National Havurah Committee

Courses

Summer Institute Courses

Course Titles: (click the purple separator between descriptions to jump back to the top of the page)

M-1: Translating Text Into Textile
M-3: Applied Breslov Chassidut: From Page to Practice
M-5: Playing with White Fire
M-7: Franz Kafka: A Jew for Our Time
M-9: Israel at Sixty: Forty-One Years as an Occupier, 1967-2008
M-11: Joseph’s Multi-Colored Hellenistic Coat
M-13: The Essential Prayer: A Deep Investigation into the Amidah
M-15: A Daf a Day for 18 Years: Deconstructing the Encyclopedia Judaica
M-17: Welcoming the Homeless Stranger: How a Mitzvah is Rooted in Our Stories
M-19: The Unfinished Revolution: Jewish Feminism in a “Post-Feminist” Age
M-21: Words and Worlds of Two Prophets: Isaiah and Mohammad
M-23: What is Rosh Hashanah All About?
M-25: Speaking the World into Being: Jewish Ethics of What We Say and How We Say It
M-27: Rabbinic Rules for Radicals
A-2: Storytelling, Diaspora, and Survival
A-4: The Art and Spirit of Prayer Leading
A-6: Controversy for the Sake of Heaven: Facilitating Constructive Dialogue Across Political Differences About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Other Controversial Issues
A-8: Law and The Law
A-10: The Soul’s Search for Meaning—Creating a Personal Theology
A-12: What Words Can Do!
A-14: What is Oral About “Oral Torah”?
A-16: Infinity and God
A-18: It Goes Without Saying: Power, Passivity, and Social Change
A-20: Line, Color, Form: The Shape of Torah and the Kabbalah of Color
A-22: Beyond the Binary: the “Other” Genders in the Mishna and Contemporary Judaism
A-24: Diversity and Rupture: The "Parting of the Ways" between Judaism and Christianity
A-26: The Vagina Monologues Meet the Talmud
A-28: Do We Mourn for the Dead, or for the Living? The Case of Suicide in Halacha

Course Descriptions:

M-1 Translating Text Into Textile (Heather G. Stoltz)
Description: Discover a new way of looking at texts and learn how to express yourself in fabric. Using text and speech as inspiration, students will design and create a small art quilt while learning different sewing and quilting methods. In this way, we will find the power of turning words into a physical creation which speaks to others.

Category: Artist in Residence

Course Prerequisites: none

Heather G. Stoltz is a fiber artist who discovered her passion for sewing the stories of Biblical women when studying for a Master’s Degree in Jewish Women’s Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Heather’s work has been shown at various venues, including the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX and JOFA’s 10th Anniversary International Conference and has been published in Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project and Zeek Magazine.
http://www.sewingstories.com.

M-3 Applied Breslov Chassidut: From Page to Practice (David Seidenberg)
Description: Rebbe Nachman of Breslov is among the most popular chassidic masters. Why? How do his sometimes esoteric teachings help us live our real lives and encounter our real problems? We'll look at Rebbe Nachman's attitudes and practices for dealing with the struggles of life in general, and especially with food, sex and money; for studying Torah and praying; and for taking responsiblity for healing the world. We will work with primary Breslov texts and see how they can function in our lives as individual Jews.

Category: Spiritual and Religious Life, Advanced Text

Course Prerequisites: Some familiarity with any chassidic text OR ability to read Hebrew will be helpful. Translations will be provided.

David Seidenberg has been attending the Institute since 1981 and has taught many courses, including two on Rebbe Nachman, one course on meditation and one on Rebbe Nachman's theology about dancing and singing. David pilgrimaged to Rebbe Nachman's tomb in the Ukraine and has followed a path towards becoming a non-Orthodox hasid of Breslov. David has smikhah from JTS and Reb Zalman and teaches through his website, neohasid.org, and at shuls throughout North America.

M-5 Playing with White Fire (Mitchell Chefitz)
Description: Tradition teaches the Torah was written in letters of black fire on a background of white fire. The black letters were those that passed through Moses 2,500 years ago. As Torah expands, the space between the letters – the white fire – becomes greater and greater. If we immerse ourselves in that white fire, our selves boil away, and we can discover there new Midrash, new stories, and learn how to bring them to the surface. The format will be text study, meditative work, and story sharing through the four worlds of experience. The instructor will provide text for the first session, and then build each session out of the last.

