Welcome Back

Member BBQ

This is a guys only, non-coed event

Registration Opens 9/2/25

Join your fellow MCA Members for a welcome back celebration on the Iser Center patio and Schiff Hall.

Meet! Greet! Schmooze! 

Bring some guy friends/potential members!

Play ping pong, foosball, corn hole, putt golf balls and just hang!

Dogs, burgers, fixings, sides, drinks, and desserts supplied. Just show up with your appetite. (BYOB)

Grill closes at 1:30pm

$18/person for all you can eat.

Please register by October 26th

And don't forget to wear your MCA attire.

      For more information contact Max Weisberg.

Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of

Henrietta Szold

Registration opens 9/4/25

Henrietta Szold is among the most influential American Jewish women who ever lived, She founded Hadassah in 1912, becoming a major force in early twentieth century in Palestine: she established its health care system, treating Jews and Arabs equally, shaped its education system and initiated social services that prevail today.  Szold helped organize Youth Aliyah, which successfully rescued thousands of Jewish children from Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe during the 1930s and transported them to Palestine.  

The oldest daughter of a Baltimore rabbi, Szold devoted her early adulthood to her father and his scholarly research.  Unlike her four younger sisters, she didn’t go to college, marry or have children.  However, her organizational skills were evident from an early age, when she founded the first night school for Russian immigrants devoting her time and energy to making sure they learned English. After her father’s death, she devoted her life to another biblical scholar, Louis Ginzberg.  She was his translator and editor, taught him English, accompanied him on long walks, traded heartfelt letters with him, and fell in love with him.  When he announced his engagement to a 22-year-old German woman he had known for just weeks, Henrietta suffered a stunning, and very public, emotional collapse.

This heartfelt documentary, is directed by Peabody award-winner, Abby Ginzberg, brings long-overdue recognition to Szold, offering a thought-provoking look at a woman who reshaped history through compassion and an unwavering belief in the power of humanity. An interestingt twist: Louis Ginzberg later married Adele Katzenstein, who became Abby Ginzberg's grandmother.  Abby Ginzberg's family connection to Louis Ginzberg, her grandfather, gives her a unique perspective on this aspect of Szold's life and is incorporated into the film.

Click HERE to watch trailer

The film runs 80 minutes 

Registration opens 9/12/2025

My Career in Sports Media

Conversation with Marc Appleman

Marc's career in sports media featured early adaptation to emerging technologies and new media. Along the way, he met many interesting sports personalities, reporters, broadcasters, league and media executives and entrepreneurs. This presentation will include anecdotal memories of groundbreaking launches, interactions with interesting sports figures and behind-the-scenes details from major games and events. 

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Marc started out out as a sportswriter at the Los Angeles Times and went on to hold high-profile positions at ESPN, Sports Illustrated for Kids, Fox Sports, AOL’s Sports Channel, and he served as the CEO of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He also authored two books: Dad, Are You Pumped? A Father-Son Baseball Odyssey, and Joe Montana, a Sports Illustrated for Kids biography. 

Questions? Email Michael Sobol.

Tamara De Lempicka & The Art of Survival

Registration opens 11/5/25

With her distinctive high-gloss sensual nudes and cooly elegant portraits of high society during the Jazz Age, Polish-Jewish artist Tamara de Lempicka --  born Tamara Hurwitz -- (1894-1980), helped define Art Deco style and the glamour and transgressive vitality of post WWI Paris.

A prodigious talent, Lempicka combined cubism, classicism, and surrealism to reinvent the female figure, not as object but as protagonist. Feminist, style icon, working mother and bisexual libertine, Lempicka embodied Art Deco’s spirit and portrayed women in boldly erotic terms that broke the male gaze.

After stunning the art world in the 1920s with her show-stopping work, Lempicka fled to the United States in 1940 amidst the rise of fascism in Europe. Julie Rubio’s film is a revealing account of a woman who defied the rules—as an artist, mother, and bisexual woman—and gained notoriety for her romantic liaisons with friends and models.

Beloved by art collectors the world over, including Barbra Streisand, Jack Nicholson and Madonna (who prominently featured Lempicka paintings in her “Vogue” and “Open Your Heart” videos), Tamara de Lempicka is the subject of a new Broadway musical, and a rising star in the art market, where one of her paintings recently sold for more than $21 million, the second highest amount ever paid for an artwork by a female painter. Narrated by Anjelica Huston and featuring newly discovered material including 8mm home movies, this new documentary examines Lempicka’s extraordinary life and the aesthetic power and political impact of her marvelous paintings.

The film runs 96 minutes

To watch the trailer, click HERE

Questions?  Email docfilmsnaples@gmail.com .

Registration opens 10/11/2025

Economic and Market Forecasts 

Michael Farr – President/Founder, Farr, Miller & Washington; Chief Market Strategist, Hightower Advisors; CNBC Contributor

Michael Farr will deliver his insights into current market conditions and a forecast of the probable, plausible, and possible paths forward. The economy has changed dramatically, and investors are presented with new opportunities as well as new threats. Michael's message is that Discipline, Diversification, and Patience are the watchwords as you forge your investment future.

