The Jewish American Experience – Culture and identity

Location: Congregation Ner Tamid, 55 N Valle Verde Dr., Henderson, NV 89074

Time: From 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

Number 7 The Men That On August 13th, 1942, the government of the United States
Made The Atomic began a project that would change human history. Urged on by
September 19 Bomb physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard and proceeding under
the direction of Robert Oppenheimer and involving literally
dozens of Jewish physicists, chemists and mathematicians the
Manhattan Project would be the greatest work ever
undertaken. They knew that they were in a race against the
Germans to develop a weapon of mass destruction. The fate of
the world hung in the balance.
Number 8 The Jewish Comic In 1938 the character of Superman would make his first
Book Guys appearance in Action Comics, ushering in the Golden Age of
September 26 comics and helping to create an industry that is today valued in
the billions of dollars. Few people realize that the Man of Steel
was created by two Jewish boys out of Cleveland and that he
was, in many ways, a direct response to Adolf Hitler.

Number 9 The Jewish Beginning with Sigmund and Anna Freud and continuing
Psychologists through Abraham Maslow, Alfred Adler, Bruno Bettleheim,
October 3 Noam Chomsky and many others, the field of psychology has
in many ways been shaped by Jewish minds. Much of the early
work was done in Austria at the same time as Nazism was
gaining ascendency. How did the politics of the time impact
the science and what are the implications?
Number 10 The Roots of Rock In 1955 a young musician named Chuck Berry got the
and Roll opportunity to audition before Leonard Chess, one of the
October 17 owners of Chess Records. He played a unique version of a
country Western song and Chess agreed to produce it. He had
one condition, that the name of the song be changed to
something catchy. Chess famously said “Call it Maybelline” and
rock and roll was born. Much of the music of the following
decades would be composed by Jewish artists working in the
famous Brill Building and would be played by ground-breaking
Disc Jockeys including Alan Freed.
Number 11 The Jewish Without the supplies purchased by Haym Saloman using funds
Financiers raised by European Jews, the American Revolution would have
October 24 failed. Without the contributions of financiers such as the
Schiff, the Loeb, the Seligman families, and the Lehman
brothers, America would have been a vastly different place.
Jewish bankers often found themselves barred from entering
the more conservative areas of finance and so the found
success promoting IPOs and invented the “leveraged buyout”
made famous by Michael Milliken and Ivan Boesky. Which, in
turn, set the stage for the conman Bernie Madoff. We will
explore both the good and the bad.
Number 12 The Internet Guys The last thirty years has seen the rise of the successful
introvert, many of whom were Jewish. The internet has been
November 7 revolutionized by these entrepreneurs including Mark
Zuckerberg at Facebook and Larry Page and Sergey Brin at
Google. They have generated and accumulated unimaginable
wealth through innovation. In many ways these innovators are
to the new medium what generations of Jews were to banking
and investment.
Number 13 The Holocaust Simon Weisenthal: Forgiveness
How could a man who suffered so much, who lost so much in
November 14 the Holocaust embrace and proselytize a philosophy of
tolerance? This is his story.