Adult Education at Temple Aliyah
The Adult Education Committee offers courses throughout the year on all aspects of Jewish life. Many of these are offered together with Community Programming. Check the Calendar for upcoming Adult Education programs.
Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life
On January 10, 2012, Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director, Amnesty International USA ( at left), spoke about his new book "Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary’s Life."
Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in southern Ukraine, Leon Trotsky was both a world-class intellectual and a man capable of the most narrow-minded ideological dogmatism. He was an effective military strategist and an adept diplomat, who staked the fate of the Bolshevik revolution on the meager foundation of a Europe-wide Communist upheaval. He was a master politician who played his cards badly in the momentous struggle for power against Stalin in the 1920s. And he was an assimilated, indifferent Jew who was among the first to foresee that Hitler’s triumph would mean disaster for his fellow European Jews, and that Stalin would attempt to forge an alliance with Hitler if Soviet overtures to the Western democracies failed. "Fast-paced and engaging, Rubenstein's brief biography provides a solid introduction to the period and a detailed examination of a man much studied but little understood." - Publisher's Weekly.
Joshua Rubenstein is the Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA and a long-time Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
He is the author of "Soviet Dissidents, Their Struggle for Human Rights and Tangled Loyalties," "The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg," a biography of the controversial Soviet-Jewish writer and journalist He is the co-editor of "Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee." Mr. Rubenstein received a National Jewish Book Award in the category of East European Studies for Stalin's Secret Pogrom. He is the co-editor of "The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov." He also helped to edit and translate "The Unknown Black Book, the Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories," which first came out in January 2008 and was re-issued in paperback in 2010.
Economic Ties between Massachusetts and Israel
On April 3, 2011, the Adult Education Committee sponsored a discussion with David Goodtree of CJP's Israel Advocacy Committee, during which he presented a report on the economic ties between Massachusetts and Israel. Israel, referred to as the "Start-Up Nation" in the Wall Street Journal best-seller of the same name, has deep ties to Massachusetts. More than 100 life sciences and technology businesses in the Commonwealth are based on Israeli innovation. Just back from Governor Patrick's trade mission to Israel, David presented fascinating research about how Israeli innovation is creating jobs in Massachusetts today, and opportunities for the Bay State to strengthen the relationship in the future.
To learn more about this important topic, read the articles below:
Economic Ties Between Israel and Massachusetts: a Potential Bright Spot in a Bleak Economy
The Massachusetts-Israel Economic Relationship: An Accelerating Engine of Growth for Massachusetts Business But Competition from Other States is Intensifying
Please contact Adult Education Chair Amy Lassman for more information about Adult Education at Temple Aliyah or if you would like to join the Adult Education Committee.