Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Next Week In Chicago: Why Do Jews Answer Questions With Questions?

The Spertus Institute is one of Chicago’s foremost centers for Jewish learning. They take this mission extremely seriously and go to extraordinary lengths to explain all the great mysteries of Judaism. But this Sunday, they are going above and beyond with the public lecture “Why Do Jews Answer Questions With Questions?”

Why do Jews answer questions with questions? Why do you want to know? Who wouldn’t want to know?

Who is this Dr. Menahem Blondheim who has the audacity to try to understand and explain this unique and annoying part of our culture? What can you learn from a professor of communications at the Hebrew University that you haven’t already learned from a lifetime of being a Jew?

Have you bothered to study patterns of Jewish discursive styles from the days of the Talmud to Israeli startup culture? Do you have anything better to do this Sunday, May 7, at 2 p.m.? (Buy tickets from the Spertus website for a very Jewish $18.)

If you’re not up to sitting and listening to Professor Blondheim, Sunday afternoon also happens to be the annual JUF Israel Solidarity Day, which means the annual Walk With Israel at Ravinia Park. As always, there will be a regular three-mile walk and a one-mile family walk, followed by music. This year’s headliner is Idan Raichel. Sign up here. An $18 donation gets you the t-shirt. Chag sameach, Israel.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.