Bible by the Bay brings the community together to discuss the Torah in ways that are relevant to life in the 21st century.
Sunday, May 2
12:30 – 5 pm
$15 pre-registration / $20 at the door
Oshman Family JCC
3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto
Keynote:
What has Biblical Scholarship done to my Holiday? A New Look at the Jewish Calendar
Some of the most familiar holidays in the Jewish calendar look very different in the light of biblical research. What is more, the Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed that, alongside the “Jewish calendar” we use today, Jews in late biblical times used an entirely different calendar — one in which the holidays were never “late this year.” What are Jews today to make of these findings?
Professor James Kugel was born in New York. From 1982-2003 he was Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University. He retired from Harvard to become Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Bible. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kugel is the author of some sixty research articles and eleven books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry, In Potiphar’s House, On Being a Jew, and The Bible As It Was (this last the winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001). His latest books are The God of Old (Free Press, 2003), The Ladder of Jacob (Princeton, 2006), and How to Read the Bible (Free Press, 2007), awarded the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007. He is a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Association for Jewish Studies, and Editor in chief of Jewish Studies: an Internet Journal.
Workshops:
Midrash Before the Rabbis with Professor James Kugel, Ph. D., Bar Ilan University, Israel, Bible Department
Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife: The Seduction Story in the Bible and the Qur’an with Professor Robert C. Gregg, Ph. D., Stanford University, Department of Religious Studies
Jewish Women’s Bodies with Rabbi Melanie Aron Congregation Shir Hadash, Los Gatos
A Biblical History of the Senses with Professor Steven Weitzman, Ph.D., Stanford University, Department of Religious Studies
From the Rivers of Babylon to the Shores of Tel Aviv: Psalm 137 in Hebrew Literature with Vered Shemtov, Ph.D., Co-Director, Stanford University, Taube Center for Jewish Studies
What Would Moses Drive? Biblical Teachings and Jewish Ethics on Global Warming with Adam Berman, founder of ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship
Who’s Laughing Now: The Evolving Role of the Matriarchs in Genesis with Sarah Shectman, Ph.D., Brandeis Bible Studies
The Poetry of the Law with Professor Deena Aranoff, Graduate Theological Union, Center for Jewish Studies
Samson and Saul: Tragic Heroes Confront Their Destinies with Nechama Tamler, Jewish Community Federation, Bureau of Jewish Education
From Moses to Freud: Ancient and Modern Interpretations of Biblical Sacrifices with Naomi Janowitz, UC Davis, Professor and Program Director, Religious Studies Department
Special Final Program:
Psalms in a Box: An Interactive Exploration and Musical Performance
In this final performance of our day of learning, we will explore selected Psalms together, with musical interludes. Assorted Psalms in English and Hebrew will be hidden in a box brought from Jerusalem. People from the audience pick one psalm and read it. Does it mean anything to them? Does it ring any bell or memory? With the help of other people in the audience they will try to solve the meaning of the Psalm and its relevancy to them. Doron Nesher, who composed music for the selected Psalms will lead the discussion, give his own personal interpretation of each psalm, and comment on how it inspired his music. Doron (guitar and vocals) and Ginny Morgan (vocals and viola) will intersperse musical performances of the psalms after each discussion.
Instructors
James Kugel – Professor James Kugel was born in New York and educated at Yale University, Harvard, and City University of New York. From 1982-2003 he was Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University. He retired from Harvard to become Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Bible. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kugel is the author of some sixty research articles and eleven books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry, In Potiphar’s House, On Being a Jew, and The Bible As It Was (winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001). His latest books are The God of Old (Free Press, 2003), The Ladder of Jacob (Princeton, 2006), and How to Read the Bible (Free Press, 2007), which was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007. He is a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Association for Jewish Studies, and Editor in Chief of Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal.
Rabbi Melanie Aron – Rabbi Melanie Aron has been serving Congregation Shir Hadash of Los Gatos since July 1990. Ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1981, Rabbi Aron served congregations in Morristown, New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York before coming to California. Rabbi Aron is a board member of The American Leadership Forum – Silicon Valley and the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley, and serves on the Project Advisory Board of the Elder Abuse Initiative of Santa Clara County. She has served on the national board of the Union for Reform Judaism as the representative of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and as chair of the Committee on Adult Jewish Learning and as Chair of the Pacific Central West region of the World Union for Progressive Judaism / Association of Reform Zionists of America.
Adam Berman – Adam Berman recently completed his tenure as the Executive Director of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center (2002-2008), a spiritually vibrant, socially progressive, multigenerational retreat center and community in the Connecticut Berkshires. Adam was also the founding director of ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship, a three month leadership training program for Jewish young adults that integrates Jewish learning and living with sustainable agriculture, green living skills, teaching and contemplative spiritual practice. For three years (1996 - 1999), Adam served as the Director of the Teva Learning Center, the leading Jewish environmental education program in the United States. He holds an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A in Environmental Studies from Brown University. He currently lives in Berkeley.
