2026 Season Speakers
Week 1
Izabella Tabarovsky
A Soviet-born writer and activist specializing in Eastern European history and contemporary antisemitism. She is the Kennan Institute Senior Advisor on Regional Partnerships and Programming. She served as an associate producer on the PBS documentary “Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy”. Her pieces have been published in The Forward, Newsweek, Tablet, and Fathom Journal.
Week 2
Rabbi Josh Stanton
Rabbi at the East End Temple in New York and Associate Vice President for Interfaith and Intergroup Initiatives of the Jewish Federations of North America He served as a Senior Fellow and then Director of Leadership at -The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
Week 3
Amanda Berman
American civil rights attorney. She served as the director of legal affairs at the Lawfare Project that she called the "legal arm of the pro-Israel community". She is the founder and executive director of the Zioness. Zioness is a multiracial coalition of Jewish activists and allies who are both progressive and Zionist.
Week 4
Dr. Yoni Applebaum
Deputy executive editor at The Atlantic and the author of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Appelbaum is a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining The Atlantic, he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in American history.
Week 5
Dr. Rebecca Kobrin
Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University. Her research is in the fields of immigration history, urban studies, business history, East European history and American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration.
Week 6
Week 7
Sarah Hurwitz
American speechwriter and author best known for serving as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama and as chief speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Author of Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life—in Judaism (2019), and As A Jew (2025).
Week 8
Linda Greenhouse
An American legal journalist who is the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covered the United States Supreme Court for nearly three decades for The New York Times. is also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate.
Week 9
Dr. Annie Polland
American historian and museum professional, currently serving as President of the Tenement Museum in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Columbia University and has focused her career on exploring immigration, urban life, and Jewish history. She previously served as Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society and as the Tenement Museum’s Senior Vice President for Programs and Education. She is also the author and co-author of several works on Jewish and immigrant history, including Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration.