The Summer Institute hosts speakers who are deeply and actively involved in politics, economics, science and the arts. Featured speakers have included Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and journalists, and political leaders.
Van Jones: “We Need Each Other: Rebuilding the Black-Jewish Alliance for the Next 100 Years.” Social commentator and cultural observer Van Jones is a political analyst, lawyer, civil rights advocate, bestselling author, CNN host (“Crossfire,” “Messy Truth,” “The Redemption Project”), President Obama’s special advisor for green jobs, visiting fellow at Princeton University, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and the Dream Corps, social justice accelerator, and more. He discusses the daunting topic of growing anti-Semitism, and the intersection of Jewish and Black bias in America. August 6, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven. 130 Center St., Vineyard Haven. mvsummerinstitute.org/2026-speakers.
Also on Monday, August 3, at 7:30 pm, the film “I Have Sinned (Al Khet)” will be showing at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. The film’s runtime: 90 minutes.
Released in 1936, “I Have Sinned (Al Khet)” was the first Yiddish sound film made in Poland, and marks the film debut of the Polish-Jewish comedy team Dzigan and Schumacher (known as the Yiddish Abbot and Costello). “I Have Sinned (Al Khet)” blends melodrama with a bissel of comedy and music. Set in a small Jewish town during World War I, the film follows Esther (Rachel Holzer), a rabbi’s daughter who abandons her child after her lover dies in battle and the Russians invade. Complications unfold as Esther’s friends, played by Dzigan and Schumacher, attempt to reunite mother and daughter many years later. mvhc.shulcloud.com/form/2026-SI-Film-Series#purchase.
