Online Registration is now closed. On-Site Registration begins at 11:15 on Sunday morning at Kol Shalom.

Places are limited.

Don't forget the time change.

The On-Site Registration Fee is $54. Please make your check payable to The Jewish Theological Seminary.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Sponsored by Kol Shalom, Rockville, MD

Spend an afternoon engaged in stimulating study and conversation. This celebration of adult Jewish learning features interactive study sessions with top Jewish Studies scholar/teachers.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

11:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

at Kol Shalom, 9110 Darnestown Road, Rockville, MD 20850

IMPORTANT: Before registering, please click on the tabs above for additional information about instructors and study sessions. During the registration process, you will be asked to select your preferred topic for each round of the study sessions.

Program Schedule:

11:30 a.m.	Check-in
12:00 p.m	Keynote Presentation
1:00 p.m.	Kosher Lunch
1:45 p.m.	Study Sessions - Round One
3:00 p.m.	Refreshments Available
3:15 p.m.	Study Sessions - Round Two
4:30 p.m.	Closing Text Study

Tickets (Note: Each attendee must register separately)
$36 for Advance Registration (before Friday, November 1, 2013)

$54 at the Door

Questions?

Please contact: Kol Shalom: 301-309-9110 / [email protected] or JTS: 212-870-5850 / [email protected]

Childcare:

Kol Shalom is offering no-cost childcare, by prior request only. Please indicate your need for childcare during the registration process.

This program is made possible by a collaborative effort of B’nai Israel Congregation, B’nai Shalom of Olney, JCC of Greater Washington, Kehilat Shalom, Kol Shalom, Shaare Tefila Congregation, Shaare Torah, and Temple Beth Ami

JTS | 3080 Broadway, New York, NY 10027 | www.jtsa.edu

Study Session Descriptions

During the registration process, you will be prompted to select your choice for each round.

Since you will not be able to return to this Study Session Description screen without interrupting your registration, please print this screen now, or note your selection.

Round One:

Religious Passion and Religious Fundamentalism: The Inherent Dangers of the Religious Experience

David Hoffman, Jewish Theological Seminary
Raw religious passion is potentially a dangerous emotion. It can breed fanaticism and much violence has been perpetrated in its name. Yet passion is an integral ingredient for a dynamic and engaging spiritual life. In this session we will explore how the rabbis of the Talmud viewed religious passion. Did they seek to cultivate it and were they aware of the dangers? What, if any, internal correctives to this potentially dangerous consequence of a committed and compelling religious life did they create?

Dressing My Sons, Dressing Myself: The Talmud's Undoing of the Biblical Mother

Marjorie Lehman, Jewish Theological Seminary
While the Bible is filled with many heroic mothers, the Talmud contains far fewer narratives applauding the courage and boldness of mothers. We will explore some of the narratives presented to us in the Talmud that depict women preparing clothing for their priestly sons in order to think together about why mothers are described so differently from earlier biblical accounts.

The “Golden Age” of the Jews of Spain: Fact or Fantasy

Jonathan Ray, Georgetown University

The Jews of Spain represent one of the most famous communities in the long history of the Jewish people. Journalists, Day School teachers and Jewish tour agencies continue to treat the history of Jewish life in medieval “Sepharad” as a model of intellectual achievement, economic prosperity and interfaith tolerance. In this session we will explore some of the writings of this “Golden Age” to see what the Jews who lived at the time thought about their world, and reveal some of the more complex aspects of being a Jew, even at the best of times.

Jewish Visual Artists on the Left, 1920s-30s

Lauren Strauss, George Washington University

Discussion of the political activities and art of these Yiddish-speaking artists, who bridged the gap between the American left - with its involvement in such issues as the Scottsboro Boys, anti-lynching campaigns, Sacco & Vanzetti, and the Spanish Civil War - and the concerns of an immigrant Jewish community. Includes slides of their work.

Round Two:

Between Tragic Drama and Purim Carnival: Pondering the Inscrutable in Reb Nahman’s Stories

Marc Caplan, Johns Hopkins University

Among the many paradoxes in the brief but fascinating career of the Hasidic master Reb Nahman of Breslov (1772-1810) are the collection of 13 tales he left to be published posthumously in Hebrew and in Yiddish. Although originally told to only a handful of his disciples in intensely intimate settings, the transcriptions of these enigmatic stories form a distinctive and important origin to modern Jewish literature, and provided explicit influence to subsequent writers such as Y. L. Peretz, Sh. Y. Agnon, and Martin Buber, among many others. We will be examining one of Reb Nahman’s most elliptical stories in this session to understand some of his motivations in telling them and discuss possible lines of interpretation and tentative strategies for comprehending their distinctive literary characteristics.

