beit midrash

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz has a conversation with former professional basketball player Dan Grunfeld about the book he published in 2022, By the Grace of the Game about the journey from Auschwitz to the NBA.

Dan Grunfeld is a former professional basketball player, an accomplished writer, and a proud graduate of Stanford University. An Academic All-American and All-Conference basketball selection at Stanford, Dan played professionally for eight seasons in top leagues around the world, including in Germany, Spain, and Israel. Dan’s writing has been published more than 40 times in media outlets such as Sports Illustrated, The Jerusalem Post, and NBC News. 

Dan earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2017 and lives with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works in venture capital.

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Dr. Martin Lockshin

The event was co-sponsored by BMH-BJ

About the Event: 

The Bible is full of commandments that say “do x” or “don’t do y,” almost always without specifying who is being addressed.  When the Bible says not to mistreat widows and orphans, was it addressing judges? Or the wealthy? Or all of us?

About the Speaker: 

Martin Lockshin is a University Professor Emeritus at York University and lives in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and his rabbinic ordination in Israel while studying in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook. Among Lockshin’s publications is his four-volume translation and annotation of Rashbam’s commentary on the Torah.

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Dr. Jeremiah Unterman

About the Event: 

The polytheism of the ancient Near East conceived of the gods as natural beings who needed sacrifices and libations to physically sustain them. The ethical monotheism of the Torah created a revolution against paganism which would ultimately change forever the concept of religion. One of the key ways in which the Jewish prophets shaped this revolution was their unique understanding of the relationship between ethics and ritual.

About the Speaker: 

Since 2013, Rabbi Dr. Jeremiah Unterman has been a Resident Scholar at the Herzl Institute and the Academic Editor of The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel (since 2017). From 2000-2006, he was the Director of the Association of Modern Orthodox Day Schools and Yeshiva High Schools, and Adjunct Professor of Bible at Yeshiva University. He also served as Executive Director of the Toronto Board of Jewish Education and Vice-President for Education of the UJA Federation of Toronto, as well as Director of Education of the Hillel Academy of Ottawa. From 1992-1997, he was Executive Director of the Commission on Jewish Education and Director of Boston’s Hebrew College Hartford Branch, Connecticut.  He was the Director and Associate Professor of the Jewish Studies Program at Barry University (Miami, Florida) from 1983 to 1992.  He received his B.A. in Hebraic Studies from Rutgers University, an M.A. in Bible from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in the Judaica Program of the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He received semicha through private studies in Israel. 

He has authored two books, Justice for All: How the Jewish Bible Revolutionized Ethics, and From Repentance to Redemption: Jeremiah’s Thought in Transition, and over 100 articles in scholarly publications in the U.S. and Israel. He has lectured frequently at scholarly conferences in the United States and Israel, such as the World Congress of Jewish Studies, the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, and the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies, and at numerous universities in the U.S. and Israel. 

He is a citizen of both the United States and Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He lives in Jerusalem, Israel, with his wonderful wife, Judy.

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yankolwiz interviews Rabbi Sharon Brous, founding and Senior Rabbi of IKAR 

Sharon Brous is the founding and senior rabbi of IKAR, a trail-blazing Jewish community based in Los Angeles. Built in 2004, IKAR has grown into a diverse, dynamic, multi-generational community, one of the fastest-growing and most influential in the country. Brous has been named #1 Most Influential Rabbi in the U.S. by Newsweek/The Daily Beast. She blessed both President Obama and President Biden at their National Inaugural Prayer Services, and her TED Talk “Reclaiming Religion” has been viewed 1.5 million times. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. A New Yorker at heart, she’s grown deeply enamored of the sunshine and promise in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and children.

A hybrid event (in-person and virtual) by Rabbi Sharon Brous

The event was co-hosted by Temple Solel

About the Event: 

The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World, makes the case that in an era of loneliness, social alienation, and ideological extremism, our deepest spiritual work is finding our way to one other—in celebration, sorrow, and solidarity. Relationships of care and curiosity, Brous argues, are essential to both personal healing and social change. This is how we reawaken our humanity.

About the Speaker: 

Sharon Brous is the founding and senior rabbi of IKAR, a trail-blazing Jewish community based in Los Angeles. Built-in 2004, IKAR has grown into a diverse, dynamic, multi-generational community, one of the fastest-growing and most influential in the country. Brous has been named #1 Most Influential Rabbi in the U.S. by Newsweek/The Daily Beast. She blessed both President Obama and President Biden at their National Inaugural Prayer Services, and her TED Talk “Reclaiming Religion” has been viewed 1.5 million times. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. A New Yorker at heart, she’s grown deeply enamored of the sunshine and promise in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and children.

