Sunday, Dec 4th at 2 pm at Woodlands Community Temple, 50 Worthington Road, White Plains, NY. This event will explore the question of how a collective memory is formed. Recent developments in the neuro and social sciences have led to a whole new discipline of Memory Studies. In an afternoon of speakers and break-out sessions, we will review some of the new findings in these fields with a focus on trying to better understand the group-psychological factors, social practices, political pressures, and possibly even biologic dynamics that lead to a community constructing a particular conception of its past. To gain perspective on the distinct and universal ways this plays out for different groups, the presenters will focus on the experience of the American-Jewish and African-American. We will question some of our basic assumptions about the reliability of memory and the effects its constructed nature has on identity and our ability to relate (or not) to the remembered experiences of others. Speakers will include Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses. Sinai and Synapses is an organization that advances a vision of religion that embraces critical thinking and scientific inquiry. Jamal Calloway, Doctoral Candidate at Union Theological Seminary. Mr. Calloway is studying African American Christian theology at Union Theological Seminary. He also serves as a minister at his congregation in Massachusetts during academic breaks. Rabbi Avram Mlotek, Co-Founder of Base Hillel. Rabbi Mlotek was recently listed as one of America’s “Most Inspiring Rabbis” by the Jewish Daily Forward. Myisha Cherry, Doctoral Candidate at the University of Illinois in Chicago Ms. Cherry is a Doctoral Candidate in the Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago and an Edmond J. Safra Fellow at Harvard University. She is a prolific pod caster and is co-editing “The Moral Psychology of Anger” to be published by Rowman and Littlefield.