PARSIPPANY — Award winning author and political journalist Jonathan Alter will present the annual Joseph Gotthelf Holocaust Memorial Lecture at Temple Beth Am in Parsippany on Friday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m.
The May 12 lecture, sponsored by the Joseph Gotthelf Holocaust Memorial Fund, is part of the yearly commemoration of Yom Hashoah, a day set aside to memorialize those lost in the Holocaust. In a lecture titled “The Fragility of Democracy,” Alter will speak about “the threat that present political trends pose to world peace and the future of the Jewish people.” The lecture, during Shabbat services, is free and open to the public.
Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist and television producer and analyst. He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers: “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies”(2013), “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” (2010) and “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2006), also one of the Times’ “Notable Books” of the year. Since 1996, Alter has been an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing on-air two or three times a week. After 28 years as a columnist and senior editor at Newsweek, where he wrote more than 50 cover stories, Alter is now a twice-monthly columnist for the Daily Beast. He has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, Esquire, Bloomberg View and other publications.
He is an executive producer of “Alpha House,” a half-hour political comedy created by Garry Trudeau and starring John Goodman that is available for viewing on Amazon.com. He is at work on a full-length biography of former President Jimmy Carter and is producing a documentary about the lives of legendary journalists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill.
Alter is chairman of the board of the Lukas Prize Project, which provides cash awards for non-fiction authors, and serves on the boards of The Blue Card, a national Jewish organization assisting Holocaust survivors, DonorsChoose, which allows teachers to post online proposals for classroom materials, the Bone Marrow Foundation, the Historians Advisory Council of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and the Montclair (NJ) Library Foundation. He is a resident of Montclair.
Celebrating their 51st year, Temple Beth Am is a Reform congregation with a diverse membership living throughout Morris County, including the towns of Parsippany, Boonton, Denville, Lake Hiawatha, Mountain Lakes, Montville, Randolph and Rockaway. We open our doors to adults and youth, singles and couples, Jews-by-birth and Jews-by-choice, and interfaith couples. Led by Rabbi Steven L. Mills and Rabbi/Cantor Inna Serebro-Litvak, Temple Beth Am is an inclusive, warm and welcoming place for personal and communal prayer, solace and comfort, joyous celebration, community service, education and sharing as a vibrant Jewish congregation.