The Future of Faith after Maimonides: Re-conceptualizing an Idea of Faith and Jewish Identity

David Hoffman, Jewish Theological Seminary

In the 12th Century, Maimonides, the pillar of medieval Jewish thought, changed the notion of what it meant for a Jew to have faith. He broke with traditional understandings from the Bible to his day, rejecting the ideas of the Talmudic rabbis. By radically changing the concept of faith for Jews, Maimonides created enormous challenges for Jewish identity and we are still working through the consequences of his ideas today. In this session we will seek to understand Maimonides’ break with tradition and ask: what would it mean to return to Talmudic understandings of faith and belief?

Heaven and Hell in the Jewish Tradition

Jonathan Ray, Georgetown University

To many Jews, heaven and hell seem to be somewhat foreign concepts to Judaism. At best, they are subjects that we acknowledge obliquely, but rarely discuss. Yet for most of Jewish history, notions of the “world to come” and the relationship between this life and the next were central to Jewish thought and daily life. In this session we will look at some of ways in which philosophers, mystics and average Jews have imagined heaven and hell. We will also discuss a range of Jewish practices meant to commune with the dead and to help their passage from this life to the next.

The Jew in the City: How Jews Reflected On, Reacted To, and Re-Shaped the Contours of New York City

Lauren Strauss, George Washington University

An interdisciplinary mash-up of poetry, photography, film, journalism, short stories, and other reflections on the checkered love affair between Jews and New York in the 20th century.

Instructor Bios

Marc Caplan, PhD

Johns Hopkins University

Between Tragic Drama and Purim Carnival: Pondering the Inscrutable in Reb Nahman’s Stories (Round Two)

Marc Caplan, the Zelda and Myer Tandetnik Professor in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, earned his PhD in comparative literature from New York University. His primary interest as a scholar is to place the study of Yiddish literature in comparative contexts. He is the author of How Strange the Change: Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms. His next book-length project will explore Yiddish literature written in Weimar Germany, considered in comparison with contemporaneous German literature, theater, and film. In addition to his academic commitments to the study of Yiddish literature, Dr. Caplan writes a regular column in Yiddish on popular culture for the journal Afn shvel.

David Hoffman, PhD

Jewish Theological Seminary

Religious Passion and Religious Fundamentalism: The Inherent Dangers of the Religious Experience (Round One)
Session B: The Future of Faith after Maimonides: Re-conceptualizing an Idea of Faith and Jewish (Round Two)

David Hoffman is an assistant professor in the Department of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS and serves as scholar-in-residence in the Development Department. Rabbi Hoffman recently completed his PhD in Talmud, writing on notions of honor and anger in rabbinic literature. He was appointed by Chancellor Arnold Eisen to serve on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly and has taught widely in synagogues across North America. Rabbi Hoffman was ordained at JTS, where he was a Wexner Fellow.

Marjorie Lehman, PhD

Jewish Theological Seminary

Keynote address and 'Dressing My Sons, Dressing Myself: The Talmud's Undoing of the Biblical Mother' (Round One)

Marjorie Lehman is associate professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Lehman's scholarly interests are focused on the En Yaaqov, an early 16th-century collection of talmudic Aggadah. She recently published The En Yaaqov: Jacob ibn Habib's Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus. The book was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award-Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in the category of Scholarship. Her research also concentrates on the study of women and festival observance in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmudim. A dynamic, stimulating, and passionate teacher, Dr. Lehman is known at JTS for her attention to pedagogy.

Jonathan Ray, PhD

Georgetown University

The “Golden Age” of the Jews of Spain: Fact or Fantasy? (Round One)
Heaven and Hell in the Jewish Tradition (Round Two)

Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. He holds a PhD in Jewish History from The Jewish Theological Seminary. Professor Ray specializes in medieval and early modern Jewish history. His research explores the “convivencia” or coexistence between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish societies in Iberia and throughout the broader Mediterranean world. He is the author of After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry and The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia.

Lauren Strauss, PhD

George Washington University

Jewish Visual Artists on the Left, 1920s-30s (Round One)
The Jew in the City: How Jews Reflected On, Reacted To, and Re-Shaped the Contours of New York City (Round Two)

Lauren Strauss is assistant professor of History and Judaic Studies at George Washington University and the head of the Foundation for Jewish Studies. Professor Strauss specializes in American Jewish History and Modern Jewish literature and cultural history. She has published articles on American Jewish journals, women, and artists, and in 2004 she was a historical consultant or the Library of Congress exhibition "From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America." She edited the book, Mediating Modernity: Challenges and Trends in the Jewish Encounter with the Modern World (2008). Dr. Strauss has taught Jewish Studies for over a decade at American University, George Washington University, and the University of Maryland, as well as numerous adult education courses in the Washington D.C. area.