Questions? Email Michael Sobol.

Charles Grodin:
Rebel With a Cause

Registration Opens 12/3/25

Raised in a Jewish household in Pittsburgh, Charles Grodin’s life embodied the concept of Tikkun Olam. The film not only celebrates Charles Grodin’s hilarious acting career, but also his remarkable, decades-long, successful fight to get wrongly convicted people – most of whom were mothers of color with young children – out of prison. The film includes interviews with Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Elaine May, Carol Burnett, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Alan Arkin, Ellen Burstyn, Marc Maron, Lewis Black, Marlo Thomas, Jon Lovitz, plus several of the women Chuck got released from prison.

To watch the trailer, click HERE

The film runs 93 minutes

Questions?  Email docfilmsnaples@gmail.com .

Goodbye Walter Cronkite

The Media has Changed

Registration Opens 11/08/2025

It is not just your imagination.  The media has gone through a dramatic transformation since the days when Walter Cronkite was widely considered “the most trusted man in America” and when Simon and Garfunkel sang: “There’s no times at all: Just the New York Times.”

Gail MarksJarvis, who has been a prominent journalist in newspapers, TV and radio for more than four decades, explains what has changed and what hasn’t, how journalists make decisions and grapple with personal opinions when covering the news, the angst within newsrooms that is driving change, and what to expect in the future as old media appears headed into its twilight years.

Questions? Email Michael Sobol.

Art Spiegelman:

Disaster is My Muse  

Registration opens 1/7/26

The life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman are showcased in this biography, examining how his trailblazing graphic novel Maus redefined the medium. Deeply influenced by his Holocaust-survivor parents and personal tragedies, Spiegelman’s work confronts themes of trauma, historical memory, and identity with uncompromising honesty. From his early days co-creating underground comics to his provocative, iconic New Yorker covers, he steadily pushed boundaries, legitimizing comics as a serious art form. Rich illustrations, personal archives, incisive interviews, and sharp analyses illuminate Spiegelman’s artistic process, his enduring influence, and his outspoken fight against censorship and fascism’s resurgence in today’s political landscape. (Description cribbed from Atlanta Jewish Film Festival)

The film runs 98 minutes

To watch the trailer click HERE

Questions?  Email docfilmsnaples@gmail.com .

Registration opens 12/12/2025

My Career as an NFL Referee

How I got to the NFL, a typical week for a referee, equipment we used, highlights, stories and videos from my career, as well as comments on the recent SuperBowl.

Ft. Myers attorney Jeffrey Rice, who has been moonlighting as an NFL referee for 25 years, hung up his whistle for the final time after last Sunday’s Pro Bowl.

Over the past 25 years, Rice has officiated more than 400 NFL games and been granted 24 postseason assignments, including four Super Bowls and four Pro Bowls. Postseason officiating crews are considered the league’s top game officials. Rice is one of only 105 officials to work a Super Bowl game, and one of just 16 who have worked three or more Super Bowls, including two of the closest championship games in NFL history.

Questions? Email Michael Sobol.

Diane Warren:

Relentless

Registration opens 2/4/2026

Electric Vehicles:

The Road Ahead 

Registration opens 1/8/26

Dr. Peter Michael

FGCU Emergent Technologies Institute

Hear from an expert about the current status and what the future holds for electric vehicles. Learn about EV technology and capabilities, research and development, government regulation, and the economics of electric vehicles. 

Learn also about FGCU's Emergent Technologies Institute, a research and development complex opened in Fort Myers in 2016 to support interdisciplinary research, graduate education, and technology development.

Peter Michael is an Instructor and Research Associate at FGCU's Emergent Technologies Institute, specializing in renewable energy development. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Florida.   He moved to Florida following a long career at Science Applications International Corporation (SIAC) and its successor company, Leidos, where he held positions as a Solutions Architect and Principal Engineer.

Cancellation Policy: No refund if cancellation is within 7 days of the event.

Questions? Email Michael Sobol.

 The Nobel Prize and its many Jewish Awardees 

Registration opens 2/16/26

MCA Member Steve Yussen

Swedish engineer, entrepreneur, and inventor, Alfred Nobel, set up an endowment to recognize outstanding contributions to mankind, with the first awards conferred after his death, in 1901, in five different fields, and more awards conferred in a 6th field (Economics) since the 1960s. 

As of 2024, it is estimated that over 200 Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish. This number represents approximately 20% of all Nobel laureates, despite Jews constituting less than 0.2% of the world's population.

Steve considers those outcomes, the award itself, its history, controversies, and the impact of some of its prominent Jewish awardees in different fields.

Steve Yussen earned his bachelors degree in psychology at Swarthmore College, his Ph.D. In developmental psychology at the University of Minnesota, and had a career spanning 48 years as a Professor,, teaching, conducting research in cognitive development, memory, and reading, and serving as an administrator at 3 universities, UW- Madison, U of Iowa, and the University of Minnesota, where he retired in 2020. 

Cancellation Policy: No refund if cancellation is within 7 days of the event.

Questions? Email Michael Sobol.