The event was presented in loving memory of Dr. Sherman Minkoff

A virtual event presentation by Dr. Mark Nanos

The event was co-sponsored by Congregation Or Tzion 

About the Event: 

Most interpretations of Paul understand the apostle to argue that Jews who did not share their faith in Jesus Christ had lost their original covenant standing. Yet, at the same time, they maintain that there will come a time when Jews will believe (based on the same terms as Gentile sinners), and then “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26). In this class we will trace some of the developments in Dr. Nanos’ lifetime journey, as a Jew, to read and then re-read the texts in Romans 11, wherein Paul sets out his view of his fellow Jews and discover alternatives for translating and interpreting these texts.

About the Speaker: 

Mark D. Nanos is a widely known lecturer and author of many books and articles. He received his PhD from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and an Honorary PhD from the University of Lund, Sweden. His book, The Mystery of Romans, won The National Jewish Book Award in Jewish-Christian Relations in 1996 and he is a co-founder of the “Paul within Judaism” section at the Society for Biblical Literature.

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz interviews Rabbi Daniel Askenazi, Chief Rabbi of Barcelona, Spain.

A virtual event presentation by Rav Sarah Mulhern

The event was co-sponsored by Temple Chai & Temple Emanuel        

About the Event: 

Is there a value to being publicly identifiable as Jewish? Is there a value to looking more like our non-Jewish neighbors? In this session, we will explore how Jewish texts have engaged with these questions over time, and interrogate our instincts and experiences. We will focus on classical Jewish texts about distinctive Jewish dress to launch a broad conversation about the ethics of passing and outing oneself and when and how we wish to display our Jewishness or other identities to the broader world when we do not, and why.

About the Speaker: 

Rav Sarah Mulhern is a Rabbi, educator, and community builder. She serves as the Rabbi of Silverstein Base Lincoln Park, opening her home and her heart to young adults in Chicago. She passionately believes that Torah matters and that Judaism can enrich human life and better society. 

Rav Sarah is also a nationally-regarded Torah educator, frequently teaching in a wide variety of Jewish adult education settings, particularly on topics of ethics, gender, and Jewish practice. As a rabbi, some of her areas of focus include grief support, feminist and queer niddah education, and crafting joyful halachic egalitarian life cycle rituals. She is deeply committed to inspiring traditional prayer and is a passionate shaliach tzibur. 

Rav Sarah was ordained by the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, where she also earned a Master's in Jewish Education, and received private rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Daniel Landes. She is an alumna of Brandeis University, Yeshivat Hadar, Pardes Institute, Drisha Institute, Beit Midrash Har El, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and the David Hartman Center Fellowship. She can be reached at sarahemulhern@gmail.com or @Rav_Sarah.

*Source Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ROWtjcrXYoV_Gxzz-l184CLig_xVkAxv/view

A hybrid event (in-person and virtual) by Rabbi David Kasher

The event was co-sponsored by Temple Chai

About the Event: 

We often divide the Torah into two categories: narrative and law. But the laws of the Torah themselves are often written in poetic language, inviting us to use the tools of literary criticism to analyze them. That poetic quality is prominently on display in one of the Torah’s most (in)famous legal formulations: An Eye for an Eye. A careful literary reading of this law in the Torah can reveal hidden layers of meaning.

About the Speaker: 

Rabbi David Kasher serves as the Director of Hadar West Coast. He grew up bouncing back and forth between Berkeley and Brooklyn, hippies and Hassidim – and has been trying to synthesize these two worlds ever since. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1998, he studied for several years in yeshivot in Israel before heading off to rabbinical school at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. He was ordained there in 2007 and returned to Northern California, where he became the Senior Jewish Educator at Berkeley Hillel. He was part of the founding team at Kevah, a nonprofit specializing in Adult Jewish Education, where he worked from 2012 to 2018 and developed the Kevah Teaching Fellowship. He has served on the faculty of Berkeley Law, the Wexner Heritage Program, Reboot, and the BINA Secular Yeshiva, and also taught courses at Pardes, SVARA, The Hartman Institute, AJR, and HUC. Rabbi Kasher is a teacher of nearly all forms of classical Jewish literature, but his greatest passion is Torah commentary, and he spent five years producing the weekly ParshaNut blog and podcast exploring the riches of the genre. 

