92NY’s fall calendar is stacked with Jewish events

92NY sent over its Jewish programming for October through December this week, and reading it felt like scrolling a family group chat. Israel is on there, along with antisemitism, Holocaust memory, AI and dating, and on December 1 there’s an afternoon of mah jongg. Nearly all of it takes place at 1395 Lexington Avenue, most of it stream, and tickets mostly start between $18 and $25.

We went through the list for you and we’ve got a few standouts to share.

The calendar opens on Sunday, October 4, with Ruth Margalit talking to David Remnick about In the Belly of the Whale, her collection of portraits of Israelis from The New Yorker and Times Magazine.

Three days later, on October 7, Jonathan Dekel-Chen sits down with Jaser AbuMoussa, a father from Gaza, with Claire Shipman moderating. Dekel-Chen’s son Sagui was held in Gaza for nearly 500 days, and the evening falls on the third anniversary of his kidnapping. It will probably be the hardest ticket on the calendar to sit through and the one most worth buying.

On October 11, Alon Shaya and the food historian June Hersh discuss Memories of a Good Meal with Dan Pashman of The Sporkful. The book grew out of Shaya’s Rescued Recipes work with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and tickets start at $18.

The SAPIR Debate on October 19 puts Michael Oren and Jonathan Schanzer on stage with Bret Stephens to argue whether Israel would be better off without American aid. It is not lost on us that a few years ago, asking that question at a federation dinner would have gotten you moved to a table near the kitchen. The next night, Simon Schama brings The Shortest History of Antisemitism to a conversation with Rabbi David Ingber

On October 22, Eitan Levine tapes Jewish or Antisemitic live, in person only and from $40, and crowns a “New York’s Most Chosen Person” at the end. Three nights after that, the Lox Club brings Harmonie Krieger of Netflix’s Jewish Matchmaking to set up singles from the audience on stage, followed by drinks in the Weill Art Gallery. Your mother has already forwarded you the link, we bet.

November moves on to the Israeli election results (November 16, with Tom Nides and Nadav Eyal), and December brings Gal Beckerman and YIVO’s Jonathan Brent on the effort to digitize S. An-sky’s ethnographic archives in wartime Kyiv (December 13). That one is for the people in your life who still own a hardcover of The Dybbuk.

Then comes Mah Jongg Day on December 1 at 2pm, which sold out in the spring. Gregg Swain is bringing a century’s worth of sets from her collection, and Barney Gallassio will run the games. By that point we’ll have spent two months debating foreign aid, antisemitism, AI and an election. Mah jongg is the only event on the list where everyone already knows the rules, and people will still argue about them.