Category: Arts and Literature, Spirituality and Religious Life.

Course Prerequisites: Best to have at least an elementary understanding of the Jewish spiritual framework. The instructor can recommend reading for those who think they might not be prepared.

Mitch Chefitz is the author of two novels and a collection of stories written around a core of Jewish spirituality. He’s currently Scholar in Residence at Temple Israel of Greater Miami.

M-7 Franz Kafka: A Jew for Our Time (James S. Diamond)
Description: The Jewish foundation of Franz Kafka's extraordinary stories and parables is often downplayed, yet these writings constitute an engagement with Judaism that offers perhaps the earliest (pre)figuration of a postmodern Jewish identity. In this course we will study several of Kafka’s key texts with an eye toward not only understanding him as a profoundly Jewish writer but more importantly as a paradigm for understanding ourselves as Jews living in a still emerging postmodern condition.

Category: Arts and Literature, Contemporary Issues

Course Prerequisites: none

James S. Diamond taught at last year’s Havurah Institute and felt like a duck in water. He teaches in the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University and is the author of the forthcoming book Stringing the Pearls: How to Read the Weekly Torah Portion (JPS 2008.)

M-9 Israel at Sixty: Forty-One Years as an Occupier, 1967-2008 (Harold Gorvine)
Description: A consideration of Israel’s post-1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza: the origins of the settlements, and the effects of the occupation on the occupied, the occupiers, and American Jews. We will also delve into the roots of the occupation in secular and religious Zionism. We will use both primary and secondary sources, and we will engage in hevruta (one-on-one) study.

Category: History and Culture

Course Prerequisites: none

Harold Gorvine was honored in June 2001 by the Alumni Association of Akiba Hebrew Academy (suburban Philadelphia) for 35 years of being an outstanding teacher of history and Jewish studies. This is his 10th Havurah Institute.

M-11 Joseph’s Multi-Colored Hellenistic Coat (Aaron Kachuck)
Description: Joseph, the man with a many-colored coat, also wore the variegated garments of multiculturalism. It was therefore natural that those Jews who flourished in Hellenistic Egypt (~300 BCE-100 CE) saw Joseph as a prototype for their own cosmopolitan community dedicated both to Greek modernity and Jewish tradition. Through Greek "midrash," we will explore the Hellenistic, and our own, struggle with the Joseph story. Sources will include Genesis, Philo, Josephus, and Joseph and Aseneth, a Jewish-Greek story (~200 BCE-100 CE) of chariot chases, romance, and palace intrigue. Come explore these strange and wonderful texts! Readings will be in Hebrew and Greek, with translations provided.

Category: Intermediate Text

Course Prerequisites: none

Aaron Kachuck is currently the Mellon Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, in the Faculty of Classics. His research interests include comparative epic poetry, religion and atheism in ancient Greece, and Hellenistic Judaism. He is a co-founder of Minyan Urim, an inclusive prayer group at Yale University, and was also the founder of the Jump and Jive Minyan at Adat Ari El Synagogue in Los Angeles.

M-13 The Essential Prayer: A Deep Investigation into the Amidah (Elie Kaunfer)
Description: Together we will explore the Biblical and rabbinic sources of the various blessings of the Amidah to understand why this is THE prayer of rabbinic literature. How do the non-verbal elements relate to the experience of this prayer? How do the stories behind the creation of the Amidah help us discover new meaning in the liturgy? How does the Biblical context inform our textured understanding of the words? All texts will be in Hebrew and English, although it is aimed for people who can navigate some Hebrew texts.

Category: Text For Everyone

Course Prerequisites: none

Eie Kaunfer is executive director of Mechon Hadar: An Institute for Prayer, Personal Growth and Jewish Study (www.mechonhadar.org) - the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva program in the United States. Elie is director of Yeshivat Hadar (www.yeshivathadar.org), a yeshiva in New York that offers generous stipends to students looking to engage in intensive Jewish study. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, Elie completed ordination and an MA in liturgy at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is working on a doctorate in liturgy. The Forward Newspaper named him one of 50 Top Jewish Leaders.