In 2018, he began work as an Associate Rabbi at IKAR, a non-denominational spiritual community in Los Angeles, where he teaches a weekly parashah class and has a new parashah podcast called Best Book Ever. He published an essay, ‘Eating Our Way from Justice to Holiness,’ in Kashrut and Jewish Food Ethics (Academic Studies Press, 2019), completed a translation of Avot d’Rabbi Natan for Sefaria, and is the author of ParshaNut: 54 Journeys into the World of Torah Commentary.

*Source Sheet: https://smallpdf.com/file#s=8b6eadb7-9fe7-4d78-9019-ce3b204d4c51

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz engages in an enlightening conversation with Rabbi David Kasher, exploring the divinity of the Torah.

Rabbi David Kasher serves as the Director of Hadar West Coast. He grew up bouncing back and forth between Berkeley and Brooklyn, hippies and Hassidim – and has been trying to synthesize these two worlds ever since. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1998, he studied for several years in yeshivot in Israel before heading to rabbinical school at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. He was ordained there in 2007 and returned to Northern California, where he became the Senior Jewish Educator at Berkeley Hillel. He was part of the founding team at Kevah, a nonprofit specializing in Adult Jewish Education, where he worked from 2012 to 2018 and developed the Kevah Teaching Fellowship. He has served on the faculty of Berkeley Law, the Wexner Heritage Program, Reboot, and the BINA Secular Yeshiva and taught courses at Pardes, SVARA, The Hartman Institute, AJR, and HUC. Rabbi Kasher is a teacher of nearly all forms of classical Jewish literature, but his greatest passion is Torah commentary, and he spent five years producing the weekly ParshaNut blog and podcast exploring the riches of the genre. 

In 2018, he began work as an Associate Rabbi at IKAR, a non-denominational spiritual community in Los Angeles, where he teaches a weekly parashah class and has a new parashah podcast called Best Book Ever. He published an essay, ‘Eating Our Way from Justice to Holiness,’ in Kashrut and Jewish Food Ethics (Academic Studies Press, 2019), completed a translation of Avot d’Rabbi Natan for Sefaria, and is the author of ParshaNut: 54 Journeys into the World of Torah Commentary.

A virtual event presentation by Dr. Adele Reinhartz

The event was co-sponsored by BMH-BJ

About the Event: 

This talk will explore some of the issues about the portrayal of Jews and Judaism in the Fourth Gospel. In analyzing this very important topic, it is always necessary to have a dual focus, with one eye on what the Gospel itself says, and the other on what scholars have said. This talk will have three main parts:
 1. Jesus as a Jew in the Gospel of John
 2. Jesus and the “Jews” in the Gospel of John
 3. Is John Jewish, Anti-Jewish, or both?

About the Speaker: 

Adele Reinhartz is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Ottawa, where she is also a Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. Her main research contributions have been in the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity, and the Bible in/and Film. Adele served as the General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature for 7 years (2012-2019) and as the President of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2020. Adele was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 2005, and into the American Academy for Jewish Research in 2014. Her most recent books are Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (2018) and The Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (2nd edition, 2022). She is currently working on a project on the so-called “parting of the ways” and the origins of Christianity.

A hybrid event (in-person and virtual) by Dr. Bernice Lerner

About the Event: 

In mid-April 1945, a small group of liberators entered Bergen-Belsen, where they found tens of thousands of unburied dead and 60,000 “displaced persons,” of whom 25,000 were in dire need of medical attention. What principles guided their leaders’ excruciating choices? What ethical questions consumed the men as they endeavored to feed the starved, control the spread of disease, and equip the largest hospital in Europe? Dr. Lerner will share astonishing stories about the unprecedented liberation–from the perspectives of both liberators and survivors, including 15-year-old Rachel Genuth, her mother.

About the Speaker: 

Bernice Lerner, Ed.D., is the author of All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, and other writings on the Holocaust and virtue ethics. She is the former dean of adult learning at Hebrew College and a lecturer on the Holocaust and character education.

*Zvi Asaria-Hermann Helfgott- Helping Survivors in Bergen-Belsen Video: https://youtu.be/cmxz6S0sobE?si=evvCmJylZESgysoH

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Dr. Aubrey Glazer

About the Event: 

Merest Breath is a provocative and contemporary translation with two new commentaries on Qohelet (Ecclesiastes). These eclectic commentaries on one of the strangest books of the Hebrew Bible open up an ancient wisdom text that dares to address theological skepticism of the present. Understanding Qohelet as resisting biblical theological platitudes about sin, prayer, and forgiveness, these commentaries are a magisterial conversation between thinkers ancient and modern – from Heraclitus to Leonard Cohen – that dares to think differently. Martin Cohen’s new translation and introductory commentary (Kol ha-Tor) is in conversation with Aubrey Glazer’s philosophical interpretations (Ruah ha-Orev) – ranging from Hebraic stoicism and skepticism to an exploration of the diverse interpretations in philosophical (Samuel Ben Judah Ibn Tibbon, Gersonides, David Hume, Theodor W. Adorno, Emmanuel Lévinas) kabbalistic (Zohar, Bahir) and Hasidic (Ba’al Shem Tov, R. Nachman of Bratzlav, R. Meshulem Faish ben Mordekhai Levi, R. Aharon Yosef Luria) commentaries – that enable Qohelet to re-emerge anew as a theological empiricist. Rediscover Qohelet as the remarkable Hebrew ironist who points seekers of truth to life’s dialectical dance between melancholia and joy.

About the Speaker: 

Rav Aubrey L. Glazer, Ph.D. (University of Toronto, 2005), rabbinic ordination (JTSA, 2000) is honored to serve as Department Chair of Jewish Thought and Philosophy for the Aleph Ordination Program. Aubrey is the founding director and editor-in-chief of Panui: a think tank devoted to researching, reflecting, and teaching modern and contemporary Jewish mysticism dynamically and authentically to build a conscious, compassionate community. Aubrey is currently honored to serve as Senior Rabbi of Beth Abraham Synagogue (Dayton, Ohio), and has served as Senior Rabbi in the following communities: Congregation Shaare Zion, Montreal (2018-2021), Congregation Beth Sholom, San Francisco (2014-2018), as well as Jewish Community Center of Harrison, New York (2005-2014). Aubrey has served as a mentor for rabbinic students from diverse seminaries. As a graduate of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Aubrey co-led Jewish meditation retreats at Makor Or with Zoketsu Norman Fischer as well as teaching Zohar in the Philosophy Circle of Lehrhaus under the direction of Daniel C. Matt. Aubrey has also completed certification of Kashrut: Rav HaMachshir (JTSA) and Jewish Business leadership (Kellogg School of Business). Aubrey’s recent publications on contemporary philosophy and theology include: Mystical Vertigo (2013); Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen’s Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish & Beyond (2017) and God Knows Everything is Broken: Bob Dylan’s Gnostic Mystical Songbook (2019). Aubrey is co-editor and translator of a multi-volume series on Tiberian Hasidism called From Tiberias With Love.

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Shlomo Levin

The event was co-sponsored by Congregation Or Tzion

About the event: 

Numerous times the Torah commands us to help those in need. Is this also a statement of human rights? In this session we’ll ask whether giving tzedakah is a fulfillment of human rights values, or whether human rights are limited to abstract freedoms and charity is something we give out of kindness alone.

About the Speaker: 

Shlomo Levin received ordination from Yeshivat Hamivtar in Israel and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. For 15 years he served as a Rabbi at various pulpits in the United States. In 2022 he received a master’s degree in International Law and Human Rights. Now he works for a non-profit organization he started called the Human Rights Haggadah, which aims to become a central hub for education and respectful discussion of human rights issues as they pertain in particular to Israel and the Jewish community.

A virtual event presentation by Maggid Jim Brulé

The event was co-sponsored by Temple Emanual

About the Event: 

Stories have the power to entertain, inform, enlighten, and motivate. They also have the power to heal. Maggid Brulé will weave together traditional Jewish stories from a variety of cultures, interspersed with reflections on the reasons that stories affect us so deeply and opportunities for discussion and dialogue.

About the Speaker: 

Jim Brulé is a maggid – a transformational storyteller, teacher, and mentor with a very diverse background: he has advanced degrees in clinical psychology and artificial intelligence. His online school – Transformational Storytelling – trains spiritual storytellers from multiple traditions to tell stories that inspire healing and spiritual growth.

As a death doula, he works with families, individuals, and caregivers. He is a member of NEDA – the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance – where he has achieved the EOL Doula Proficiency badge and has a subsequent certification as a death doula from The Dying Year. 

