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Current Sunday Morning Program
The Ethical Culture Society of Essex County
516 Prospect Street, Maplewood, New Jersey 07040 Phone 973-763-1905 Email: ecsec.nj@gmail.com
Board of Trustees: Elaine Durbach, President;
Vice President Alice Robinson-Gilman;
Secretary Birgit Matzerath; Treasurer Jeanine Rosh;
Other Board Members: Vijya Campagne, Tom Cunningham, Zia Durrani, Jackie Herships,
Lisa Novemsky, , Paul Surovell, Andy Weinberger.Updated 9-5-25
Past Programs Recent Programs
Sunday September 7, 2025
11 AM
Jeanine Rosh
Ethical Culture and Me
Or
"What's a Nice Catholic girl like you doing in a place like this?"
Jeanine Rosh reminisces about her 49 years at the Essex Society
What brought her here
What keeps her here
She invites other attendees to share their EC beginnings.
This is an in-person and Zoom program.
We encourage you to attend in person, as your view and hearing of the discussion,
and your interactivity will be much better than if you are on Zoom.Zoom meeting.
Time: Sep 7, 2025 11:00 AM DST (US and Canada)
Join the Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87584554100
Upcoming:
September 14- Vijya Campagne will explore one of Ethical Culture's key precepts,
Felix Adler's call to bring out the best in others, and thereby in ourselves.
September 21 Birgit Matzerath will introduce a new listening journey
with J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book Two.
Upcoming Sunday Platforms
Upcoming Other Programs
Things We did Last Summer
The Social Action Committee
Social Action ACTION PageRead Notes on SAC activities
Next Social Action Committee Meeting
Next Social Action Committee Meeting
Friday September 5, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.
By ZoomSocial Action Committee Minutes here.
Sign up for our Ethical Culture Newsletter
To join our email list write to: ecsec.nj@gmail.com
Welcome to the Ethical Culture Society of Essex County, New Jersey, meeting on land previously appropriated from the Lenni Lenape people. Ethical Culture is a Humanist Religion, part of the American Ethical Union. We meet in person and by Zoom on Sunday mornings from September through June. Come visit us soon!
Upcoming Sunday Platforms
Upcoming:
September 14- Vijya Campagne will explore one of Ethical Culture's key precepts, Felix Adler's call to bring out the best in others, and thereby in ourselves.
September 21 Birgit Matzerath will introduce a new listening journing with J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book Two.
Recent Past Programs
All Societies Sunday Platform
August 31, 2025
Hamilton Nolan:
Labor Power Can Beat Fascism (But We Better Get to Work)
American Ethical Union All-Societies Sunday Platform with Hamilton Nolan: Labor Power Can Beat Fascism (But We Better Get To Work)
August 31 @ 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
Free in-person and online! Join us in Ceremonial Hall as the Society hosts the next American Ethical Union All-Societies Sunday Platform.
You must register to attend.
This Labor Day, the outlook for organized labor power in America is grim. Already, the Trump administration has decimated the federal work force, torn up union contracts, broken our system of labor law enforcement, and pushed us down the road to fascism and oligarchy. Despite all that, however, one fundamental, structural truth has not changed: Labor power is still one of the only things that can pull us back from this precipice. What would that look like? Let's talk about it.
"You must fight and win. You must fight and lose. But above all, you must fight. You must fight. You must fight."
-Mother Jones
Join Online
RSVP and join on Zoom
Hamilton Nolan is an author and journalist who writes about labor, politics, and class war. He has written for Gawker, In These Times, The Guardian, and many other publications. Today, he runs his own site, How Things Work, at HamiltonNolan.com. In 2015, he and his colleagues made Gawker Media the first major online media company in America to unionize. Hamilton has remained a union activist ever since. He is the author of the 2024 book, The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor. He lives in Brooklyn.
All-Ethical Culture Societies Zoom program on
Sunday, June 29, 202511:00 a.m.
11 AMAEU All-Societies Platform
SAVING DEMOCRACY:
A Conversation with Julia Angwin
Sunday June 29, 2025
Award-winning investigative journalist, bestselling author, and New York Times contributing Opinion Writer Julia Angwin will dialogue with Ethical Culture Societies around the country about what we are doing to effectively resist and reverse the current slide into authoritarian government, and how to work together to do it better. The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County hosts this All-Societies Platform with 22 Societies across the country.
All participants must register for the event.Register Now: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/HUQr-TqgQFaHbnImK9eB9Q#/registration
There will be no event at our Society building-it is all online.
Also, there is no program at our Society this Sunday, June 22.COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS
About Julia Angwin
Julia is an award-winning investigative journalist, founder of the nonprofit journalism studio Proof News, a bestselling author, and a New York Times contributing Opinion Writer.
