Saturday, September 9, 8:00 pm

8:00 pm: Study with Professor Derek Penslar, “Lessons of Zionism”
In anticipation of the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, leading historian, Derek Penslar, will discuss lessons learned by Israel and by Diaspora Jewry.

Click here to download the Selichot Study Texts: Dayan Eulogy & We Are the Children of Winter 1973

Study with Professor Derek Penslar is generously sponsored by Alison and Alan Schwartz

9:15 pm: Havdalah and Dessert Reception

9:45 pm: Selichot Service in the round
The exquisite music, prayers, and poetry will prepare us for the new year as we take up the themes of repentance and forgiveness, restoration and return.

To join us online, please visit our livestream Page or holyblossom.org/hhd

Click here for the Selichot service pages

A Dessert Reception will follow in the Schwartz/Reisman Atrium.

Since 1998, Derek Penslar has been the Samuel Zacks Professor of European Jewish history at the University of Toronto.  Between 2012 and 2016 he was also the inaugural Stanley Lewis Professor of Modern Israel Studies at Oxford. He is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.

Derek Penslar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.  His books include Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (2006), The Origins of the State of Israel: A Documentary History (with Eran Kaplan, 2011), Jews and the Military: A History (2013), Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (2020/German ed. 2022), Zionism: An Emotional State (2023) and Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Theory and the Historiography of Zionism (co-edited with Stefan Vogt and Arieh Saposnik, 2023). He is currently writing an international history of the 1948 Palestine War.  He is co-editor of  The Journal of Israeli History and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Israel Studies and the Israel Studies Review.

Professor Penslar is a long-time friend of Holy Blossom Temple and has recently volunteered his talents to help bring us our popular online series, “Israel Dialogues.”