Back to All Events

Human Rights Shabbat: Lunch & Learn

10 am Shabbat service in the Sanctuary- With a participatory reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

11:00- Children’s Services (Learn More)

11:30 am Rabbi Penzner will speak on- Vayishlach: How Jacob and I became Defenders of Human Rights

12:00 Lunch and Presentation: HUMAN RIGHTS and HUMAN WRONGS

Lunch is sponsored by the Larry M. Diamond fund

Learn from a distinguished panel of activists who have seen it all:

  • Joshua Rubenstein, of Amnesty International

  • Sherman Teichman, of the Harvard Kennedy SchoolCarr Center for Human Rights Policy

  • Jane Rocamora, of the Center for Justice and Accountability

  • Moderated by Susannah Sirkin, of Physicians for Human Rights

About the speakers:

Joshua Rubenstein served as Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International for

37 years. He has also written and edited ten books, a number of them about Soviet-

Jewish history. His most recent book, The Last Days of Stalin, has just been published

in Hebrew.

Sherman Teichman is the Founding Director (Emeritus since 2016) of the Institute for

Global Leadership at Tufts University, which he led for more than three decades. Mr.

Teichman is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Politics and

International Relations at the University of Oxford. He has had a distinguished career

working on diverse issues including international terrorism, the Israel – Palestine

dispute, 21 st century conflict, civil-military relations, and global health and security. Mr.

Teichman is a board member and strategic adviser for several organizations including

the Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, the Human Rights Foundation, Refuge Point,

Combatants for Peace, VII Photo Foundation, and the Liechtenstein Institute for

Strategic Development.

Jane Rocamora is Senior Attorney and Clinical Supervisor at the Harvard Immigration

and Refugee Clinic of Greater Boston Legal Services has spent more than two

decades litigating civil, criminal, immigration and human rights cases. She worked for

the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Development

Program in Rwanda investigating genocide and massive human rights violations and

collaborating in the efforts to rebuild a decimated judicial system. In 2000, Ms.

Rocamora was appointed Acting Chief of the Judicial Support Section in Kosovo of the

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She was a Co-Founder of the

International Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, which originally focused on

establishing criminal defense principles and practices at the international criminal

tribunals. She previously worked with the Coalition on Women’s Human Rights in

Conflict Situations in Montreal, Canada, which focused on ensuring accountability for

gender crimes within prosecutions at the international criminal tribunals.

Susannah Sirkin, a longtime member of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah, is the director of policy

and a senior advisor at Physicians for Human Rights, where she has worked since

1987. She oversees PHR’s policy engagement, including with the United Nations,

domestic and international justice systems, and human rights coalitions.

Earlier Event: December 14
Family Shabbat Services
Later Event: December 22
Annual Community Menorah Lighting