Ari Mermelstein is conducting the four-part Evelyn and Sol Sleppin Lecture Series in Jewish Law at the East Brunswick Jewish Center Sunday evenings through March 9.
Sidebar
If you goFebruary 19, 2008
Sol Sleppin was an attorney and judge in Manhattan and a vice president of the Sutton Place Synagogue.
Evelyn Sleppin was a vice president of the National Council of Jewish Women in New York and worked with Holocaust refugees for HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
When Michael Sleppin of Monroe considers his parents’ legacy, he finds parallels.
“She was a representative who helped refugees as they got off the boat in the ‘40s,” recalled Sleppin of his mother. “She assisted these refugees — who were intimidated enough by the authorities — cut through the red tape.
“I said to myself when thinking about this that certainly my dad, and to a large extent my mother, were fascinated by law and had a commitment to American secular law and Jewish law.”
To honor their late parents’ commitment to jurisprudence and the Jewish community, Sleppin and his sister, Joan Freedman of Cranbury, have underwritten the Evelyn and Sol Sleppin Lecture Series in Jewish Law at the East Brunswick Jewish Center. The series also honors their mother’s 25th yahrzeit and their father’s 20th.
The four-part series, which is free and open to the general public, is being held Sunday evenings through March 9. (See sidebar below.)
The series is being conducted by Ari Mermelstein, a doctoral candidate and the assistant director of the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
The first program, on Feb. 17, focused on authority and Jewish law. The next, on Feb. 24, focuses on the tension between received law and rabbinic interpretation.
Although the focus of the series is Jewish law, Sleppin said many of those attending will find a connection to American law.
“I hope they will sit and discuss it over a cup of coffee,” he added.
Cathy Mermelstein, an EBJC board member and program facilitator, said it was the first time the synagogue had opened such an event to the public.
Mermelstein, Ari Mermelstein’s aunt, suggested her nephew to Sleppin.
“We are grateful to Michael Sleppin for making it possible for us to offer a program with such outstanding academic value and we are proud to be able to share this opportunity with our congregants, our neighbors, and our extended community,” she said. “People are excited about the chance to learn at a sophisticated level and to develop an understanding of the nature and history of Jewish law. There is great buzz around the synagogue about this.”
If you go
The Evelyn and Sol Sleppin Lecture Series in Jewish Law at East Brunswick Jewish Center is free and open to the public. All programs begin at 6:30 p.m.
Feb. 24: A Theology of Controversy — The tension between rabbinic interpretation and Jewish law, which tradition says ultimately traces its authority back to God.
March 2: Jewish Law and Morality — How and whether the religious legal system can admit human morality into its understanding of divinely revealed text.
March 9: Jewish Law and Zionism — The halachic, or Jewish legal, implications of creating a Jewish civil authority in Israel.
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