7:30 pm Reception & refreshments
8 pm: Why Jews Don’t Cancel with Rabbi Jeff Salkin: Cancel culture – the silencing of unpopular opinions, and the shunning of those who voice them – is now a part of American life. It need not be. Rabbi Salkin will show you a Jewish model for disagreement, and extending diversity into different areas of life.
Watch video recording on YouTube

9 pm: Slichot service: Rabbi Jessica Graf and Rabbi George Altshuler lead a service with the ceremonial changing of our Torah mantles with cantorial soloist Simon Barrad and music director Jonathan Dimmock. 

Scholar-in-Residence Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin has a national and international reputation as one of America’s most quoted rabbis and thought leaders. His words have been cited in The New York Times, The New Republic, and USA Today. He has appeared on many television and radio programs, and has spoken in more than a hundred communities, including in Israel, Great Britain, Cuba, and Poland. His colleagues describe him as “intellectually fearless;” “an activist for Jewish ideas;” “a public intellectual of the pulpit.”

Rabbi Salkin’s books have been published by Jewish Lights Publishing and the Jewish Publication Society. His books have dealt with such subjects as the spirituality of career, masculinity, Israel, righteous gentiles, and Jewish history. Several of his books have won national awards. 

Rabbi Salkin has been responsible for the spiritual revival of bar and bat mitzvah in America – largely through his first book, Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim The Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah (Jewish Lights Publishing. His  book, The JPS Bnai Mitzvah Torah Commentary, is the first in-depth introduction to Torah and prophets for young people and their families. 

Rabbi Salkin’s blog, “Martini Judaism – for those who want to be shaken and stirred,” won the 2015 Religion Communicators Council (RCC) Wilbur Award for Faith-based Blogs. His essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Forward, JTA, Tablet, Moment, The Jewish Week and Readers Digest. 

A native of New York, Rabbi Salkin was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1981. He was one of the first Jews to earn the Doctor of Ministry degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1991. Rabbi Salkin has served on the boards of many national and local Jewish organizations, and has been an activist for Israel and Zionism.

Rabbi Salkin serves as the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel of West Palm Beach. He was the prestigious Chautauqua Society scholar in June of 2020.