The important documentary October 8 is now free to view

October 2026

Welcome to Gesher (‘Bridge’ in Hebrew) – JCRC's monthly impact newsletter to keep you informed on our work and the challenges and opportunities before our community.

JCRC Staff Column

JCRC Lema'an Podcast
Episode #1

Rabbi Jill Avrin and Sami Rahamim

Director of Campus Affairs | Senior Educator (Rabbi Avrin) and former Director of Communications and Community Affairs (Sami Rahamim)

Lema’an is a podcast exploring the biggest moral and civic questions confronting the Jewish people, Israel, and America today: purpose, pluralism and peoplehood. Through the lens of Jewish wisdom, story, and experience we invite you to join us and our expert guests in wrestling with these ideas and the relationship between them.

We are living through really challenging times. Civically, morally, spiritually, and relationally. Our goal is to try to see those challenges as clearly as we can and assemble the best toolkit possible to help us collectively find our way forward.

In this pilot episode, we will introduce ourselves, these concepts and share where we hope this journey takes us. We will unpack the name we’ve chosen for the podcast — Lema'an — and dive into the Jewish texts it shows up in.

Listen to Episode #1

Upcoming Events

Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival

October 20 - November 1

JCRC is a proud sponsor of the 5 Holocaust themed films in the 2026 Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival: Frontier, The Stamp Thief, My Underground Mother, I Don't Know What I'm Doing Here, and The Higher Calling: Documentary Shorts Block.

See full schedule

Use promo code JCRC for 20% off tickets

JCRC Annual Meeting Featuring Dara Horn

Wednesday, October 28, 7:00-9:00 pm

West Metro Location

In celebration of JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas being featured in Dara Horn's new book, we invite you to hear from her immediately following the installation of our Fiscal Year 2027 board of directors.

Details and free registration

Dessert reception to follow and books available for purchase

Amy Fish Book Talk: One in Six Million

Thursday, November 19, 7:00 pm

Beth El Synagogue

JCRC, Beth El Synagogue, The Minnesota Jewish Genealogical Society and the St. Paul Jewish Federation invite you to a presentation and moderated conversation with Amy Fish, author of One in Six Million, the story of a Jewish child left by the road side in 1942 and the genealogical search for her identity.

Details and free registration

Books will be available for purchase at the event

Applications Open: Power of Place^®European Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators

June 18-27, 2027
Hungary, Denmark Sweden

An immersive professional development opportunity for teachers where learning unfolds as we tour authentic historical sites across Europe.

Learn more and apply

Trending Now

One big thing we're focused on

Dara Horn Shines National Spotlight on Our Work

If you've reached chapter 6 of Dara Horn's new book The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, A Love Story for the Living you've read all about the "maverick" work of our Judaism and Israel Education Directors Sally Abrams and Holly Brod Farber.

The book’s release was accompanied by another remarkable piece of national exposure: Dara’s article in the September issue of Hadassah Magazine, The Jewish Story Missing From America's Classrooms, adapted from the chapter about our work. The article places our classroom work at the center of a much larger argument about what is missing from American education: meaningful exposure to the Jewish story itself.

Just after October 7, Dara spent time with us in the Twin Cities, accompanying us into classrooms and observing firsthand our approach to introducing students to Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, identity, civilization, Israel, and Zionism. "It’s a maverick task, not just because there aren’t many Jews on the prairie, but also because almost no one else is doing it. And they’ve been doing it for over 20 years" Dara Horn writes in her article. In the summer of 2025, Dara invited our staff to sit at a think tank table of select educators from across the nation at the inaugural gathering of the Tell Institute she founded to reframe nationally what people learn about Jews and antisemitism.

Dara describes how students often encounter Jews primarily through the Holocaust, antisemitism, current events, or social media, without ever learning about Jewish civilization in its fullness. She presents the work being done here by JCRC as a different approach—one rooted in the conviction that teaching the Jewish story, rather than defining Jews primarily through the hatred directed against them, is itself an essential part of confronting antisemitism.

We are enormously proud that work developed and practiced at JCRC over many years is now helping inform a national conversation about Jewish education and antisemitism.

And all of this makes us even more excited to welcome Dara Horn to the Twin Cities as the featured speaker at JCRC’s Annual Meeting on October 28. Her visit could hardly be better timed.

Read Dara Horn's article in Hadassah Magazine

Books will be available for purchase at the event

Building Bridges

Recent impact highlights from JCRC

Education

Kindertransport History Bench installed on our campus

A Kindertransport History Bench was unveiled as a permanent fixture on the Barry Family Campus. The bench serves as a commemorative installation to honor the children who escaped the Nazis through the Kindertransport, a rescue mission that brought 10,000 Jewish children to safety in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Holland, France, Switzerland and Belgium. A QR code plaque on the bench links to video testimonies from Kindertransport survivors. Helen Gunther, Sandy Baron, Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten, Arielle Black, Leia Black and Mark Black, relatives of Kindertransport survivors unveiled the bench.

Read TC Jewfolk coverage

View event recording

Advocacy

JCRC receives ally award at the Minnesota Chapter of the Coalition of Hindus in North America (CoHNA)

Several months ago, Neha Markanda presented to JCRC about her work as the Director for the Minnesota Chapter of the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA). In March, JCRC testified on behalf of the Hindu community for a resolution condemning hatred of Hindus, and at their Inaugural Gala in September we were honored to be presented with an award for allyship. Like what our community is facing, the Hindu community is also experiencing a data poisoning assault on their story in online spaces like Wikipedia. At a time when as Jews we feel increasingly isolated, it is a helpful reminder there are still many immigrant communities who are seeking to build alliances with us.