Afternoon Courses 2011
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Courses for Institute 2011
At the center of the Institute are a wide array of courses offered in morning and afternoon sessions. Each course has a maximum of 20 students and is led by a teacher who is also an Institute participant, presenting material that she or he loves in an inclusive style that encourages everyone to participate. Choose from classes in traditional texts, Jewish politics, poetry, Jewish ethics, dance and singing, Judaism and world religions, and contemporary topics.
Extended Format courses meet during the regularly scheduled course time and the adjacent workshop time.
A02 - Writing and Performing Jewish Theatre
Jordan Herskowitz, Poretsky Artist-in-Residence
Writing and Performing Jewish Theatre will begin its study with a focus on defining Jewish Theatre. What makes a play Jewish and who decides this? Jewish theatre stretches far beyond Fiddler on the Roof, and part of the course's exploration will be reading and learning different styles of Jewish plays. After this investigation, we will begin to share and extract from our own personal experiences as Jews. The culmination of this study will be writing a performance piece based on one's Jewish memories—your way of adding to the wide gamut of Jewish theatre! This course will be offered in “extended format” (see note below).
Jordan Herskowitz is an accomplished actor, writer, and teacher. Jordan received the E. R. Showman Scholarship to study theatre at The University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Herskowitz graduated in May 2009 with a bachelor's degree in Theatre Studies, a certificate in Judaic Studies, and a minor in Communication. In addition to acting and writing, Jordan has a passion for teaching. He is a mentor through the Big Brothers & Sisters organization and has developed and taught his own creative drama curriculum for talent agencies, community centers, and faith-based groups. Jordan’s has travelled extensively around the world, performing and leading workshops in South Africa, Argentina, the United Kingdom, and Austria.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Extended Format
- Afternoon Course
- Artist in Residence
A04 - Dancing in the House of God
Simona Aronow
We will create sacred space together and within that space open to deepening our relationship to God and embodied prayer. Using the basic structure of the morning service, movement exploration, and other modes of direct experience, each day we will invite exploration of different metaphors for God’s house. Explore, experiment, discover your personal connection to the Divine. Move your prayers and let your prayers move you. Bring meaning and conscious embodiment to traditional ritual and text. This course will be offered in “extended format” (see note below).
Simona Aronow is a dance movement therapist and movement educator currently focusing on Authentic Movement and integrating movement and meditation into her traditional yeshiva background. She has taught this body of work in Charlottesville, VA at Gesher Center for Jewish Spirituality Meditation and Healing and at Elat Chayim in Connecticut.
Categories
- Arts and Movement
- Afternoon Course
A06 - The Last Frontiers of Peace Within Our Walls
Suzanne Feinspan
Over the past few decades the Jewish community has made significant strides in becoming inclusive of Jews with a variety of identities. Despite these advances, transgender Jews and Jews of color still face obstacles to being fully welcomed into the Jewish community. This course will explore these identities and how our community can become fully inclusive of all Jews
Suzanne Feinspan is a Jewish informal educator who specializes in Jewish social justice education. She has variously been a public school teacher, a sex educator, and has run the DC AVODAH program. She is currently finishing her Master’s in Jewish studies and writing a thesis about inclusion of GLBT families in Jewish institutions. She is originally from Newton, MA and now resides in Silver Spring, MD with her family.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Afternoon Course
A08 - Tales of the Tzadikkim
Susan Gulack
We will study tales of some of the Tzaddikim, exploring the stories of righteous men and women through the ages. Some of the stories will be from the Talmud, some from Sefer Ha-aggadah, which is a collection of stories from the Rabbis that explain and explore the texts, and some from more contemporary sources such as Martin Buber, Yitzhak Buxbaum, Shlomo Carlebach, and Doug Lipman. We will talk about what we can learn from their lives and how their stories can help us. We will practice telling some of our favorite stories in our own ways and talk about ways of using them in our lives and our work.
Susan Gulack is a prison and hospital chaplain. She leads Spiritual Stories therapy groups in a Psychiatric Hospital and uses stories in teaching and counseling in many environments.
Categories
- History and Culture
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Afternoon Course
A10 - Jews, Jazz & Swing
Diane Klein and Nancy Klein
From Tin Pan Alley, to Big Band swing, including salsa and Latin jazz, jazz music for partner dancing has largely been a creation of people of color – and Jews. George and Ira Gershwin (Jacob and Israel Gershowitz), Artie Shaw (né Arshawsky), and Benny Goodman (son of a Warsaw tailor) are just a few of the best known contributors to the music that took America by storm from 1935-1945, and has enjoyed a recent and much-deserved resurgence. In this course, we will listen to, learn about, and swing dance to the music of Jewish composers, bandleaders, and others.