Robert Gregg – Professor Robert Gregg is the Teresa Hihn Moore Professor in Religious Studies (emeritus) at Stanford University, and served until June 2009 as Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. After fifteen years as a faculty member at Duke University, Gregg joined Stanford’s departments of Religious Studies and Classics in 1987, serving also from1987-1999 as Dean for Religious Life at the university. His scholarship includes a book on philosophies concerning death and grieving in ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian communities; two volumes on struggles over orthodoxy and heresy in 4th century Christianity, a translation of Athanasius’ Greek “Life of Saint Antony”—the famous account of his activities as one of the first desert monks; and a study of 250 Greek, Hebrew/Aramaic, and Latin inscriptions from the Golan that allow glimpses of interactions between Jews, “pagans,” and Christians in the Golan Heights and Syria, in the 1st-7th centuries CE. Professor Gregg's current project treats several “sacred stories” which appear both in the Bible and in the Qur’an, examining their interpretations by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers and graphic artists in each of the religions’ early centuries.
Naomi Janowitz – Professor Naomi Janowitz, Director of the Religious Studies Program at University of California-Davis, is the author of numerous articles on Judaism, Christianity and Graeco-Roman religions in late antiquity and three books The Poetics of Ascent: Rabbinic Theories of Language in a Late Antique Ascent Text (SUNY press), Magic in the Roman World: Pagans Jews and Christians (Routledge) and Icons of Power: Rituals Strategies in Late Antiquity (Penn State Press) which was chosen as a Choice Journal Outstanding Academic book for 2003. She is currently also an advanced candidate at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and has a private practice in Berkeley.
Doron Nesher – Doron Nesher, an Israeli author, film maker, standup comedian TV & Radio personality in Israel. In the last 8 years he has been a resident in the Bay Area, as founder and CEO of Timeless Cities, a company that builds 3D virtual historical cities on the internet.
Sarah Shectman – Dr. Sarah Shectman holds a Ph.D. in Bible and Ancient Near East from Brandeis University. She has taught at Binghamton University, Gustavus Adolphus College, and has also been on the faculty of the Tauber Jewish Studies Program at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. Her recently published book, Women in the Pentateuch: A Feminist and Source-Critical Analysis (Sheffield, 2009), is a study of the portrayal of women in the narrative sources of the first four books of the Hebrew Bible. Hailing originally from Southern California, Sarah lived on the East Coast for twelve years before moving to the Bay Area in 2004.
Vered Shemtov – Professor Vered Shemtov is the Co-Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies and the Eva Chernov Lokey Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Language and Literature at Stanford University. She completed a book on Prosody and Ideology in Hebrew Literature which will be published by Bar Ilan University and she is currently working on a book about Geographical and Literary Spaces in Contemporary Hebrew Literature. Her publications include articles on Jewish and Israeli perspectives of space in Yehuda Amichai’s poetry, discontinuous spaces in A. B Yehoshua’s work and the Bible in contemporary Israeli literature. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
Nechama Tamler – Nechama Tamler has taught Bible to adults in a variety of settings: in the Florence Melton Adult Mini School at the APJCC and the Oshman Family JCC to the Yesod program at Congregation Emanu El in San Francisco, and in private groups in the Peninsula, using literature and Biblical narratives inter-textually. She currently consults for the BJE’s NESS initiative and leads professional development sessions for teachers in five synagogue schools. Nechama worked at the Jewish Community Federation and the BJE for over 20 years before returning to her passion of teaching and learning in 2005. In 1992, she spent a year studying in Israel as Jerusalem Fellow in the Mandel Leadership Institute. She received her BA from UC Berkeley and her MA from the University of Santa Clara and is a perennial student with a well developed curiosity. Nechama lives in Palo Alto with her husband, Howard; they belong to Congregation Kol Emet, and are the parents of three adult children, two daughters-in-law and 2 grandchildren.
Steven Weitzman – Professor Steven Weitzman recently joined the faculty of Stanford's Religious Studies Department and Jewish Studies Program as the Daniel Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion. A scholar of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism, Weitzman's publications include Surviving Sacrilege: Cultural Persistence in Jewish Antiquity (Harvard University Press, 2005); Religion and the Self in Antiquity (edited with David Brakke and Michael Satlow, Indiana University Press, 2005); and The Jews: a History (with John Efron, Matthias Lehmann and Joshua Holo, Prentice Hall, 2008). His current projects include a biography of King Solomon under contract with Yale University Press. Before coming to Stanford in 2009, Weitzman served as director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University in Bloomington.