Really looking forward to meeting this community!

Lectures in Jewish History and Thought. No hard questions, please.



Lecture sponsored by Young Israel of Bal Harbour
Lecture Sponsored by Judy Seed
Lecture sponsored by Joe and Zohara Weiss
Rabbi Yosef Karo: The Kabbalah of Halakhah Delivered at the Young Israel of Bal Harbour, January 25, 2012. Lecture sponsored by Menachem Sternbaum, Susan Leaventon, and an anonymous donor. Correction: it wasn’t Rothschild after all, it was the Duke of Naxos. Update: The nice people over at TorahCafe took this video and improved it considerably….…
Welcome to the new website for Hillel Abramson‘s Lecture Series in Jewish History at Young Israel of Bal Harbour! This site will feature information on the series, and host video recordings of the lectures. We encourage you to sign up for our Email Newsletter below, which is our principal way of letting participants know what’s……


Very pleased to see this revised edition of my first book available. Includes a new foreword and afterword.

To the Hasidim steeped in the religious significance of the ritual calendar, the Sabbath known as Zakhor (March 23, 1940) must have seemed a cruel redundancy. Literally called “remember,” the Sabbath preceding the holiday of Purim is named for a few publicly read Torah verses (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) that memorialize the attack of Israel’s primordial enemy,……

Hey friends in Crown Heights! Please drop by and say hello.

(Well, not Yehudah Ha-Levi, but a lecture about the great Spanish-Jewish poet-philosopher of the 12th century). With Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum.

Sponsored by Brandon Sultan in honor of the Sultan and Benarroch Families, whose Sephardic roots are expressed in a desire to honor the Convivencia; and also in loving memory of Mrs. Jean Milstein, whose relentless optimism was an inspiration to all.
Just like that. Watch for our Shul President, Jeremy Chwat, and his wife–he apparently has an unusual motivation for coming to Shul three times a day, and she has a great, euphemistic comeback.

Someone told me that this was printed in The Vues. I’m not a Rabbi, but I’m kind of pleased that Ari Hirsch asked for my opinion anyway. Makes me feel like I actually belong in Brooklyn, somehow, if I’m included in this paper known as “the Heimishe Voice.”

The last weeks of winter 1942, ironically, represented a kind of plateau for the Jews of Warsaw. The typhus epidemic abated, and the Nazis had established some work facilities (“shops”) that led many to believe that through productive labor, the Jews would endure. The general feeling was, in the words of historians Barbara Engelking and……

The life and times of an important woman of the early post-Expulsion generation of Sephardic Jews. Can’t see the video? Click here please.

We’re starting on Monday! Please visit http://www.jewishhistorylectures.org for details on the schedule. Free and open to the community, Monday nights at 7:00 pm at the mighty Avenue J campus of Touro College, 1602 Avenue J, Brooklyn NY 11230. Call (718) 535-9333 or write to me at henry.abramson@touro.edu. Some sponsorships are still available ($250 per lecture),……

Searching for an escapee from the notorious Pawiak Prison, the Nazis arrested 255 Jewish leaders in the Warsaw Ghetto, holding them hostage and demanding that the community turn over the 21-year old resistance fighter Andrzej Kott. The rebel was not found. The Jewish hostages were eventually killed. The Rebbe was forced to spend that Sabbath……

Just got my first copy of the hardcover edition of Torah from the Years of Wrath: The Historical Context of the Aish Kodesh. Special thanks to Mr. Sam Sapozhnik for making this possible! The hardcover edition hasn’t migrated yet to Amazon, but the good news is that I can offer my students, colleagues and friends 20%……


