CBI events this winter

MILLBURN, NJ — Congregation B’nai Israel, located at 160 Millburn Ave. in Millburn, will resume its “Lunch & Learn” events for adult education this September. Lunch begins at 12:30 p.m. and the program begins at 1 p.m. Programs are open to everyone; admission is charged.

• On Thursday, Feb. 7, CBI will screen the hit documentary “Ahead of Time: The Extraordinary Journey of Ruth Gruber.” Now in her late 90s, Brooklyn-born Gruber still has that same sharp intellect and moxie that propelled her to become the world’s youngest Ph.D. at age 20. At age 24, she became a New York Herald Tribune reporter and photographer, and the same year was the first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic. A trusted member of the Roosevelt Administration during WWII, she was given a dangerous secret mission. A feminist before feminism, Gruber was never just an observer, she was a participant in the making of history. She covered the turbulent Middle East throughout the 1940s, and the film combines verite footage of Gruber traveling back to Israel with interviews and archival material.
• On Thursday, Feb. 21, learn from Hirschhorn speaker Joe Rapaport as he discusses “How the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara Led to the Fall of the Papal State.” The treatment of a young Jewish boy, forcibly raised as a Christian in 19th-century Italy, creates a furor that pits the Papacy itself against forces of democracy and Italian unification. Hear about the ramifications of this true story.

Admission is charged and may be paid at the door. Contact Lois at 973-533-1809 to place a lunch order by the Wednesday afternoon preceding the program.

  Congregation B’nai Israel