"An Eye for an Eye"- A Rabbinic Recasting of a Biblical Law
Rabbi David Hoffman is a lecturer in the Department of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS and serves as scholar-in-residence in the Department of Institutional Advancement. Presently, David is completing his PhD in Talmud, writing on notions of honor and anger in Rabbinic literature. David's research also explores the development of early Rabbinic Judaism in the first centuries after the year zero.
"And Moses Did Exactly as the Lord Commanded Him?"
Rabbi Steven Exler The Bible, as a document which exposes Moses' conversations with God and with Israel, often leaves glaring incongruities -- times where Moses says things of which we have no record of his being commanded, and times where we have no record of his delivering God's word to Israel. How do we make sense of these gaps? Are they random? Specific? What are they trying to teach us about communication and the Torah?
Wendy Amsellem is Director of the Dr. Beth Samuels High School Program and an alumna of the Drisha Scholars Circle. She is pursuing a PhD in Judaic Studies at New York University and has a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University.
Devorah Zlochower is a 1996 graduate of the Drisha Scholars Circle, and she has an MA in Political Science from Columbia University. She was the first woman scholar-in-residence to accompany a delegation of rabbinical students on the AJWS mission to El Salvador. She serves on the board of JOFA (the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance), and speaks in communities across the United States and overseas on topics such as the social and historical factors that influence the development of Halakha.
Bittulah Zehu Kiyumah - How the Neglect of Torah Can Lead to its Deepest Fulfillment
Rabbi Ethan Tucker.
Torah and everyday life are often assumed to be locked in constant tension. Rabbinic texts speak of the interruption of learning to appreciate the broader world as a capital crime. We will explore an essay by R. Yitzhak Hutner, one of the 20th century's richest rabbinic thinkers, as he envisions what it means to embody Talmud Torah so thoroughly such that one's entire life is a unified unfolding process of learning.
Breaking a Leg for God - How Much Must One Sacrifice While Performing Ordinary Mitzvot?
Shmuel Kadosh
To what extent does the halakhah demand that a Jew incur serious harm (short of death) in order to keep its dictates? On August 22, 1963, Ruth Friedman and Jack Katz, two counselors on their day off from camp, went on a hike at the Belleayre Mt. Ski Center in the Catskills. They took the ski lift to the top of the mountain, and hiked there most of the day. On their way back down, the ski lift stopped, leaving Jack and Ruth stranded on the ski lift. Concerned about violating the Jewish law prohibition against the seclusion of men and women (Yichud), Ruth jumped off the ski lift, breaking both her legs. (See Friedman v. State, 282 N.Y.S.2d 858 (N.Y. Ct. Cl. 1967)) In this class, we will examine Ruth's decision to jump, both from the perspective of normative Jewish law and in a broader discussion about the tension between Divine Will and human need.
How should we think about the economic, religious, and political implications of the Biblical agricultural cycle for contemporary Israeli life? This class will use Biblical, Talmudic, and medieval sources to develop the diversity of opinions formulated in canonical Jewish sources and their potential contemporary relevance.
We will analyze the first blessing of the Amidah as a way of approaching the question: Are traditional prayer formulas able to express my own values/ideas of prayer? What do you do when you “disagree” with the prayer's content? We will analyze the original Biblical context to help us connect to the prayer.
Rabbi Josh Gutoff has taught and written about Jewish prayer for over twenty years. He is currently a doctoral student at the William Davidson School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
It is commonly assumed that value of human life trumps all other concerns in Jewish life. After a brief introduction, we will explore a sugya from the 8th chapter of Yoma that suggests a more subtle picture. Working in the original, we will look carefully at the different layers of the Talmudic sugya in an effort to uncover the range of warring values at work in this ancient conversation, a conversation that remains relevant until today.
Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg is one of the leading Jewish thinkers and activists of our time. He is the President Emeritus of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation. He served as founder and president of CLAL from 1974-1997. Author of The Jewish Way, Living in the Image of God, and For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity, he has written extensively on the theory and practice of pluralism among other topics.