M-15 A Daf a Day for 18 Years: Deconstructing the Encyclopedia Judaica (Bill Kavesh and Solomon Moshowitz )
Description: What has kept the Jewish people going all these years? Spiritual creativity? Ancestor worship? Devotion to text? Stubbornness? After 18 years, we share hitherto undisclosed secrets of Jewish survival gleaned from a close reading of the (allegedly) greatest compendium of Jewish knowledge since the Talmud, the Encyclopedia Judaica (EJ). Explore biographies of mystics, scoffers and others; descriptions of far-flung communities; literature; mysticism; art; religious ideas; Zionism; and miscellaneous oddities. Each day, we examine a few categories for content and EJ editorial quirks; then visit some of the more horrifying, hilarious, or otherwise fascinating entries. Share the experience of slogging through it for 18 years, and why life after the EJ seems empty and meaningless.

Category: Text For Everyone, Suitable for Families

Course Prerequisites: none

William Kavesh and Solomon Mowshowitz, longtime havurahniks, hope to complete their hevruta (one-on-one) study of the Encyclopedia Judaica this year at the Havurah Institute, after reading a Daf (folio page) each day since 1988.

M-17 Welcoming the Homeless Stranger: How a Mitzvah is Rooted in Our Stories (Herb Levine)
Description: Welcoming the stranger is at the heart of the biblical story (think of Abraham, Rebecca, Boaz) and therefore at the heart of Judaism. This course explores the textual basis for the mitzvah of welcoming the stranger in both biblical narrative and law, as elaborated in Talmudic legend and Maimonides' code of Jewish law. The interpenetration of story and religious practice (aggada and halachah) in these texts will give us a basis for connecting them to issues of who are the strangers & poor people in U.S. society most in need of our hospitality and advocacy. All texts will be translated, with originals available.

Category: Contemporary Issues

Course Prerequisites: none

Herb Levine is Executive Director of the Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness, Lawrenceville, NJ. and a past chair of the NHC. He has taught at six previous Havurah Institutes.

M-19 The Unfinished Revolution: Jewish Feminism in a “Post-Feminist” Age (Judith Plaskow and Martha Ackelsberg )
Description: What issues do feminists still need to address in this supposedly post-feminist age? The course will begin by taking stock of what Jewish feminists have and have not accomplished over the past forty years and will end by seeking to map some future directions. We will explore challenges to the gender binary and their implications for Jewish life, look at the problem of work/life balance, and discuss the potential contributions of Jewish feminists to broader issues of social justice.

Category: Contemporary Issues

Course Prerequisites: none

Judith Plaskow and Martha Ackelsberg are long-time Jewish feminist activists who are members of Havurat Ha-Emek in Northampton, MA. Judith is professor of religious studies at Manhattan College and author of Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. Martha is professor of Government and the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College and a founder of Ezrat Nashim and B’not Esh. They are both included in the new encyclopedia, Feminists Who Changed America.

M-21 Words and Worlds of Two Prophets: Isaiah and Mohammad (Dawn Rose)
Description: A respectful introduction to Mohammad and the Koran by way of an enlightening comparison with our own prophet Isaiah and his works. During historical times of great bloodshed, both of these prophets articulated revolutionary notions of good and evil. Both understood the task of the prophet as impacting social, political, and economic spheres. Both offer visions of a world redeemed. This class, geared for discussion, will reveal differences as well as similarities which are fascinating and deeply meaningful. All texts will be in English. Participants should purchase an inexpensive volume of the Koran, The Qur'an (Oxford World's Classics) paperback, 2004.

Category: History and Culture

Course Prerequisites: none

Dawn Rose is rabbi of the Norwich Jewish Center in New York. With a doctorate in Jewish Philosophy, she has published many articles and chapters and is currently working on a book dealing with struggles around religious fundamentalism in the U.S. and Israel.

