Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County

All CHJ members are invited to join us women as  a way to get to know each other. We schmooze via Zoom. Please RSVP Roberta Frank. Watch your emails for the Zoom link, closer to the date.

Congregation for Humanistic Judaism

          Jewish Journeys Committee 

            Two Short Stories and Discussion

      Sunday, April 25, 2021, 9:30 AM

We will distribute two Sholem Aleichem stories in advance.

The theme: “Jews and their passionate relationship with the news.” 

 Discussion April 25th will be facilitated by CHJ member 

                             Carol W. Cederbaum, MSW, LCSW.

The Zoom link will be sent the week of April 19th.

          For additional information, contact adulted@humanisticjews.org         

 

 

CHJ is proud to be a caretaker of one of the 1,564 Czech Memorial Torahs collected from community synagogues in Bohemia and Moravia in the 1940s and safeguarded in Prague during the Nazi occupation. After the war,the scrolls were purchased from the Czech government by a British man named Ralph Yablon, who asked the Westminster Synagogue in London to repair them.

The Programming Committee invites you to an extended series that will take a deeper look at the Congregation’s Torah over a two-day presentation series.

Day 1 –  Lois Roman, Memorial Scrolls Trust Trustee,will provide a comprehensive history of how the Memorial Scrolls were saved and disseminated across Europe and North America. In her talk she will focus on the history of CHJ’s scroll.

CHJ is proud to be a caretaker of one of the 1,564 CzechMemorial Torahs collected from community synagogues in Bohemia and Moravia in the 1940s and safeguarded in Prague during the Nazi occupation. After the war,the scrolls were purchased from the Czech government by a British man named Ralph Yablon, who asked the Westminster Synagogue in London to repair them.

The Programming Committee invites you to an extended series that will take a deeper look at the Congregation’s Torah over a two-day presentation series. Day 1 was May 2.
 
Day 2  
 
Shabbat, join us to learn about the many roles CHJ members filled during the procuring of our Czech Memorial scroll.

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly—thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows among them.

When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.

Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.

All members are welcome to join.

Open to all CHJ members.

Please RSVP to Steven Getz.

 in partnership with

CHJ’s Jewish Journeys Committee invites you to an interactive talk
with acclaimed psychologist Dr. Betsy S. Stone, PhD .

“Pandemic parenting and beyond: Mental wellness going forward” 

                    Sunday, May 16, 2021, 9:30-11:30 AM

How can we help our children emerge from the pandemic? Reopening will be stressful on us all; it will not be as simple as going back to school, camp or work. After a year of fear and isolation, hear how to prepare for a new normal that reflects our changed selves.

Event opens 9:30am 

Dr. Stone’s talk begins 9:45, followed by Q&A.

Dr. Stone teaches on topics including Adolescent Spirituality, Gen-Xers as parents, Teenagers and their Brains, Leadership in Crisis, and Stress and Anxiety. 

An engaging speaker, her passion for wellness has brought her invitations to teach across the US. During the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Stone has focused on Trauma, Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth.

This free online event is open to CHJ and JCC members and the general public.

Non-CHJ members, please RSVP via email to events@HumanisticJews.org, with event name, first, last name, and town. 

Registrants will receive Zoom link week of May 10th.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.
Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date

Being There is one of the most popular and significant works from a writer of international stature. It is the story of Chauncey Gardiner – Chance, an enigmatic but distinguished man who emerges from nowhere to become an heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon, a presidential policy adviser, and a media icon. Truly “a man without qualities,” Chance’s straightforward responses to popular concerns are heralded as visionary. But though everyone is quoting him, no one is sure what he’s really saying. And filling in the blanks in his background proves impossible. Being There is a brilliantly satiric look at the unreality of American media culture that is, if anything, more trenchant now than ever.

All members are welcome to join.

A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition.

All members are welcome to join.

No epidemic has equaled the devastation of the Bubonic Plague, which decimated between one-third and three-quarters of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages and continued to flare up in destructive pockets for centuries after. In Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks eerily captures every aspect of life during the plague the gruesomely painful death, the speed with which the disease spread and the superstitions surrounding it, which rivaled the plague itself for horror.

All members are welcome to join.

Inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives.