Jodi Ruth Eichler-Levine presents and illustrated talk about Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community

Thursday, January 6 at 2pm on Zoom and Falmouth FCTV Public Channel 13

“Eichler-Levine’s compelling account of how to experience religion outside the traditional spaces of focus illuminates how American Jews create and craft a Judaism as a form of resilience, a material encounter with memory, and a physical desire for continuity. This book is testimony and witness to these lives and to these practices.” — Ken Koltun-Fromm, author of Imagining the Jewish God

ZOOM INFORMATION

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqce6rqjosEtGVAGQummRNTbx-Of3VMhjA

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Falmouth Jewish Congregation and the Worcester JCC co-host this Jewish Book Council author talk, another in a series that occurs roughly monthly.

Explor­ing a con­tem­po­rary Judaism rich with the tex­tures of fam­i­ly, mem­o­ry, and fel­low­ship, Jodi Eich­ler-Levine takes read­ers inside a flour­ish­ing Amer­i­can Jew­ish craft­ing move­ment. As she trav­eled across the coun­try to homes, craft con­ven­tions, syn­a­gogue knit­ting cir­cles, and craftivist actions, she joined in the mak­ing, asked ques­tions, and con­tem­plat­ed her own fam­i­ly sto­ries. Jew­ish Amer­i­cans, many of them women, are cre­at­ing rit­u­al chal­lah cov­ers and prayer shawls, ink, clay, or wood pieces, and oth­er arti­cles for fam­i­ly, friends, or Jew­ish char­i­ties. But they are doing much more: armed with per­haps only a nee­dle and thread, they are reck­on­ing with Jew­ish iden­ti­ty in a frag­ile and dan­ger­ous world.

Jodi Eichler-Levine is the Her academic home is Lehigh University, where she is the Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization and an Associate Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University, where shes teaches courses in Jewish studies, North American religions, and gender studies, among other fields. Her work on the intersections of religion, popular culture, politics, race, and gender has appeared in The Washington Post, Salon, The Revealer, Killing the Buddha, Kveller, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues. In addition to Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), Ms. Eichler-Levine has published Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature (NYU Press, 2013). She is currently writing a book on religion and the vast world of Disney — the parks, the company, the films, the fans, and more.

Learn more about the author at her website: https://jodieichlerlevine.com/