Sbe is a winner and two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for her work at The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica. She founded the nonprofit newsroom, The Markup. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance” (Times Books, 2014) and “Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America” (Random House, March 2009).
She earned a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. She is currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and was previously Entrepreneur in Residence at Columbia Journalism School’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
There is no cost to attend, but all participants must register for the event.
There will be no event at our Society building-it is all online.
Tech Help
Since the Pandemic, we've all had to adjust to new technology, like Zoom meetings and virtual platforms, to help us stay connected. We are offering tech help to any members who need assistance in learning how to use these online programs in order to participate in Ethical events and platforms. Please let us know if you would like tech support and we'll connect you with someone who can help. Send an email with a request to ecsec.nj@gmail.com.
Ongoing Collections
Food Bank- Please remember to bring canned or boxed food items (unexpired only) for the food pantry box in our front hall. Donations go to the New Jersey Food Bank.
Volunteer Opportunities
We need help! Please call the office if you can aid with any of these endeavors:
- Occasionally provide local transportation to people who cannot get to events
- Be part of a caring committee to identify/contact those who are ill or ailing
- Lend your expertise to research/grant applications
Erol Delos Santos
Bioethics and Healthcare
Sunday June 15, 2025
11 AM
Bioethical Issues with Erol Delos Santos
Sunday, June 15, 2025
This Sunday's platform, the last of our 2024-25 season, will explore bioethical issues through diverse cultural perspectives, and examine the ethical implications of advancements in medicine, technology, and societal norms.
Erol Delos Santos will help us navigate the complex intersection of ethics and healthcare needed to create a more informed and compassionate society. He will be bringing stories from case studies that have shaped the legal and ethical landscape of healthcare, especially those that speak to the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and much more. He says, "I feel like we don't talk about these stories enough outside of academic and private healthcare institutions."
Erol King Delos Santos, MS, MDiv, is a Humanist and a Unitarian Universalist living in Maplewood. He received his Masters of Science in Clinical Trial Sciences from Rutgers University, Biomedical Health Sciences (Formerly UMDNJ), and his Masters of Divinity in Ministerial Leadership from Union Theological Seminary.
Sunday June 8, 2025
11 AM
High School Grads' Panel: "On the Threshold - Our View of the Future"
Sunday, June 8, 2025
For the third - and hopefully not the last - time, a group of seniors from Columbia High will be coming to share their views with our Society, this time discussing their college and career plans, and how they see the very strange world that awaits them. We hope to hear from them what they hope for personally and professionally.
June 1, 2025
Wrong Notes and Life
Sunday June 1, 2025
11 AM
Birgit Matzerath: "Wrong Notes and Life" and Interviewed by Tom Cunningham
Sunday, June 1, 2025 - Birgit Matzerath Interviewed by Tom Cunningham
Birgit Matzerath and Tom Cunninghamd will share their views on striving to get things right in music, and the life lessons learned from making mistakes.
Birgit and Tom are both current ECS members and members of the Board, and South Orange residents, and both are professional musicians, Birgit as a teacher - and presenter of extraordinary music programs at ECS, and Tom as a choir director (in his so-called "spare" time), as well as a band performer with his wife, Dr. Evelyn Chu.Birgit Matzerath was born and raised in Cologne, Germany. She holds a degree in piano and a teaching degree in music and English from Hochschule für Musik and Universität Köln. For twenty years she performed and taught piano at community music schools in Germany. In 1997, she began to study piano with Seymour Bernstein in NYC, which led to her relocation to the US in 2002. She was a full-time member of the piano faculty at the Concord Community Music School and in 2009 she moved to New Jersey. She teaches privately here and has given lectures and recitals, frequently about the music of J.S. Bach.
She published a memoir about her unusual journey as a musician, that led from Germany to Japan, Russia, and to the United States. “More than the World in Black and White – How music came alive and my life became music.” More information is on her website https://birgitmatzerath.com.
Her blog “Music, Life and other Challenges” is on blogspot.
Past Programs
Fall/Winter 2024-25
Recent Programs 2024
2023-24 Programs
2022-2023 Programs
2018-19 Programs
2017-18 Programs
2016-17 Programs
2010-2011 Programs
2008-09 Programs
2007-08 Programs
2003-04 Programs
Minutes of Old Board Meetings
3-9-22 Board meeting
2-9-22 Board meeting
1-12-22 Board meeting
11-10-21 Board Meeting
10-13-21 Board Meeting
9-8-21 Board Meeting
8-12-20 Board Meeting
8-23-20 Annual Meeting
9-9-20 Board Minutes
9-18-20 Board Meeting
10-14-20 Board Meeting
11-11-20 Board Meeting
12-9-20 Board Meeting
1-13-21 Board Meeting
2-10-21 Board Minutes
Newsletters
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
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