Religious Pluralism: A Conversation Wednesday February 19, 2020, 7:30 pm

Jewish Community Day School of RI 85 Taft Ave, Providence

JCDSRI, Congregation Beth Sholom,Temple Beth-El, and Temple Emanu-El invite you to a facilitated conversation between Professor Guy Ben-Porat and Rabbanit Avital Engelberg about Jewish pluralism in and its impact on civil society.

Professor Guy Ben-Porat is professor and department chairperson at the Department of Politics and Government at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He is an award-winning educator and the author of Global Liberalism, Local Populism (2006), which won the Ernst-Otto Czempiel Award of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Between State and Synagogue (Cambridge, 2012), which was awarded the Shapiro Best Book Award and the Israeli Political Science Association Best Book Award. Most recently, he has published Policing Citizens: Minority Policy in Israel. Professor Ben-Porat received his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University and his research currently focuses on the politics of conflicts, policy making, and church-state relations.

Rabbanit Avital Engelberg currently serves as the Director of Spiritual Engagement at Congregation Beth Sholom and is the 5th grade Judaic's teacher at the Jewish Community Day School of RI. Rabbanit Avital is a graduate of the Advanced Kollel at Yeshivat in the Bronx, New York, the first Orthodox institution in North America to ordain Orthodox women. In Israel, Rabbanit Avital has taught at various Jewish educational institutions and was a fellow of the Halakhic Studies program at Midreshet Lindenbaum, a Jewish educational institution for women in . She is an activist for the separation of church and state in Israel, as she officiates orthodox weddings outside the state rabbinat, and sits on the board of Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, an Israeli religious-liberal-Zionist movement. Rabbanit Avital holds a Bachelor's degree in Theatre from Tel Aviv University, a Master's degree in Talmud from Bar Ilan University, a Teacher's degree from the Open University, and a Diploma in Group Facilitation from Sapir College in Sderot.

Temple Emanu-El