M-23 What is Rosh Hashanah All About? (Joe Rosenstein)
Description: Is it simply a prelude to Yom Kippur, or does the beginning of a new year have a separate existence and meaning? Is it a time for repentance or a time for celebrating our new year and the birthday of the universe? And what are the spiritual implications of these questions? In this course we will explore, through study, discussion, and guided meditation, the themes of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, how their authors and later commentators understood these themes, and how these themes might be reflected in our own observance of Rosh Hashanah. Translations of all texts will be provided.

Category: Spirituality and Religious Life

Course Prerequisites: none

Joe Rosenstein is a founder and former chair of the NHC and of the Havurah Institute. He is the author of Siddur Eit Ratzon (www.newsiddur.org) and a member of the Highland Park (NJ) Minyan. In real life, he is a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University focused on K-12 mathematics education. He and his wife Judy are blessed with five daughters, two sons-in-law, and three grandchildren.

M-25 Speaking the World into Being: Jewish Ethics of What We Say and How We Say It (Regina Sandler-Phillips)
Description: Is what comes out of your mouth as important to you as what goes into it? Unethical speech is considered equivalent to murder in Jewish thought, but it runs rampant through Jewish life—and everyone thinks it’s someone else’s problem. What’s a Jew to do? We’ll help each other move from studies to solutions with a toolkit of Biblical and rabbinic teachings, modern guidance, experiential exercises and motivational melodies—and special consideration of our choices regarding electronic communications and the news media. If you are someone who “desires life,” join us and help build the Jewish ethical speech movement!

Category: Spirituality and Religious Life, Intermediate Text

Course Prerequisites: none

Regina Sandler-Phillips is rabbi of the Free Synagogue of Flushing, New York, and the founding chair of the 70-member hevra kadisha (sacred Jewish burial fellowship) at Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn. She has served as a chaplain, educator and “singer provocateur” in a variety of settings in Israel and the U.S., including the NYC disaster relief efforts following September 11, 2001. Regina believes that we teach what we most need to learn, and has done both at many previous Havurah Institutes.

M-27 Rabbinic Rules for Radicals (Ari Wesibard)
Description: So you say you want a revolution? We all want to change the world. In this class, we will study how. We will delve into the practical lessons of Jewish tradition, from Talmudic texts to Saul Alinsky. What do our texts teach us about how to promote effective change in the world? By unlocking the nature of powerful institutions, community organizing and leadership, and the truly "radical" actions in Jewish history, we can become better organizers, activists, and community leaders. All course materials will be in English, with original languages available to supplement the discussion when appropriate.

Category: Text For Everyone

Course Prerequisites: none

Ari Weisbard is in his final year at Yale Law School. His radical experiences include participating in a three-week sit-in to win a living wage at Harvard, organizing political campaigns, and working for The Nation magazine and the Brennan Center for Social Justice at NYU. His rabbinic experience includes being a younger brother to Rabbi Talya Weisbard Shalem (which could also be listed under his radicalizing experiences) and being raised as a Havurah Jew.

A-2 Storytelling, Diaspora, and Survival (S. Bear Bergman)
Description: Jewish storytelling has created a uniting thread, binding Jews together across time, distance, joy and despair. In this course, we will foster storytelling skills in a fresh new batch of storytellers. We will look at stories everywhere, Talmud to Haggadah to Megillah to Chelm, on stage and in song, and appreciate what gives a story the blood and breath to outlive the original creator. Once we have some theories, we’ll test them by composing and retelling more modern Jewish stories, practice performing them, and record them to share across and outside the Institute.

Category: Extended Format (each session is 2.5 hours)

Course Prerequisites: No prior performance experience is required.

Artist, activist, storyteller and scholar S. Bear Bergman is the author and performer of three plays about the intersections between and among gender, sexuality and Jewish identity. Hir publications include Butch Is A Noun (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2006), essays on queer and Jewish culture, and a chapter of the LGBT Inclusion Guide for Hillel. Ze performs widely and facilitates workshops about the parallels between Jewish and LGBTQ communities in diaspora. Bergman serves on the board of NUJLS (The National Union of LGBTQ Students), and works with Hillels across North America on LGBT student concerns.

