Cultural Arts & Jewish Heritage Speakers & Authors

Overview

Commonpoint Queens partners with the Jewish Book Council to offer engaging virtual and in person speaker events for all ages and topics!

2023-24 Speakers:

Cyn­thia Ehrenkrantz
Seeking Shelter: Memoir of a Jewish Girlhood in Wartime Britain
Tuesday, May 21, 2024 – 6:30 p.m. (virtual)
Click here to register

Cyn­thia Ehrenkrantz, nee Shelow­er, was six in 1939 when Britain entered World War II and twelve in 1945 when the war end­ed. Seek­ing Shel­ter is her vivid child’s eye account of life in wartime Eng­land as she lived it: an adored only child in a large Jew­ish clan whose com­fort­able exis­tence becomes one of food short­ages, ration books, gas masks, and air raid sirens and – worst of all, for a sen­si­tive pre­co­cious child accus­tomed to cod­dling and att­ten­tion – being sent away for months and years at a stretch to escape Ger­man bombs. Click here to buy the book.

B.A. Van Sise
Invited to Life: Finding Hope after the Holocaust
Tuesday, June 11, 2024 – 11:00 a.m. (Older Adult Center at Bay Terrace members only)

B.A. Van Sise is an author and pho­to­graph­ic artist focused on the inter­sec­tion between lan­guage and the visu­al image. He is the author of two mono­graphs: the visu­al poet­ry anthol­o­gy Chil­dren of Grass: A Por­trait of Amer­i­can Poet­ry with Mary-Louise Park­er, and Invit­ed to Life: After the Holo­caust with Neil Gaiman, May­im Bia­lik, and Sab­ri­na Orah Mark. “No mat­ter how it might seem,” writes B. A. Van Sise, ​“this is not a book about the Holo­caust.” Rather, it is about a num­ber of sur­vivors who emerged from the deep­est depths of the Shoah and accept­ed their invi­ta­tion to life. In nine­ty hand­some and sen­si­tive por­traits, all set against a black back­ground, Van Sise iden­ti­fies in their sto­ries lessons for our unset­tled time. Click here to buy the book.

NEW DATE – Philippa Strum
On Account of Sex: Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the Making of Gender Equality Law
Monday, April 15, 2024 – 6:30 p.m. (virtual)
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Long before she became ​“Noto­ri­ous,” Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg was an attor­ney argu­ing gen­der equal­i­ty cas­es before the U.S. Supreme Court. The cas­es she won in the 1970s changed the mean­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion, adding legal equal­i­ty for women to it. That is the rea­son RBG became the first Jew­ish Amer­i­can and the first woman to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. Click here to buy the book.

POSTPONED – Elizabeth Mandel
Salt & Hon­ey: Jew­ish Teens on Fem­i­nism, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and Tradition
Wednesday, March 27, 2024 – 6:00 p.m. (virtual)

Eliz­a­beth Man­del is the Founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of jGirls+ Mag­a­zine, an online lit­er­ary mag­a­zine for Jew­ish girls and non­bi­na­ry teens. In Salt & Hon­ey: Jew­ish Teens on Fem­i­nism, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and Tradition, a collection col­lec­tion of per­son­al essays, poet­ry, and visu­al art­work, Jew­ish young adults from the online pub­li­ca­tion jGirls Mag­a­zine con­front dif­fi­cult truths in a chang­ing world. Many of the pieces are unfil­tered, seek­ing to con­nect with oth­er teens rather than defend­ing their points of view to adults. The result is a mov­ing work that encour­ages sol­i­dar­i­ty. Click here to buy the book.

Mind Over Batter with Michael Harari
Mind Over Batter: 75 Recipes for Baking as Therapy
Tuesday, February 27, 2024 – 6:00 p.m.

A study in the virtues of bak­ing and eat­ing as restora­tive prac­tice, Mind Over Bat­ter is a charmed propo­si­tion that encour­ages read­ers to engage in ​“bak­ing ther­a­py”— which, accord­ing to Haz­an, a licensed psy­chother­a­pist, ​“is a heal­ing process, bro­ken down into bite-size, nour­ish­ing con­tent. Click here to buy the book.

CANCELED – International Holocaust Remembrance Day with Richard Hurowitz
In The Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust
Thursday, January 24, 2024 – 12:00 p.m.
In Person at Central Queens

Unfortunately, our International Holocaust Remembrance Day speaker event has been canceled due to a family emergency with the author. The event will be rescheduled for another date to be announced. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Gar­den of the Right­eous at Israel’s Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al, Yad Vashem, pays trib­ute to indi­vid­u­als who risked their lives, lib­er­ty, and/​or careers in order to save Jews dur­ing the Holo­caust.Named after the memo­r­i­al gar­den, Richard Hurowitz’s book presents in-depth case stud­ies of indi­vid­u­als from var­i­ous nations who took sig­nif­i­cant risks to do what they believed was right. Click here to buy the book.

The Jewish Deli with Ben Nadler
Monday, December 11, 2023 – 6:30 p.m.
Virtual

The neighborhood Jewish deli is a culinary and cultural institution, a wonderland of amazing flavors and delicious food—bright, buttery, briny, sweet, fatty, salty, smoky—as well as a center of tradition, innovation, and celebration. Artist Ben Nadler pays tribute to this beloved gastronomic destination in The Jewish Deli: An Illustrated Guide to the Chosen Food which takes an illustrated comic-style approach to the subject. Click here to buy the book.

Totally Kosher with Chanie Apfelbaum
Total­ly Kosher: Tra­di­tion with a Twist! 150+ Recipes for the Hol­i­days and Every Day
Thursday, November 9, 2023 – 6:30 p.m.
Virtual

The Cultural Arts & Jewish Heritage Department is excited to welcome Chanie Apfelbaum to Commonpoint Queens on November 9 in partnership with Jewish Book Council. This event will feature her new cook book, Total­ly Kosher: Tra­di­tion with a Twist! 150+ Recipes for the Hol­i­days and Every Day: A Cookbook. Her cookbook includes more than 150 fun, flavorful, and modern kosher recipes inspired by dishes from around the world—featuring quick-and-easy weekday meals, traditional recipes, and unfussy holiday dinners from the creator of the blog Busy in Brooklyn. Click here to buy the book.

Storytime with Elyssa Friedland
The Museum of Lost Teeth
Tuesday, October 3, 2023 – 4:30 p.m.
In person at Commonpoint Queens Central Queens

Where do all the lost teeth go??

Join Commonpoint Queens as we welcome author Elyssa Friedland for a special reading and Q&A event featuring her exciting and funny book The Museum of Lost Teeth. Click here to buy the book.

For more information, contact SBenAderet@CommonpointQueens.org.

Please register through our online system here: