With George Dobbins

In what has become an annual favorite at the JCCSF, San Francisco Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman is joined by self-professed television expert George Dobbins to uncover the best and worst of the current season. Complete with clips and side-splitting commentary, this evening is a must for lovers and haters of the small screen.

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Join AJWS President Ruth Messinger and local young adults for a Bay Area advance screening of the new documentary featuring Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist.

REPORTER documents Nicholas Kristof's efforts to write about the world's most wrenching conflicts. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kristof seeks personal stories of women and children in the midst of the decade-long conflict to illuminate the violence, hardship and injustice that AJWS addresses through grassroots work. Film will be followed by Q & A with Ruth Messinger. Come for hors d'oeuvres in the atirum at 5:30 pm, compliments of AJWS.

Co-sponsored by Congregation Emanu-El and Congregation Emanu-El’s Young Adult Community, Congregation Beth Sholom, Congregation Sherith Israel, Taube Center for Jewish Life at the JCCSF, The Hub of the JCCSF, The SF Bay Area Darfur Coalition and Congregation Sha’ar Zahav.  

Space is limited. RSVP to Stephanie Tholand at stholand@ajws.org or 415.593.3298 with chosen location and number attending by November 25. 

With Jeffrey Solomon

Moderated by Amy Rabbino, Director of Philanthropic Services, Jewish Community Endowment Fund

Renowned philanthropist and founder of Birthright Israel Charles Bronfman offers fresh insights into creating a business plan that works, regardless of income level, and why one needs to understand philanthropy as a business undertaking as well as a deeply personal, reflective process. In a post-Madoff world, Bronfman's words of wisdom are all the more instructive. Jeffrey Solomon is president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, a global family of charitable foundations that actively connects young Jews with their communities, culture and each other.

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Radio host Michael Medved (The 10 Big Lies About America) says contempt for free enterprise is fueled by five big lies about American business. Among those lies: that pursuit of profit damages the public interest and undermines values. With his trademark slashing wit, he joins neoconservative trailblazer Norman Podhoretz (World War IV) to discuss what's wrong with Jewish liberalism and why we should feel grateful for our corporate system.

Presented in partnership with the Koret Foundation and Taube Philanthropies.

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Michael Pollan says that instead of food, we're consuming "edible food-like substances." The Western diet has traded food for nutrients and common sense for confusion. The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become. Thirty years of nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter. Learn what Pollan offers as a simple solution to eating well. Dr. Dean Ornish is founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito.

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Impractical Lessons for Practical Living

Romanian-born poet, novelist and essayist Andrei Codrescu delights NPR audiences with his audacious cultural commentary. He writes that his adopted city of New Orleans, especially post-Katrina, is "a city that steadfastly refuses to conform." His new book, The Posthuman Dada Guide, is "an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world."

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The New Yorker staff writer Atul Gawande is the author of Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance and Complications, a humane and passionate reminders that doctors are people, too. A MacArthur Fellow, a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and an assistant professor at Harvard, Gawande's latest work finds a remedy for grievous medical errors in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospi­tal infection.

Dr. Kessler, the controversial former head of the FDA who took on the big tobacco companies, now strikes out at the food industry in The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Isatiable American Appetite. Kessler reveals startling facts. Did you know that many foods are created to stimulate the appetite even after we're full and are engineered to literally melt in your mouth so that you'll eat faster and consume more calories? You may never look at restaurant chicken, often injected with sugar, salt and fat, the same way again.

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With Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute?

More than five job hunters for every opening. Thirteen million Americans looking for work. Do you need help tipping the odds in your favor? Richard Bolles can help. Learn 18 different ways to look for work. Know what to do when posting a résumé online fails to land you an interview. Arm yourself with the single most crucial question you can ask when angling for a job offer.

The JCCSF offers a range of free programs to assist job hunters and career changers. Find out more at www.jccsf.org/careerdev

Jane Bryant Quinn is one of the nation's leading personal finance commentators. An award-winning columnist for Newsweek and Bloomberg, and the author of the wildly bestselling Making the Most of Your Money and Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People, she's cornered the market on simple but essential advice for people of any age to plan for their financial future. Among her new topics is tips for Boomers on making retirement income last.

Award-winning novelist and MacArthur "genius" Rebecca Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem, Mazel, Betraying Spinoza) is a writer whose work wrestles with affairs of the mind, heart, and soul. A philosopher by training, Goldstein helps us understand the almost erotic power that ideas can impart. Her latest book, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God, dives into the great debate between faith and reason, and gives us "a hilarious novel about people's existential agonies and the intellectual mysteries that obsess them." (Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated).

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Chris Cleave's incandescent novel, Little Bee, tells the compelling story of a young Nigerian girl, a refugee from the internecine tribal oil wars of her country, and an Englishwoman whose destiny is inextricably linked to this young African girl's. Cleave, whose acclaimed first novel, Incendiary, was an international bestseller, deftly combines humor with pathos in this timely tale of friendship, national identity, responsibility, grief, and redemption.  Chris Cleave is a columnist for The Guardian newspaper in London.

"Book clubs in search of the next Kite Runner need look no further than this astonishing, flawless novel…Cleave effortlessly moves between alternating viewpoints with lucid, poignant prose…A tension-filled dramatic ending and plenty of moral dilemmas add up to a satisfying, emotional read. Highly recommended…" — Library Journal

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Rejecting the stylized self-consciousness that characterizes so much contemporary poetry, Kay Ryan chooses instead to write poetry accessible to a broad audience, coloring her poems with sly humor and dramatic imagination. Treat yourself to an evening with this renowned Bay Area poet.

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Dr. Verghese's interest in a more patient-sensitive approach to medicine and his remarkable empathy for patient suffering have brought him national renown. His acclaimed My Own Country is based on his experience in treating HIV patients, and his latest book, Cutting for Stone, mines the story of his own life, from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City.

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Barrows' book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, has become a publishing phenomenon, jumping off the shelves and rocketing to the top of book club lists. The characters spring to life as they exchange letters and telegrams, many revealing life on an island off England under German occupation, shortly after World War II.

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One of the all-time most popular broadcasters on public radio, Stamberg is known for her conversational style and knack for finding an interesting story. She's interviewed Laura Bush, Billy Crystal, Rosa Parks, Milton Friedman and Luciano Pavarotti. Look forward to Stamberg speaking on everything from Jewish mothers to the little-known story of the Jews of Shanghai.

The Pritzker Family Lecture is made possible through the generosity of the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund.

In conversation with KGO's John Rothmann

The final volume of USC Professor and former State Historian Kevin Starr's spirited, comprehensive magnum opus on California is cause for celebration. Covering demography, water, freeways, politics, culture, major cities and race relations, the new book offers sketches of many of California's often larger-than-life individuals: Buffy Chandler, Cardinal McIntyre, Pat Brown, Dave Brubeck, Clark Kerr, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Herb Caen.

"With the publication of Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963, Kevin Starr...has completed his transformation from the state's greatest historian to its indispensable one.....a magnificent gift to the people of his native state." - Los Angeles Times

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Paula Wolfert is widely acknowledged as one of the premier food writers in America and the "queen of Mediterranean cooking." She writes a quarterly column in Food & Wine, and is the author of seven cookbooks, several of which have remained in print for upwards of 30 years.  Patricia Untermann joins the JCCSF to host a special luncheon at her famed Hayes Street Grill celebrating Paula Wolfert's new book Mediterranean Clay Pot Coking: Traditional and Modern Recipes to Savor and Share.  Don't miss this rare foodie event!

"I’m not quite sure how it happened that I became a clay pot 'junkie'. Perhaps it was the different shapes and sizes, the colors and glazes, the myriad variations on primal shapes that attracted me. Or perhaps it was just that earthenware produced such great-tasting food. And that’s where I begin this book, by asserting a simple truth: Most food – and Mediterranean food in particular – tastes better cooked in clay." – Paula Wolfert, from MEDITERRANEAN CLAY POT COOKING



Hayes Street Grill
320 Hayes Street
San Francisco, CA

We're bringing together San Francisco's premier art gallery owners to tell you everything you want to know about collecting.  Is art the right place to park your money now that the stock market and real estate are in the dumper?  How can you determine the true value of a work of art?  Do auction houses manipulate prices?  Join Fraenkel Galley Director Frish Brandt, Modernism's Martin Mueller, Jessica Silverman of Silverman Gallery, George Krevsky of George Krevsky Gallery and Trish Bransten, director of Rena Bransten Gallery.     

Anonymous photograph, from the collection of Robert E. Jackson

Screening and Talkback with Co-director Robert Mailer Anderson

The new horror film from the author of Boonville sends a group of San Francisco friends on a hunting trip in Mendocino County where they encounter an angry 3,000-pound pig and find themselves at war with an inbred clan of yokels and a cult of Amazonian throat-slitting babes. Not for the faint of heart!

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For the longest time, Joan Ryan focused on the negative aspects of parenting, as her adopted son continued to aggravate and disappoint her. In The Water Giver: The Story of a Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance, Ryan describes the traumatic accident that dramatically changed her relationship with her son. A former columnist for The Chronicle, Ryan is also the author of Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters.

"This is a story that will move the heart of anyone who has ever been a parent or a child. A primer for patience and responsibility, and a testament to a mother's love." – Mitch Albom

"A story about the healing grace of deep friendships and a loving community. I couldn't put it down." – Anne Lamott

With Aaron David Miller and NPR's Linda Gradstein

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller (The Much Too Promised Land) has played a central role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace as an advisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisors.  NPR's Israel Correspondent Linda Gradstein joins him for an in-depth, critical discussion of attempts to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an insider's behind-the scenes look at the minds and personalities of the major players in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. 

Presented in partnership with the Israel Center of the Jewish Community Federation

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With Rabbis David Weiss-Halivni and Michael Berenbaum

Rabbi David Weiss-Halivni is a survivor of Auschwitz and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the past century.  He contends that the unprecedented horrors of the Shoah defy explication; rather the cause of suffering was "cosmic," as in God's actual, ontological withdrawal from human history.  Rabbi Michael Berenbaum, leading scholar of the Holocaust, joins Weiss-Halivni for a conversation about Jewish theology after Auschwitz, the memorialization of the Shoah, and why remembering is an "act of defiance."

Presented in partnership with the Holocaust Center of Northern California.  The Alfred Manovill Memorial Lecture is made possible through the generosity of the Ingrid Tauber Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund.

With Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd

Weissbourd forcefully asserts that adults fail their children by insisting on a child's happiness rather than moral goodness. The Parents We Mean To Be emphasizes empathy over personal fulfillment, making the case that, as models of behavior, parents must be vigilant about their own moral choices. Of special concern are parents who try too hard to be their kids' friends.

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Join us for a special study session with Jerusalem-based educator, Torah scholar, and philosopher Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (The Murmuring Deep, The Beginning of Desire, The Particulars of Rapture). Her lectures, like her books, are a sophisticated mix of traditional Jewish exegesis, Hasidic texts, Western philosophy, and poetry and appeal to students of all backgrounds and denominations. A not to be missed opportunity to study with a master.