Siegal Lifelong Learning's Annual Week of Learning with
MICHAL BAR-ASHER SIEGAL
Horace Goldsmith Visiting Associate Professor in Judaic Studies, Yale University
Associate Professor, The Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Sunday, May 21 - Thursday, May 25, 2023
Register below for individual programs, or click here to register for the entire Week of Learning.
IT’S COMPLICATED: JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE ANCIENT WORLD (IN-PERSON LECTURE)
Sunday, May 21 | 7 p.m. ET
Did Jews and Christians know about each other in the first centuries CE? What did they know and how? In what ways did this knowledge change both religions? The talk will explore these fascinating historical questions, using examples from the Babylonian Talmud, and will demonstrate the complex social and religious Jewish-Christian matrix of late Antiquity.
Free and open to the community.
Landmark Centre, 25700 Science Park Dr. –Beachwood
REGISTER HERE
WHEN A HERETIC WALKS INTO THE HOUSE OF STUDY: JEWISH-CHRISTIAN INTERACTIONS IN THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD
(IN-PERSON COURSE)
Monday–Wednesday, May 22–24 | 10 a.m.–12 p.m. ET
A Rabbi and a heretic fight over a biblical verse. Bruria, one of the Talmud’s only female scholars, yells at a heretic that he will end up in hell. What is a heretic? What do these stories teach us about how the rabbis engaged with those they saw as ‘other’? We will explore previously untapped Christian materials to arrive at new interpretations of familiar texts and illuminate the complex relationship between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity.
Member Cost: $70 | Nonmember Cost: $85
Landmark Centre, 25700 Science Park Dr. –Beachwood
REGISTER HERE
“MOUNTAINS HANGING ON A STRING”: ON THE TWO TORAHS (ORAL AND WRITTEN) (IN-PERSON LECTURE)
Thursday, May 25 | 7 p.m. ET
The relationship between the oral and written Torahs – the Biblical text and the commentaries that came later – is a central concern of Jewish religious thought. The Talmudic text of Mishnah Hagiga 1:8 provides categories for conceptualizing this relationship. One of these categories is laws akin to “mountains hanging by a string”. Join us as we explore what this term means and what it tells us about rabbinic conception of the two Torahs.
Free and open to the community.
Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, Community-wide Tikkun Leil Shavuot
REGISTER HERE
The Week of Learning is generously sponsored by the Friends of Jewish Lifelong Learning Endowment Fund, Jewish Federation of Cleveland