Upcoming Webinars
We are pleased to share with you the full list of webinars that we are hosting in the coming months. View past webinars here.
Hadassah Kaplan: Book Discussion (ZOOM ONLY)
Thursday, October 30, 2025 • 8 Cheshvan 5786
7:00 – 9:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
Zoom link (no registration needed): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84369677825?pwd=tUm9mSOYLokCNQxK28PzqZh6vrWRSK.1#success
This event is sponsored by West End Synagogue in New York with help from the SAJ.
West End Synagogue member Professor Mel Scult will interview Professor Sharon Ann Musher on her book, Promised Lands: Hadassah Kaplan and the Legacy of Jewish Women in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (NYU Press).
In 1922, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, first initiated the Bat Mitzvah as a rite-of-passage for Jewish girls. Characterized as a lifelong supporter of women’s rights, Kaplan’s family, including his wife and four daughters, played a role in shaping his ideas about women, Jewish law, and Zionism. This was especially true of his second daughter, Hadassah Kaplan, who joined a small but influential cohort of American Jewish women who studied, worked, and volunteered in British Mandate Palestine. This conversation between Sharon Ann Musher, a granddaughter of Hadassah Kaplan Musher and a great granddaughter of Mordecai Kaplan, and Mel Scult, Mordecai Kaplan’s biographer, draws on Sharon’s recent book Promised Lands: Hadassah Kaplan and the Legacy of American Jewish Women in Twentieth Century Palestine. Promised Lands draws on a rich personal archive of diary entries, photographs, and letters, to follow Hadassah’s journey to Palestine and illustrate how travel shaped a cohort of American Jewish women who went on to shape American Jewry.
Click here for more information on Sharon Ann Musher and her new book.
November 2025 Art and Healing series:
- Sunday, November 2 at 2:30pm Eastern Standard Time (EST): “For Everything There is a Season”: What Shall Be After with Elyssa Moss Rabinowitz
- Sunday, November 9 at 2:30pm Eastern Standard Time (EST): Poems for Our Days with Dr. Rachel Korazim
- Sunday, November 16 at 2:30pm Eastern Standard Time (EST): Healing Ink with Craig Dershowitz
- Sunday, November 23 at 2:30pm Eastern Standard Time (EST): Shir Tikva (Song of Hope) with Hadas Wolff-Yitzhak
- More 2025-26 webinars to be announced soon!
And More:
- Prelude to 21st Century Kaplanian Vision of Jewish Life and Learning
- 21st Century Responsa to Kaplan’s Questions Jews Ask
- ‘Coffee House’ Conversations with small groups
- Mel Scult Teen Essay contest
- Adult Study: All the Rich Possibilities: Kaplan Study in 5785/2024-5
Past Webinars:
- Reconstructing Hadassah: How Family Influenced Mordecai Kaplan with Sharon Ann Musher (9/14/2025)
- Pirke Mordecai with Yovel recipients Rabbis Lee Friedlander and Arnold Rachlis (5/4/2025)
- Between Father and Daughter: Exploring the Career and Influence of Judith Kaplan Eisenstein with Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton (3/23/2025)
- Tu b’Shevat – Judaism and the Environment with Rabbis Michael Cohen and Fred Scherlinder Dobb (2/9/2025)
- Tribute Honoring Mel Scult’s 90th birthday (12/8/2024)
- Revaluating the Unetanah Tokef: What Kind of Tzedaka Softens the Harsh Degree? with author Amy Schiller and Rabbi Mordechai Liebling (9/17/2024)
- Celebration and Thanksgiving: A Webinar Honoring Rabbi Jeffrey Schein with Rabbi Mira Wasserman (6/9/2024)
- Democracy and Judaism: Does One Need the Other to Thrive? with Aaron Dorfman, Amy Spitalnick, Rabbis Amy Klein and Bill Plevan, and moderated by Rabbi Elyse Wechterman (3/20/2024)
