Synagogue Scholar & Author Series is back featuring another slate of congregants presenting on a range of interesting topics. All programs begin at 7:30pm in Zimmerman Hall and refreshments will be served.

2024 - 2025 Sessions:

Wednesday, november 6, 2024 - peter hitchcock, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology at Emory University 

Peter is dually trained as a clinical psychologist with a focus on behavioral treatment and as a computational psychiatry researcher with a specialty in applying formal learning and choice models to depression and anxiety. I received my PhD in clinical psychology from Drexel University, completed clinical internship at the VA San Diego in 2019, and was a post-doc with Michael Frank at Brown University from 2019-2023.

Topic: Why do we Dwell on the Past and Worry about the Future? 

Wednesday, december 18, 2024 - lisa ellison, M.Phil. Jewish history 

National Director of Education at Women's League for Conservative Judaism (retired)

Topic: ... Worth a Thousand Words: Jewish Art as Historical Text

While Jewish creativity has been reflected primarily in the written text, art and other graphic displays can provide an equally compelling insight into Jewish history. What can murals in ancient synagogues, illuminated Sephardic haggadot or nineteenth century German paintings teach us about the Jews who commissioned and created them and the world/s in which they lived?

Wednesday, january 22, 2025 - stephanie wechsler, MD 

Clinical Professor, Pediatric Cardiology and Division of Medical Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine

Dr. Wechsler is board certified in medical genetics and pediatric cardiology. She received her medical school training at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and completed a pediatric residency through Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD.  She completed a fellowship in cardiology through Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, and a fellowship in medical genetics through the University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, MI. She has been in Academic Medicine for close to 20 years and involved in medical education as well as clinical practice.  She has worked with genetic counselors in several of her academic appointments, including in her current position with the Emory Division of Medical Genetics.  

Topic: Fixing Broken Hearts - Pediatric Cardiology in the 21st Century

Wednesday, march 5, 2024 - rabbi adam strater, ph.d. 

Judaics Faculty, Epstein School and Chaplain (Captain) in the U.S. Army Reserve

Adam holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Emory University and Rabbinic Ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. 

Topic: The Violent Legacies of Esau and Amalek in the Jewish Tradition

Wednesday, april 2, 2025 - rick hellman, MD 

Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, Dekalb County; Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Reserve (retired) 

Topic: The Fifth Vital Sign (Pain), Opioids and Opiates, and the U.S. Fentanyl Epidemic

Wednesday, may 7, 2025 - aminah hasan-birdwell, ph.d.

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy at Emory University 

Aminah's research focuses on marginalized figures in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy and their contributions to issues of ontology, political thought, and ethics, while shedding light on the presence of racialist and misogynistic ideas in the philosophical canon. She is completing a book, Early Modern Women on War and Peace, that treats early modern women philosophers’ ethical and political responses to the Thirty Years’ War and the English Civil War, as well as their challenges to dominant thinkers such as Grotius, Hobbes, and others.

Topic: Baruch Spinoza and the Distinction between Faith and Reason