A-4 The Art and Spirit of Prayer Leading (Julia Appel)
Description: Where does our own connection to God fit in when we're aiding the connection of others? How do we elevate our prayer experience and that of our communities? We will improve our own understanding of prayer leading by exploring central Jewish approaches, in texts from the Talmud to Chassidism to contemporary thinkers. Together, we will hone our use of tone and words to facilitate prayer experience of clear, directed intention. Topics include prayer's purpose, cultivating koved rosh (concentration), kevah and kavanah (structure and intentionality), and raising up others' prayers. English translations provided, but text will be discussed in the original Hebrew.

Category: Intermediate Text, Spirituality and Religious Life

Course Prerequisites: Experience prayer leading (any setting). Familiarity with service structure and basic Hebrew comprehension.

Having prayed and led services with havurot, shabbatons, and congregations across the Northeast, Julia Appel currently develops her tefilah (prayer) skills with Rabbi Ebn Leader at Hebrew College Rabbinical School in Newton, MA, where she enters her third year this fall. This is her sixth Havurah Institute.

A-6 Controversy for the Sake of Heaven: Facilitating Constructive Dialogue Across Political Differences About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Other Controversial Issues (Mitch Chanin)
Description: This course will teach you to organize and facilitate dialogue sessions that help people: talk across political differences in ways that promote mutual understanding; reflect on their own ideas, feelings, questions, and dilemmas; and seek ethical and effective ways to respond to the conflict. You will experience an actual dialogue session; discuss the theory behind it; explore Jewish texts and traditions that support the practice of dialogue; and practice facilitating. Visit www.jewishdialogue.org to read more about our approach.

Category: Contemporary Issues, Extended Format (each session is 2.5 hours)

Course Prerequisites: none

Mitch Chanin is the Executive Director of the Jewish Dialogue Group (JDG) and helped to found the organization in Fall 2001. He has facilitated nearly 100 dialogue sessions in synagogues, colleges, schools, and other venues around the Philadelphia area and New York, and has trained facilitators for the past four years. He is co-author of the JDG/Public Conversations Project guidebook: Constructive Conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the JDG’s booklet Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition.
http://www.jewishdialogue.org

A-8 Law and The Law (Stephen Eisdorfer)
Description: Among its first decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling fining a Jew for refusing to testify on Shabbos. In this course, we will consider opinions by American courts from 1793 to the present as emblematic tales of the changing attitudes of mainstream American society toward Jews and vice versa. Through group text study of court opinions – such as those featuring The War of the Butchers, The Rabbi with a Secret Past, The Jewish “Bleak House,” and The Eruv Hated by the Jews – we will explore the historical, cultural, and religious issues illuminated by these tales.

Category: History and Culture, Advanced Text

Course Prerequisites: none

Stephen Eisdorfer is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a practicing lawyer. Among other activities, he represents Jewish organizations and public entities in land use cases involving synagogues, day schools, yeshivas, etc. He is long-time member of the Highland Park Minyan.

A-10 The Soul’s Search for Meaning—Creating a Personal Theology (Shelly Fredman)
Description: Our lives are a tapestry of luminous moments—if only we could see it that way. Join us as we look into some of Judaism’s most stirring and important texts, writing our way in, through and around them. Writing into a text allows us all, those with a willingness to write and those who consider themselves non-writers, to explore writing as a form of meditation or prayer. Taking text as our inspiration, we will look into issues of Sacred Time, Sacred Space and the path to Holiness, and begin to craft a vision of the Sacred Life.

Category: Arts and Literature, Spirituality and Religious Life

Course Prerequisites: none

Shelly R. Fredman teaches writing at Barnard College and the "Writer's Beit Midrash: Creative Non-Fiction" at The Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El. She received an MFA from Washington University. Her work has appeared in Best Jewish Writing 2002, Lilith, and a number of anthologies and literary magazines. Arts and Literature

A-12 What Words Can Do! (Bob Freedman)
Description: “God spoke and the world was created”– you think it only happened once? Breshit (Genesis) records four creations initiated by Divine speech; more creation accounts appear in Tanach and Midrash. But who is speaking? Were not the words written by humans to describe essentially unknowable events? We’ll explore texts, using hevruta (one-on-one) study to reflect the partnership that brings together Divine and human creativity. This beit midrash (house of study) style class is designed to satisfy advanced text learners and those who want to improve their skill. Knowledge of Hebrew is helpful but not required. Please bring a Hebrew/English Tanach; The instructor will provide supporting texts.

