The community is invited to join the Jewish Community Forum of Raritan Valley on Saturday night, Feb. 1 at 8:30 as Rebecca Cypess presents “Great Things and Small Things”: A Vision for Yeshiva College and Stern College” at Congregation Ahavas Achim, Highland Park.

Cypess is the Mordecai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz dean of the undergraduate faculty of arts and sciences at Yeshiva University. Committed to the model of servant leadership, she strives to promote and highlight excellence in teaching, research and service among the faculty, students and staff of Stern College for Women and Yeshiva College. Cypess is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary thinking and scholarly collaboration, especially by helping to bring the expansive study of Torah into dialogue with deep, open-ended inquiry in the sciences, social and behavioral sciences, arts and humanities.

Prior to her work at Yeshiva University, Cypess served as associate dean for academic affairs and professor of music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. At Rutgers she also served for eight years as founding co-chair of Rutgers JFAS (Jewish Faculty, Administrators and Staff), a grassroots group of Jewish employees that combats antisemitism as well as anti-Israel bias and promotes a positive, supportive environment for Jews on campus.

Starting in 2023, the disturbing rise in antisemitism in higher education led Cypess to begin publishing and speaking widely on the purposes of academia and how it can be reclaimed as a site of reason and understanding. Her work on these issues has appeared in venues such as Tablet, Inside Higher Ed and the Wall Street Journal.

Join online: www.tinyurl.com/47bbmrmv .