Finally, he is also an interfaith chaplain in hospital, prison, and jail settings, and a storytelling healer at an “Omega Home” – a last home for the dying. Jim also works with organizations and communities to promote dialogue across learned boundaries of faith, ethnicity, privilege, and class using stories.

A virtual event presentation by Dr. David Sanders

The event was co-sponsored by BMH-BJ

About the Event: 

“A dream not interpreted is like a letter not read.” This quote is not from Freud or Jung but from the Zohar, the classic medieval Kabbalah text connecting dreams and our spiritual growth. We spend an average of 9 years dreaming. What do our dreams reflect to us of our experience? How are dreams guides for our emotional and spiritual development? Come and see the significance of dreams. Journaling and sharing your dreams helps you apply the Kabbalah dream framework.

About the Speaker: 

Dr. David Sanders, Founder and Spiritual Director of Kabbalah Experience, combines over thirty years of experience as both a psychologist and Kabbalist helping guide people to deeper awareness and fulfillment in their lives. His transformation from religious studies to mysticism intrigued him to broaden the study of Kabbalah to practical spiritual growth. Transformative Kabbalah combines traditional mysticism, contemporary psychology, and quantum physics.

It is David’s joy to help others challenge their views of themselves and the world. Through study and practice, students regularly change their perceptions and choose to alter or modify their behavior – which in turn brings positive change to their relationships and community and find greater and more fulfilling expression of their life purpose. He is the author of 2 books on mysticism and language and is currently writing a book on MASKS, the subject of one of KE’s most popular courses.

David maintains an active therapy practice, specializing in working with couples and families. He sees psychological and spiritual growth as a continuum of learning and becoming more aware of the self and others. His creation of the Kabbalah Experience is a way to enter into people’s lives from a different premise – spiritual learning and guidance that does not have a starting point of “my problem.” Based on the methodology of study at KE on adult-centered learning, everyone is linked in the awareness to work together as the teacher becomes the student and the student becomes the teacher.

David considers it his fortune to live with and learn from his wife Rita every day. With two sets of twins and an eldest son, life is rich for the whole family.

A virtual, five-part series presented by Professor Eitan P. Fishbane

*Source Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14JGleBQE8nwYtoRTtm2v36G8I4wckb_Y/view

About the event: 

In what would become the legendary kabbalistic hilltop town of Tzfat in the 1500s—the birthplace of such timeless texts as Lekha Dodi and Yedid Nefesh; a location whose larger-than-life figures included such luminaries as Rabbi Yosef Karo, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (the ARI), and many others— there unfolded one of the most remarkable chapters in the entire history of Judaism, and Jewish mysticism in particular. Through various concerns, ideas, and writing genres, the mystics of this time and place focused on the nature of the human self and spiritual psychology: its essence and character, its fundamental state of relationship to Divinity. In the sessions of this course, we will explore a range of these issues and modes of creativity as they appeared in sixteenth-century Tzfat. We will explore such major topics as Soul, Body, and Reincarnation (Gilgul); The Ethics and Piety of Self-Transformation (Kabbalistic Musar); Mystical Autobiography; Emotion, Feeling, and Mind. Please join us as we dive deeply into this fascinating and inspiring landscape of ideas, feelings, and spirituality!

About the Speaker: 

Dr. Eitan Fishbane is a Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he has taught for 17 years. A 2015-2016 JTS Chancellor’s Fellow, Fishbane has served on the JTS Faculty Executive Committee; as a B.A. and M.A. Advisor in Jewish Thought; and on The Rabbinical School Council. He is a former Division Chair for Jewish Mysticism at the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS); current Chair of the Oxford Interfaith Forum on Mysticism; and Book Review Editor for Jewish Mysticism at The Marginalia Review of Books. He is the recipient of grants from The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), as well as the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Among Professor Fishbane’s published books are: The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018); As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford University Press, 2009); and, most recently, Embers of Pilgrimage (Panui Poetry Series, 2021). He works on several book projects, including Shabbat in Ḥasidic Thought: Sacred Time and Mystical Consciousness; Self & Identity in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah; and The Zohar as Mystical Poetry. In addition to these academic projects, Fishbane is working on a spiritual-theological commentary on the Torah cycle and the Jewish holidays, tentatively entitled, Written on the Heart: Meditations & Readings; and he is completing his second volume of original poetry, entitled, Soul Fragments. Fishbane received his Ph.D. and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University. Visit him at www.eitanfishbane.com.

