March 23 Potluck Lunch following Services
Bring a non-meat dish to share
https://hebrewseniorlife.zoom.us/my/rabbijim
In his 20s, Benjamin Franklin set out to perfect his character, devising a self-improvement method to aid him in the challenging task of becoming virtuous. The method, which he later outlined in his famous posthumously published autobiography, was eventually incorporated into the practical Jewish ethical tradition of musar through the publication of Rabbi Mendel Lefin’s Sefer Heshbon Ha-Nefesh (Book of Spiritual Accounting, 1808), a text that made it available to Hebrew-reading audiences. This is a historical development that Jewish scholars have often been confused about or uncomfortable acknowledging, and about which Franklin specialists have been largely oblivious.
Shai Afsai lives in Providence. His recent research has focused on the writings of Thomas Paine, Jews and the Masonic fraternity, the religious traditions of the Beta Yisrael Jewish community from Ethiopia, Judaism in Nigeria, aliyah to Israel from Rhode Island, Jewish pilgrimage to Ukraine, Jews and Irish literature, Jewish-Polish relations, and Micronesian attitudes toward Israel. His work on Benjamin Franklin and Judaism has been published in Journal of the American Revolution, Review of Rabbinic Judaism, and Segula: The Jewish History Magazine.