Category: none

Course Prerequisites: none

Bob Freedman began his Jewish professional life as a cantor, then returned to school and obtained rabbinical ordination. After serving a congregation in Manchester, VT, for seven years he moved with his wife, Sally, to Princeton, NJ, to enjoy the intellectual and social delights of that fair burg. He has attended and taught at Havurah Institutes since 1996.

A-14 What is Oral About “Oral Torah”? (Bob Goldenberg)
Description: The idea of “oral Torah” (Torah she-b’al-peh) has been central to the rabbinic tradition since ancient times. What did that idea really mean? How did orality shape the Jewish tradition, and how did that tradition shape Jewish speech? The course will examine a set of texts that shed light on these questions: we’ll discuss the texts in English (of course!), but study them in the original languages. Ability to handle rabbinic texts in the original will be extremely helpful; we’ll translate the texts as we go, but printed translations will not be distributed in advance.

Category: Advanced Text; History and Culture

Course Prerequisites: none

Robert Goldenberg teaches Judaic Studies at Stony Brook University. He was chair of the NHC from 1985-1987 and attended about a dozen Havurah Institutes from the beginning till 1997; then circumstances kept him away, but now he’s back.

A-16 Infinity and God (Matthew Goldfield)
Description: We are taught that God is infinite, yet hearing the words "ein sof" (without end) may not help us understand the grandeur of God, since imagining anything without an end is a difficult task. We will compare a conception of infinity born from the theory of Jewish mathematician (and father of modern set theory) Georg Cantor, including the ideas of "larger and smaller infinities," with Jewish conceptions of infinity and God to help us glimpse worlds without end. In this course we explore an area where Torah and science combine particularly beautifully.

Category: Spirituality and Religious Life

Course Prerequisites: No prior math knowledge/skills required, only an open mind!

Matthew Goldfield is a doctoral student in Computer Science at Brandeis University. He enjoys playing lots of different kinds of music on different instruments. He has been attending the Havurah Institute since he was 15.

A-18 It Goes Without Saying: Power, Passivity, and Social Change (Jill Jacobs and Guy Izhak Austrian )
Description: Words create worlds. But what does silence create? In many of our personal, professional, communal, and societal interactions, power is the unspoken dynamic that creates, destroys, and maintains worlds. In this class, we will examine traditional sources and contemporary Jewish perspectives about power. We will consider our attitudes toward Jewish power, think about the ways in which power operates, and share some techniques for using power responsibly for social justice.

Category: Intermediate Text, Contemporary Issues

Course Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with and prior exposure to Talmud and Midrash; basic knowledge of American Jewish history. All traditional texts will be accompanied by English translations.

Jill Jacobs is the Rabbi-in-Residence for the Jewish Funds for Justice. Her writings on Judaism and economic/social justice have appeared in more than two dozen magazines, journals and websites, and she has spoken and served as a scholar in residence at synagogues, schools, and campuses throughout the country. Guy Izhak Austrian works as Director of Social Action/Social Justice at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City. He has four years of experience as a professional community organizer, beginning in Chicago at the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. In Chicago he led skills trainings across the metro area for synagogue social action committees, while also building a coalition of Jews and Muslims to stand against bias crimes and to advocate for civil rights legislation.

A-20 Line, Color, Form: The Shape of Torah and the Kabbalah of Color (Eleni Litt)
Description: What color was the first light of creation? What is the shape of loving-kindness? What did it look like when Hashem spoke and the world came into being? Even as Jews are known as “the people of the book,” there is a Jewish tradition of image making that is stimulated by contemplating texts. In this class we will do close text study of some key texts from Genesis (and related commentaries) and explore our own visual interpretations of these texts. Along the way we’ll also look at art that shows how other artists wrestled with the same issues. Each day includes text study, consideration of images and studio time.

