The Jewish Community Scholars Program began in 2001 in Orange County California to provide high level adult Jewish education. Technology has given CSP a global reach with partner synagogues in Israel, Europe and all of North America. As a partner synagogue, Temple Israel members have access to CJP’s vast array of live presentations from top notch scholars. CSP also has an extensive archive of past programs on You Tube.
Thursday, February 12th from 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. (PT) and 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. (ET) live on Zoom from NYC
“Derfner Judaica Museum: The Best Little Museum You Never Knew Existed” led by Dr. Sharon Keller
The Derfner Judaica Museum is a true hidden gem—an intimate “jewel box” of a museum overlooking the Hudson River on the campus of The Hebrew Home at Riverdale in the Bronx. In this session, we’ll take a vivid journey through its remarkable permanent collection—nearly 1,000 works that tell the Jewish story through art, ritual, and everyday creativity. Centered on beautifully crafted objects made for synagogue and home—metalwork, textiles, ceremonial implements, and more—the collection reveals how Jewish communities across time and place transformed tradition into visual form, blending sacred purpose with local style, personal artistry, and bold imagination. From historic ritual masterpieces to striking modern interpretations, the Derfner reminds us that Judaica isn’t static—it’s a living, evolving language of meaning. Come discover the objects, the artisans, and the unexpected stories that make this museum such a powerful celebration of Jewish material culture. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
Sundays, February 1st, 8th, 15th and Tuesday, February 24th from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (PT) and 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (ET) live on Zoom from Barcelona, Spain
“Soviet Jews: From Revolutionaries to Refuseniks” led Evgenia Kempinski.
The story of Soviet Jews is not a story of a single identity or a single role. It is a story of builders and critics, of loyal citizens and disillusioned dissidents, of idealists who believed in the Soviet dream and victims crushed by the very system they helped create. Across seven decades, Jews stood on every side of the Soviet project — as passionate revolutionaries, administrators, cultural leaders, soldiers, skeptics, silent conformists, targets of repression, and ultimately as the men and women who helped bring Jewish life back to the world stage.
PART 1: “Between Revolution and Tradition: Jewish Political Life in 1917”
PART 2: “Builders of a New Society: Jews in the Early Soviet State”
PART 3: “Under Stalin: Terror, War, and the Destruction of Jewish Public Life”
PART 4: “The Thaw, the Struggle, the Exodus: Soviet Jews from the 1950s to the 1990s”
Tuesday, February 17th from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (PT) and 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (ET) live on Zoom from Berlin, Germany
“God, Nature, and the Lens: How Spinoza Really Saw the World” led Rana Werbin
Most people hear one line about Spinoza— “God is Nature”—and assume they’ve gotten the point. In this session, we’ll see why that shortcut misses what’s most daring (and most useful) about Spinoza, and why he remains one of the most surprisingly modern thinkers in Jewish and Western intellectual history. Viewing him through the lens of his day job as an optician—someone who literally shaped how people saw—we’ll explore how his philosophy is less a slogan about pantheism and more a radical account of reality: a single infinite substance that can be understood in countless ways depending on the “lenses” we bring to it. The result is an eye-opening invitation to rethink perception, freedom, and the limits of what we think we know—Spinoza not as a dusty heretic, but as a guide to seeing the world differently. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
CLICK HERE FOR UPCOMING SESSIONS IN FEBRUARY 2026
