On Sunday, Feb. 11, Or Emet president Allan Malkis will present a program on Rabbi Sherwin Wine, the founder of Humanistic Judaism. 

Malkis will show a video interview with Wine and lead a discussion about what Humanistic Judaism means to the Or Emet community.

The program will run from 10 a.m.-noon at the Talmud Torah of St. Paul, 768 Hamline Ave. South in St. Paul. A social time will follow.

Those who cannot attend in person may join over Zoom. Please register in advance here.

The Sunday adult programs are free and open to the public and meet concurrently with the Jewish Cultural Sunday School.

Or Emet is a secular congregation celebrating and honoring Jewish culture, history and values from a humanistic, inclusive perspective.

For information about Or Emet’s Jewish Cultural Sunday School, contact JCSS director Molly Phipps at school-1@oremet.org. 

For information about Or Emet, email info@oremet.org or visit oremet.org.

Rabbi Lynn Liberman

On Sunday, Jan. 21, Or Emet will host a program led by Rabbi Lynn Liberman, a board-certified chaplain and community chaplain for Jewish Family Service of St. Paul, and Angela Cowan, a licensed clinical social worker and program manager for the counseling team at Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis.

The program will run from 10 a.m.-noon at the Talmud Torah of St. Paul, 768 Hamline Ave. South in St. Paul. A social time will follow.

Liberman and Cowan will lead an opportunity for attendees to process and think about these challenging times as we live through the Israel-Gaza War, rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, and the fear and anxiety of the unknown in 2024.

Angela Cowan

Those who cannot attend in person may join over Zoom. Please register in advance here.

The Sunday adult programs are free and open to the public and meet concurrently with the Jewish Cultural Sunday School.

Or Emet is a secular congregation celebrating and honoring Jewish culture, history and values from a humanistic, inclusive perspective.

For information about Or Emet’s Jewish Cultural Sunday School, contact JCSS director Molly Phipps at school-1@oremet.org. 

For information about Or Emet, email info@oremet.org or visit oremet.org.

On Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024, from 10-11:30 a.m., Or Emet will host a Shabbat service followed by a program and social time. The events will take place at the Minnesota JCC Sabes Center Minneapolis, 4330 S. Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis. 

The service will be led by Eva Cohen, Or Emet’s ritual leader and a Humanistic rabbi in training. 

Gregory King

After the service, Gregory King, president of the board and advocacy coordinator for the Minnesota Interfaith Coalition on Immigration (ICOM), will present a program on immigration detention in Minnesota. ICOM engages in courageous, spiritual, multicultural action in solidarity with immigrants and refugees to achieve justice and stand up to oppression.

King joined the ICOM board when it became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2019 and has served as president of the board since 2021. He also serves on the Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center board and performs Filipinx folk dance with his mother and daughters as part of the Cultural Society of Filipino Americans.

King was born in Minneapolis and still lives there today with his wife and three daughters. The son of a Filipina immigrant, he got involved in immigrant rights advocacy after the 2016 election, co-founding Filipinx for Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice Minnesota (FIRM) and becoming introduced to ICOM through his congregation, St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community.

Those who cannot attend the program in person may join over Zoom. Please register in advance here. 

Or Emet is a secular congregation celebrating and honoring Jewish culture, history and values from a humanistic, inclusive perspective. For more information, email info@oremet.org or visit oremet.org.

On Saturday, Dec. 16, from 10-11:50 a.m., Or Emet will host a Shabbat service followed by a program and social time. The events will take place at the Minnesota JCC Sabes Center Minneapolis, 4330 S. Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis. 

The service will be led by Eva Cohen, Or Emet’s ritual leader and a Humanistic rabbi in training.

Susan Weinberg

After the service, Or Emet member Susan Weinberg will give a presentation on immigration through the lens of laws, documents and family stories. With a focus on the 1900s, she will explore the immigration laws that affected entry as well as the documents created as laws changed that are available to genealogists. 

Juxtaposed with laws and documents are stories of the Jews of the 1900s who came to America. Weinberg’s multimedia presentation will incorporate experiences drawn from an oral history project with Jewish elders. The stories span those who grew up in early immigrant communities, Holocaust survivors who came in the 1940s-50s and immigrants from the former Soviet Union who arrived in the 1970s-90s. 

Weinberg is an artist, author and frequent speaker on genealogy topics. She is president of the Minnesota Jewish Genealogical Society and serves on the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.

She developed the Jewish Identity and Legacy Project, an oral history project with elders, then authored the book “We Spoke Jewish: A Legacy in Stories” that includes oral history, artwork and history about three groups of Jewish immigrants who spanned the 1900s. 

Those who cannot attend the program in person may join over Zoom. Please register in advance here. 

Or Emet is a secular congregation celebrating and honoring Jewish culture, history and values from a humanistic, inclusive perspective. For more information, email info@oremet.org or visit oremet.org.

On Sunday, Dec. 3, Or Emet will host a program by David Jordan Harris, artistic director of Voices of Sepharad, who will describe through word and song the customs, food and melodies that are special to a Sephardic Chanukah celebration.

The program will run from 10 a.m.-noon at the Talmud Torah of St. Paul, 768 Hamline Ave. South in St. Paul. A social time will follow. 

David Jordan Harris

Harris has pursued study and performance of Sephardic music throughout North America, Greece, Israel, France, Turkey, Poland, Bosnia, Spain and Morocco. He has received numerous awards, fellowships and commissions supporting his fieldwork and performances with Voices of Sepharad, which he co-founded in 1986 with dancer Judith Brin Ingber. 

Harris was the founding executive director of Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, which he led until 2022 and served as cantorial soloist/music director at Shir Tikvah Congregation for 21 years.

Those who cannot attend in person may join over Zoom. Please register in advance here. 

The Sunday adult programs are free and open to the public and meet concurrently with the Jewish Cultural Sunday School. 

Or Emet is a secular congregation celebrating and honoring Jewish culture, history and values from a humanistic, inclusive perspective. 

For information about Or Emet’s Jewish Cultural Sunday School, contact JCSS director Molly Phipps at school-1@oremet.org. For information about Or Emet, email info@oremet.org or visit oremet.org.