Category: Arts and Literature. Spirituality and Religious Life

Course Prerequisites: none

Eleni Litt is a visual artist (with a Certificate in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design) and an independent scholar (with a PhD in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics), combining her interests in art history, anthropology and Jewish Studies with painting and drawing. She is a long-time Havurah teacher, having taught on a variety of Jewish practices and texts. She lives in Princeton, NJ, and works at The New School in New York City

A-22 Beyond the Binary: the “Other” Genders in the Mishna and Contemporary Judaism (Benjamin Maron)
Description: Contrary to Genesis, wherein we find that "male and female created He them" (1:27), rabbis of ancient Judaism recognized many more genders than this binary suggests. There is male and female, and also people who have qualities of both, or neither, genders. The rabbis had to decide how other-gendered people would fit into a religion and society that had fairly rigid gender roles. Reading Mishna and tshuvot (responsa), we will learn about the halachic (legal) obligations and exemptions applied to transgender and intersex Jews, then write our own responsa. Texts provided will be in English or Hebrew with English translation.

Category: Contemporary Issues

Course Prerequisites: none

Benjamin Maron is currently living a nomadic life, centering around studying, politics, and activism. In previous Canadian homesteads, he's been active in leading traditional egalitarian minyans, organizing Jewish-Muslim interfaith groups, and running informal learning classes for Jewish youth. An activist since before his bar mitzvah, he enjoys studying and teaching on topics related to gender, sexuality, Canada, politics, cooking, children and families, kayaking, and Judaism (and awards bonus points when the learning involves more than one of these topics).

A-24 Diversity and Rupture: The "Parting of the Ways" between Judaism and Christianity (Adele Reinhartz)
Description: While much of the early relationship between Judaism and Christianity is shrouded in mystery, two facts are certain: 1) Jesus and his earliest followers were Jewish and considered themselves part of the larger Jewish nation and community. 2) After Christianity separated from Judaism, Christians viewed themselves as being outside the Jewish nation and?community. We will consider the factors and historical circumstances under which such rupture occurs, and the impact of separation not only on Christianity, but also on Judaism and the development of Jewish identity down to the present day. All readings will be in English.

Category: Text For Everyone

Course Prerequisites: none

Adele Reinhartz is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, in Canada, and a long- time participant and teacher at the Havurah Institute. Her main areas of research are the Gospel of John, early Jewish-Christian relations, feminist criticism, and the Bible and Film. She is author of numerous articles and several books in these areas, the most recent being Jesus of Hollywood (Oxford, 2007), a study of the Jesus movies. She is currently completing a book on Caiaphas the High Priest, and working on the "Parting of the Ways" between early Judaism and Christianity.

A-26 The Vagina Monologues Meet the Talmud (Aviva Richman)
Description: This course is a textual fusion. Eve Ensler’s twentieth century script The Vagina Monologues crashes into a page of Talmud and we’re left sorting out the debris. What can these two very different genres teach each other? And together, what do they teach us about ways to understand, articulate, and communicate our most intimate selves? We will use the styles and contents of both genres, to reflect on issues such as privacy, body image, power dynamics in relationships, and celebration. The course is open to all genders.

Category: Intermediate Text, Contemporary Issues

Course Prerequisites: none

This summer will be Aviva Richman's sixteenth year at the Havurah Institute. She has studied Talmud in a women’s yeshiva in Jerusalem and majored in Chemistry and Jewish Studies at Oberlin College. She is currently in the Advanced Scholars program at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.

A-28 Do We Mourn for the Dead, or for the Living? The Case of Suicide in Halacha (Micha'el Rosenberg)
Description: In classical Jewish law, one is forbidden from mourning for someone who committed suicide. However, this seemingly straightforward law does not go unchallenged or unchanged. In this advanced course, we will study Jewish legal texts on this topic, focusing on post-Talmudic materials, examining them from legal, psychological, and sociological perspectives, and always asking: What value does this text express? All texts will be studied in the original (translations will not be provided) with the use of wordlists.

Category: Contemporary Issues, Advanced Text

Course Prerequisites: none

Micha’el Rosenberg is a doctoral student in Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). In 2006, he passed with honors the Chief Rabbinate of Israel's exam in the laws of mourning. He has taught in a variety of settings, including at Drisha, JTS, and the Northwoods Kollel and Beit Midrash of Ramah Wisconsin.