1220 Zane Avenue North, Golden Valley
A free, family-friendly event celebrating all that our community does for one another!
Join us for an afternoon filled with:
Face painting
Children’s games and crafts
Local community vendors
Live music and delicious food
A hands-on volunteer activity
Shop for Change Sale
Battle of the Burbs Food Drive
This event is open to everyone. Connect with your neighbors, support local vendors, and enjoy an afternoon of fun—all while helping PRISM continue providing food, housing support, and dignity to the community.
More information at prismmpls.org.
Center for Jewish Studies
Sander Gilman Presents Antisemitisms and Anti-antisemitisms
Tuesday, October 20, 7:30 p.m.
Minnesota JCC Capp Center, 1375 St. Paul Avenue, St. Paul
Free; RSVP for Sander Gilman Presents
In his 2026 book, Antisemitisms: A History of Jew-Hating, Sander L. Gilman summarizes how the hatred of Jews came to be used as a political cudgel by non-Jews and Jews alike. In this talk, he will begin with the rise of 19th c. political antisemitisms, illustrating how “combatting” antisemitisms begins to sort out those who argue that Jews should be “treated just like everyone else”–without defining what that means–and those, acknowledging the persistence of Jew hatred, who believe that Jews should be the object of the “sympathy” accorded to perpetual victims. Such views were echoed in the 1913 founding of the Anti-Defamation League and have resonated ever more loudly in our present moment of rising antisemitisms and their instrumentalization.
Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor emeritus of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of over one hundred books, ranging from Readers for Life: How Reading and Listening in Childhood Shape Us (2024) to the study of the visual stereotyping of the mentally ill, Seeing the Insane (1982) to his classic study, Jewish Self-Hatred (1986). In addition to many distinguished positions in North America, he has held positions in Berlin, Oxford, London, Hong Kong, Munich, South Africa, Israel, and New Zealand. Gilman became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Center for Jewish Studies
Rachel Gordan Presents The Jew Who Passed: Laura Z. Hobson and the American Bargain of Belonging
Thursday, November 12, 7:30 p.m.
Minnesota JCC Sabes Center, 4330 Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis
Free; RSVP for Rachel Gordan Presents
Before Gentleman’s Agreement became the Academy Award–winning postwar film starring Gregory Peck, it was the bestselling novel of Laura Z. Hobson, a Jewish American woman whose life was shaped by the very questions of antisemitism, assimilation, and conditional belonging that made her novel-turned-film famous. Born Laura Zametkin, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrant radicals, Hobson transformed herself into Laura Z. Hobson: Cornell graduate, Madison Avenue copywriter, Time Inc. editor, Upper East Side wife, divorced single mother, celebrity novelist, and one of the most widely read interpreters of American antisemitism. This talk tells the story of Hobson’s life as a biography of passing—not as simple denial, but as a practice of social translation through names, manners, marriage, work, motherhood, and literary ambition. Her life reveals the “other Jew” as the one who seems to have crossed the boundary into belonging—until antisemitism exposes how conditional that belonging remains.
Rachel Gordan is the Samuel Shorstein Professor of American Jewish Culture & Society at the University of Florida. Her book, Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American (Oxford, 2024), was a finalist for the 2025 Jordan Schnitzer Award in Modern Jewish History & Culture. In addition to her scholarly publications, Gordan’s writing has appeared in LitHub, Slate, Tablet, Moment Magazine, and the New York Times website.
Center for Jewish Studies
Rowan Dorin Presents Before 1492: Expelling Jews and “Jews” in Medieval Europe
Tuesday, December 8, 7:30 p.m.
Minnesota JCC Capp Center, 1375 St. Paul Avenue, St. Paul
Free; RSVP for Rowan Dorin Presents
Vilified for their supposed usury, condemned by church leaders, and expelled by opportunistic rulers—such was the fate not only of medieval Europe’s Jewish communities, but also of the many Christian moneylenders in their midst. (That’s right, Jews were not the only moneylenders in the Middle Ages!) By recovering the forgotten existence of those who were frequently denounced as “Jew-ish” by hostile contemporaries, this lecture asks what we can learn about Jewish history from the experiences of those who came to share not only a language of exclusion but also the reality of expulsion.
Rowan Dorin is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Stanford University, as well as core faculty of Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. His research and teaching focus on the history of premodern Europe and the Mediterranean, in particular Jewish-Christian relations, religious law, and digital humanities. His recent book, No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe (Princeton UP, 2023) won multiple awards, including the 2024 Baron Prize from the American Academy for Jewish Research, awarded annually for the best first book in Jewish Studies.
Center for Jewish Studies
Rotem Tamir Presents Latitude 33°: Another Heritage
Thursday, January 28, 6:00 p.m.
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis
Free; RSVP link coming in December*
”Latitude 33°,” Rotem Tamir’s exhibition at Mia November 21, 2026 through February 21, 2027, is named for the cartographic line running through Iraq, north Libya, and near Haifa where Tamir grew up, a latitude tracing her heritage materially and symbolically. Her family’s story is one of migration: objects left behind and what gets carried instead. Her grandparents could only bring the intangible: stories, songs, recipes. In Hebrew, Tamir observes, chefetz (object) shares a root with longing — an object is something you yearn for and bring into being. This exhibition, conjuring places through the physical and immaterial, evokes the ache of distance between where one is and where one is from and asks, “how does one piece together identity, keeping heritage alive for oneself and one’s children?” Tamir will speak about the objects and family history behind the art, and how making becomes a holding on to what migration carried forward.
