Join us on Shavuot evening starting at 7:30 pm:
7:30 pm Blintzes and a Nosh
8:00 pm Festival Ma’ariv Services
Annual Tikkun Leil Shavuot (study on Shavuot)
Cheesecake, ice cream and sorbet (following the Tikkun)
Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof – Chasing Justice Deuteronomy 16:20
On the first night of Shavuot, after a blintz, a nosh and festival Ma’ariv, join us for the Or Zarua Shavuot Tikkun. This year’s congregant panel features three dynamic speakers. Dena Adler, Shelly Adler and Owen Pell are experts who can help explicate, explain and apply this central Jewish teaching. Each is a lawyer and deep thinker about Judaism and justice issues within our society, for humanity and our planet. See below for their topics and bios.
After the Tikkun we’ll have ice cream and cheesecake to sweeten the holiday and celebrate together (non-dairy options will be available).
Dena Adler
Dena will provide some examples from the Torah and Talmud illuminating an ethic of care for both our planet and the most vulnerable. She will describe how the Talmud allocates liability for environmental damage and compare and contrast that with the treatment of environmental regulation in American law. She will discuss the intersection of these duties with guiding principles of environmental justice that aim to ensure no community is disproportionately burdened by environmental harms.
Dena is a Senior Attorney at Policy Integrity. She works on issues of federal environmental regulation with a focus on air quality, power plants, and climate resilience. Dena also is currently serving as an Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU Law School and teaching a seminar on Climate Law Change and Policy. Prior to joining Policy Integrity, she was an attorney with the clean air team at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Washington, D.C. Previously, she served as a climate law fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. Dena earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale School of the Environment.
Sheldon Adler
By focusing on Deuteronomy 16 :18-20 and specifically on the famous phrase צדק צדק תרדוף (Justice, Justice, you shall pursue), Shelly will explore the concept of Justice expressed in the Torah and the Talmud. He will examine the analysis of some of the major commentaries including Rashi, Ramban, Ibn Ezra and Rabbeinu Bahya as well as the treatment of these psukim in the Talmud. He will then compare the treatment of Justice in the Torah and Talmud with the study of Justice in the works of the leading American legal philosophers John Rawls and Lon Fuller.
Shelly is a retired partner of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. During his time at Skadden, he was primarily responsible for the development of Skadden’s utility mergers and acquisitions practice. From 2013 to 2017, Sheldon was a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School and taught a seminar on Drafting and Negotiating Mergers and Acquisitions transactions. Sheldon has repeatedly been selected for inclusion in Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business and The Best Lawyers in America. Sheldon earned his JD from Yale Law School in 1979 and was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Owen Pell
Owen will speak briefly on the work of the Rev. Leon Sullivan in the 1970s-1980s relating to Apartheid South Africa. In the only known example of mass corporate civil disobedience, Rev. Sullivan convinced 150 U.S. public companies to join the Sullivan Principles, which required the companies to violate the laws and customs of Apartheid on their properties in South Africa and invest in education, health care, and job training in the segregated Black communities where their workers lived. Sullivan’s approach was built on the Old Testament, and did not require the companies to succeed in ending Apartheid, but did require them to make steady and meaningful progress in how they opposed it.
Owen Pell is a retired partner from White and Case in New York City, a large international law firm, where he handled complex commercial litigation, litigation involving foreign sovereigns, and litigation involving issues of international law, including as to the Holocaust. He also formulated a proposal for a title-clearing and dispute resolution center in the EU to address claims for art works looted from Jews during the Holocaust, a proposal that was endorsed by the European Parliament in 2003. In addition to publishing on Holocaust-looted art issues, he has authored a paper analyzing the history of the French National Railway during the Holocaust, contributed book chapters on Business and Human Rights, and given a TEDx talk titled “Diplomacy 2.0” on how companies and non-governmental organizations can affect human rights issues faster than countries. Owen is President of the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, the largest NGO in the world that trains government officials in long-term strategies for preventing identity-based violence. He also sits on the board of the International Peace Institute, the largest think tank dedicated to making the UN system work better, and Project Shift, the largest NGO in the world that trains companies in how to conduct meaningful human rights due diligence relating to their operations.