- Beneath the Surface: Mordecai Kaplan’s Philosophical Commitments Explored with Dr. Nadav Berman and Dr. Rabbi Vered Sakal (2/11/2024)
- Art of the Spirit with Rabbi Richard Hirsh (1/30/2024)
- The Great Kaplanian Report Card: Valley Beth Shalom of California as a Kaplanian Playground with Rabbis Amy Bernstein, Ed Feinstein and Jeffrey Schein on the successes and challenges of implementing the Judaism as a Civilization program. (1/7/2024: Third of a Three Part Series in Honor of the 40th Yahrzeit of Mordecai Kaplan and the 90th Anniversary of Judaism as a Civilization)
- Judaism as a Civilization, The Hanukkah Gift to the Jewish People and World that Keeps on Giving, lecture by Dr. Deborah Waxman of Reconstructing Judaism and response from Dr. Elias Sacks of Jewish Publication Society. Moderated by Dr. Jeffrey Schein. (12/10/2023: Second of a Three Part Series in Honor of the 40th Yahrzeit of Mordecai Kaplan and the 90th Anniversary of Judaism as a Civilization)
- What Remains Revelatory in the 21st Century in Mordecai Kaplan’s Thought? with Drs. Arnie Eisen, David Ellenson, and Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, moderated by Dr. Eric Caplan (11/12/2023: First of a Three Part Series in Honor of the 40th Yahrzeit of Mordecai Kaplan and the 90th Anniversary of Judaism as a Civilization)
- Standing with Israel, Pursuing Peace (10/19/2023)
- Kaplan, Musar, Mindfulness and Morals with Drs. Eric Caplan and Mel Scult, Rabbi Marc Margolius, and Elizabeth Caplun, moderated by Rabbi Les Bronstein (9/10/2023)
- Kaplan and Israel: A New, New Zionism with Rabbis Michael Cohen, Barbara Penzner, Gail Shuster-Bouskila, Dennis Sasso, and Dr. Shlomi Ravid (4/23/2023)
- Kaplan and Hebrew with Rabbis Daria Jacobs-Velde, Helen Plotkin, Professor Vardit Ringvalt, and Earl Schwartz (2/26/2023)
- Kaplan, Creativity & the Arts with Rabbi Adina Allen, Joanne Fink, Elizheva Hurvich, and Rabbi Margie Jacobs (1/29/2023)
- Hanukkah and a Friendly Critique of the Notion of Living in Two Civilizations with Rabbis James Greene, Jessica Lott, Jeffrey Schein, and Dr. Eric Caplan (12/11/2022)
- Entering the Heichal (sanctuary) of the Voting Booth: Reflections on Judaism and Democracy with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, Sarah Hurwitz, and Rabbi Sid Schwarz (10/30/2022)
- God is Here in Kaplanian Context with Rabbi Toba Spitzer (9/13/2022)
- God is Here, Book Club with Drs. Deborah & Jeffrey Schein (8/31/2022)
- Role models of Kaplanian lay leadership today; A discussion among rabbis to mark the yahrzeit of Dan Cedarbaum (6/27/2022)
- Dr. Marcia Falk, Mah Nishtana Ha-Haggadah Ha-Zot: an exploration of my new haggadah, Night of Beginnings (3/13/2022)
- The Natural and Supernatural, The Human and Divine: A Dialogue about the Golem, Artificial Intelligence and Purim with Dr. Jeffrey Schein, Dr. Henry Morris, and Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker (2/27/2022)
- Dr. Tzemah Yoreh, Rabbi Sandy Sasso, and Sarah Brammer-Shlay discuss Sasha Sagan’s For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in our Unlikely World (1/30/2022)
- God and Science, Einstein and Kaplan: a conversation with Rabbi Michael Cohen and Roger L. Price (1/9/2022)
- Eric Caplan: Revisiting From Ideology to Liturgy: New Insights into Mordecai Kaplan as liturgist and the current prayerbooks of Conservative and Reform Judaism (12/12/2021)
For information about the webinars, contact Jeffrey Schein (Jeffrey@KaplanCenter.org) or Eric Caplan (Eric@KaplanCenter.org)