Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan offers Scholar in Residence weekend programs for your congregation. Rabbi Kaplan speaks on a variety of interesting subjects, injecting humor and encouraging a great deal of participation. Many of the programs use PowerPoint or DVD clips. The most popular topics are listed below. Many other programs are available.

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Five Hot Button Issues Facing Reform Judaism in the Coming Years
Over the past 20 or 25 years, we have raised, debated, and eventually resolved a number of very large issues. But most of these issues have now been resolved. My goal in this talk is to choose five issues that may roil us in the coming years. I don’t want to tell you in advance what five hot button issues I have chosen because that would spoil the surprise, but let me say they are issues of consequence which are not much spoken about.

Contemporary Debates in Contemporary American Reform Judaism
This talk will show how the Reform movement has responded to controversy over the last 150 years. I am somewhat of a specialist in controversy. In 2001 I published my first book, Contemporary Debates in American Reform Judaism, and I’ve been interested in controversy ever since. In the early years of the 1840s, we fought over mixed seating, mixed choirs, the prayer service and what constituted acceptable personal practice. Since then, each generation has faced a series of their own controversies: Zionism, intermarriage, the role of women, gay and lesbian marriage, and so forth. Any one of these issues could potentially divide us and split our movement into two or more pieces. That we are still one movement is nothing short of a divine miracle.

From One Judaism to Many: The Dynamic Tension of Reform Judaism
PowerPoint presentation. I have put together about 60 slides showing how Reform Judaism has grown and changed over the past 150 years. Congregants will see the major personalities who led the movement, some of the important synagogues of the various eras, and the different prayer books. I will explain how each of the different groups saw Reform Judaism and why there was almost perpetual conflict, which I call “dynamic tension.”

Platforms and Prayer Books
PowerPoint presentation. This presentation focuses on the platforms and prayer books that have set the ideological and theological direction for the Reform movement. We will look at the platforms passed in Pittsburgh 1885, Columbus 1937, San Francisco 1976, and Pittsburgh 1999. We will also look at the nineteenth century prayer books, the UPB, the big blue Gates of Prayer, the thin grey gender sensitive version, and the brand new Mishkan T’filo.

Echos of Classical Reform
The last couple of decades of the 19th century and the first couple of the 20th century are considered the height of the Classical Reform period. And the one document which is considered to represent Classical Reform Judaism was the Pittsburgh Platform. While we have changed a great deal since 1885, much of what we call Reform Judaism remains deeply rooted in our classical heritage. I want to answer the question: Can We Hear the Echo of the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform Today?

Looking at Jewish Rituals in the Movies
DVD Clips. Appropriate for a middle school audience, as well as adults. Hollywood was founded by Eastern European Jewish immigrants who were very concerned about the endemic anti-Semitism in American at the time. With some very notable exceptions they tried to avoid portraying Jews or Judaism in the movies. But over the past 20 years this has completely changed. Virtually every television show has at least one Jewish character and issues connected to Judaism arise frequently. This presentation will look at Hollywood has presented some specific cases of Judaic ritual.

Jewish Love and Romance in Contemporary Film
DVD Clips. Particularly appropriate for teenagers, as well as adults. Love has always been one of our central obsessions. From Romeo and Juliet to Love Story, we have followed the trials and tribulations of couples looking for romance. Hollywood has been paying increasing attention to Jewish themes, and particularly Jews in love. This has led to countless Jewish wedding scenes, from Private Benjamin to The Wedding Crashers. I will show several of these scenes and discuss their significance.

What is so Funny? The Serious Subject of Jewish Humor
What is Jewish about Jewish humor? The opening presentation will provide the theoretical underpinning for the weekend. Using plenty of jokes as examples, we will put Jewish humor into a conceptual framework. Comedy is a mirror of culture and Jewish jokes can reveal a great deal about Jewish character. We will look at the weapons of wit: incongruity and ambiguity, and anomaly and actuality. We will apply these ideas to how Jews relate to God, relations in the synagogue, the fear of anti-Semitism, the pull of assimilation, the love of learning, the passion for arguing, our relationships with our mothers and fathers, and many more. The goal of the weekend is to be is not only entertaining but also to provide a whole new way of looking at Jewish humor. While popular with teens and children, this presentation is enjoyed by young and old alike.