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Zachary Truboff

The event was co-sponsored by BMH-BJ 

About the Event: 

One of the ongoing debates of modern Jewish life is the extent to which human beings or God should be given the final say on religious questions of ultimate importance. For many, this dilemma is seen as an either/or, and one must choose a side, but a look at two of orthodoxy’s most influential thinkers can shed light on how the question is far more complicated than most realize.

About the Speaker: 

Rabbi Zachary Truboff is the Director of Rabbinic Education for the International Beit Din, and his work focuses on educating rabbis about halakhic solutions to the agunah problem. He is the author of Torah Goes Forth From Zion: Essays on the Thought of Rav Kook and Rav Shagar, and his writings on contemporary Jewish thought and Zionism have appeared in the Lehrhaus, Arutz Sheva, and Akdamot. Before making aliyah, he served as the rabbi of Cedar Sinai Synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio. He has taught in a variety of adult education settings, such as the Wexner Heritage Program and the Hartman Institute. He received semikha from Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.

A virtual, five-part series presented by Professor Eitan P. Fishbane

*Source Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qzW3jl5I1ZWug2YIpQ_JAcouT1g51LRe/view

About the event: 

In what would become the legendary kabbalistic hilltop town of Tzfat in the 1500s—the birthplace of such timeless texts as Lekha Dodi and Yedid Nefesh; a location whose larger-than-life figures included such luminaries as Rabbi Yosef Karo, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (the ARI), and many others— there unfolded one of the most remarkable chapters in the entire history of Judaism, and Jewish mysticism in particular. Through various concerns, ideas, and writing genres, the mystics of this time and place focused on the nature of the human self and spiritual psychology: its essence and character, its fundamental state of relationship to Divinity. In the sessions of this course, we will explore a range of these issues and modes of creativity as they appeared in sixteenth-century Tzfat. We will explore such major topics as Soul, Body, and Reincarnation (Gilgul); The Ethics and Piety of Self-Transformation (Kabbalistic Musar); Mystical Autobiography; Emotion, Feeling, and Mind. Please join us as we dive deeply into this fascinating and inspiring landscape of ideas, feelings, and spirituality!

About the Speaker: 

Dr. Eitan Fishbane is a Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he has taught for 17 years. A 2015-2016 JTS Chancellor’s Fellow, Fishbane has served on the JTS Faculty Executive Committee; as a B.A. and M.A. Advisor in Jewish Thought; and on The Rabbinical School Council. He is a former Division Chair for Jewish Mysticism at the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS); current Chair of the Oxford Interfaith Forum on Mysticism; and Book Review Editor for Jewish Mysticism at The Marginalia Review of Books. He is the recipient of grants from The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), as well as the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Among Professor Fishbane’s published books are: The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018); As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford University Press, 2009); and, most recently, Embers of Pilgrimage (Panui Poetry Series, 2021). He works on several book projects, including Shabbat in Ḥasidic Thought: Sacred Time and Mystical Consciousness; Self & Identity in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah; and The Zohar as Mystical Poetry. In addition to these academic projects, Fishbane is working on a spiritual-theological commentary on the Torah cycle and the Jewish holidays, tentatively entitled, Written on the Heart: Meditations & Readings; and he is completing his second volume of original poetry, entitled, Soul Fragments. Fishbane received his Ph.D. and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University. Visit him at www.eitanfishbane.com.

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Ian Pear

About the Event: 

In a continuation of Rabbi Pear’s first class, we will discuss Rav Goren’s attempts to create a military ethic in the entire Israeli army.

About the Speaker: 

Rabbi Chaim (Ian) Pear, a Rabbi, lawyer, and social activist living in Jerusalem, is the founder of Shir Hadash, a popular Jerusalem Synagogue, Educational Institute, and Community Center, as well as an expert in Israeli and Jewish environmental law – he worked at Israel’s premier environmental law firm, Laster and Goldman – and a leader in the Spiritual Diplomacy efforts made on behalf of Israel. A one-time aspiring standup comedian, Rabbi Pear received his ordination from Yeshiva University and holds law degrees from Hebrew University (LLM, with a focus on Mishpat Ivri) and NYU School of Law (JD, with a concentration in international law), and a degree in International Law, Politics and Security from Georgetown University’s School for Foreign Service. The author of three books, he is married to Dr. Rachel Pear and is the father of five children.