Rotem Tamir’s art practice spans sculpture, sound, and installation. Drawing from her Sephardic Jewish heritage and rooted in traditional crafts, her work engages themes of migration, transcultural identity, and belonging. Tamir’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Ras Al Khaimah Contemporary Art Biennale, Haifa City Museum, Locust Projects, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. A 2021 McKnight Visual Artist Fellow, Tamir is an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of Minnesota.
This event is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at Mia. Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.
*A direct registration with Mia will become available on Dec. 28. Stay tuned!
Center for Jewish Studies
Michelle Campos Presents The ‘Other Jew’ ‘Between Jaffa and Tel Aviv
Thursday, March 25, 7:30 p.m.
Minnesota JCC Sabes Center, 4330 Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis
Free; RSVP for Michelle Campos Presents
Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche grew up within a notable Sephardi family in the tiny but flourishing Jewish community in Jaffa. Born in 1870, he became a prominent entrepreneur, a founder of Tel Aviv, and a fierce critic of the Ashkenazi Zionist leadership, of Arab nationalism, and of British colonial sectarianism. In his final decade, however, he emerged as an anguished public figure struggling to repair Arab-Jewish relations. Chelouche was ‘othered’ by his fellow Jews for being a native of the Orient and by his fellow native Jaffans for his commitment to the Zionist project, both of which he confronted in his published memoir. The memoir offers ambiguous answers, however, about the real possibilities of bridging between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, highlighting issues which we struggle with to this day.
Michelle Campos is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Campos coedited with Or Aleksandrowicz Between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, 1870–1930: A Memoir by Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche (Brandeis UP, 2025). Previously, she authored the award-winning book, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine. Campos is currently completing a book on neighborhood life and intercommunal relations in 19th and early 20th century Jerusalem. She also served as co-director on an NEH-funded international collaborative research project, “Reimagining Jewish Life in the Modern Middle East: History, Society, and Culture.”
Center for Jewish Studies
Ofer Ashkenazi Presents Paying Attention at the End of the World: 1930s Photographs by German Jews
Thursday, April 8, 7:30 p.m.
Minnesota JCC Capp Center, 1375 St. Paul Avenue, St. Paul
Free; RSVP for Ofer Ashkenazi Presents
In hindsight, the early 1930s marked the erosion and eventual collapse of liberal democracy in Germany. For those living through these years, however, the trajectory was far from certain. For German Jews—cast by the National Socialists as an existential threat to the nation—the question of the crisis’s true nature, and of democracy’s prospects, was especially urgent. This talk examines German Jewish responses to this pivotal moment through private photographs taken in the early 1930s. Private photography had become widespread in Germany, and its practitioners were increasingly aware of its power to convey ideological convictions and to shape both memory and self-perception. These images reveal how Jews sought to interpret and confront a shifting political, social, and cultural landscape—and to anticipate what lay ahead. Read as commentary on individual experience, private photographs allow us to recover the otherwise unrecorded emotions, beliefs, and behaviors of German Jews during these critical years.
Ofer Ashkenazi is Ben-Eliezer Professor of Modern History and Director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His recent publications include the monograph, Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025, with Rebekka Grossmann, Sarah Wobick-Segev, and Shira Miron), and the co-edited volume, Rethinking Jewish History and Memory through Photography (2025, with Thomas Pegelow Kaplan).
Minneapolis Jewish Federation: Engage Israel
May 4 - 11, 2028
As you look ahead to the coming year, start planning your next journey to Israel with the Minneapolis Jewish Federation. Join trip co-chairs Zehorit & Matt Heilicher, Katie & Michael Stern, and Jodi & Jeff Upin on Engage Israel. Celebrate Israel’s 80th year together.
Fill out the interest form to be the first to hear about trip updates.
Questions? Email Kara at krosenwald@jewishminneapolis.org.
The Chai–light Chorus
Ongoing
The chorale is actively recruiting new members! We’ve been in existence since 2000, having produced over 35 productions. We celebrate the joy of vocal performance without taking it too seriously. Anyone age 60 and above is eligible, and there’s absolutely no program fee — a musical “free for all!” Our weekly rehearsals are during the day. For more information, contact Mark Bloom via email at mark.bloomtru2life@gmail.com or by phone at 612-270–1705.
Jewish Youth Mentoring Program
Jewish Family and Children's Service (JFCS)
Ongoing
The Jewish Youth Mentoring Program (formerly the Jewish Big Brother/Big Sister Program), is a community-based mentoring program for Jewish-identified youth that is designed to promote positive social-emotional-spiritual development and increase engagement in the Jewish community. Since the program’s inception in 1975, it has matched over 400 Jewish youth with mentors.
The program is open to all families! Anyone can benefit from a personal, one-on-one connection with someone who is giving their undivided attention to them.
Participants are matched with carefully screened and selected volunteer mentors based on family preferences, age, gender identity, common interests, geographic proximity and more. Common match activities include visiting libraries or bookstores; arts and crafts; baking; exploring local parks; playing sports; going to museums; playing board games; and attending community events. Mentees are aged 6-12 and mentors are 16 and up, with a valid driver’s license
For questions, contact Dori Gelfman, Jewish Youth Mentoring Program Coordinator, at dgelfman@jfcsmpls.org or 952-542-4835.