Diane Klein is a lawyer and law professor living in Gulfport, Florida, teaching this year as a visiting professor at Stetson Law School. She has attended every NHC Summer Institute since 2003 and taught a variety of courses. Some of her legal scholarship focuses on jazz, race, and law, and she has been lucky enough to befriend a few working jazz musicians (thereby becoming cooler by osmosis).
Nancy Klein (Diane’s sister) is new to the NHC. She is an experienced dancer and dance teacher, who began doing ballet and jazz as a child and has been swing dancing in and around Los Angeles for the past several years
Categories
- Arts and Movement
- History and Culture
- Afternoon Course
A14 - Jewish Geometry: Math in the Bible and Talmud
Adam Levine
We’ll look at a variety of mathematical and geometrical questions that come up in the Bible, the Talmud, and later rabbinic literature. What is the value of pi? Which direction do we face when we pray toward Jerusalem? How far should one carry objects on Shabbat? And how precise do our answers to these questions need to be? We’ll examine a variety of biblical and rabbinic sources on these questions to try to understand how much math the rabbis knew and what impact this might have on Jewish practice today.
Adam Levine is a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at Brandeis University, studying knot theory and low-dimensional topology. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 2010 and has studied Talmud in a number of settings, including Yeshivat Hadar in New York. This is his third NHC Summer Institute.
Categories
- History and Culture
- Intermediate Text
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Afternoon Course
A16 - Avivah Zornberg’s Interpretive Gift
Herb Levine
Can we learn to dive with Contemporary Biblical commentator Avivah Zornberg into the “murmuring deep” of the rabbis, into what she calls “the rabbinic unconscious”? This class will examine her methods, both contemporary/psychoanalytic and traditional/midrashic, focusing on one extended essay and an introduction on method. This course will be offered in “extended format” (see note below), allowing us to delve beyond her written text into a Zornberg “archive,” a collection of more extensive passages from the works she cites. By week’s end, students will have gained an appreciation for her essential interpretive gift: exposing one’s life to Torah and Torah to one’s inner life. This course will be offered in “extended format” (see note below).
Herb Levine has taught seven previous courses at the Havurah Institute and is active in Minyan Masorti at the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia. He is the author of Sing Unto God A New Song: A Contemporary Reading of the Psalms. He works as Executive Director of the Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness in Lawrenceville, NJ.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Extended Format
- Afternoon Course
A18 - Esau’s Blessing: The Bible Through the Lens of Special Education
Ora Horn Prouser
We often think of special needs as a modern construction. In reading the Bible, however, we find many characters who seem to be misunderstood and described in very negative ways within the text, or, more commonly, by later commentators. If we read these characters as individuals with special needs, however, a very different picture emerges. In this course we will look at several biblical characters from the educational standpoint of being individuals with special needs. We will then draw implications for our reading of the Bible, and for our use of the Bible in the classroom.
Dr. Ora Horn Prouser is the Executive Vice President and Academic Dean at The Academy for Jewish Religion. She has taught in many settings, from university courses through adult education in synagogues, camps, and retreats on making the Bible speak to central existential concerns, specifically regarding ethical dilemmas and individual growth
Categories
- Text for Everyone
- Afternoon Course
A20 - For the Love of Zion: Jewish Ethics and the Question of Zionism
Micha’el Rosenberg
It is easy to forget that the question of Zionism and its religious acceptability was one of the most heated questions in Jewish life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this course, we will study the writings of two writers, both of whom were products of the Lithuanian yeshiva world, and who came to very different perspectives on the question of Zionism. Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohein Kook advocated for a Zionism based on prophetic principles, while Rav Elazar Menahem Man Shach claimed that Zionism and the ethics demanded of a Jew were incompatible. We will aim to understand both thinkers, and see not only where they differ, but also what they may have had in common.
Micha’el Rosenberg is the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center. A doctoral candidate in Talmud and Rabbinic Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he received his rabbinical ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. He has taught Talmud and halakhah in a variety of settings, including Drisha, JTS, and the Northwoods Kollel.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Afternoon Course
A22 - Differing for the Sake of Heaven
Jonah Steinberg
Will abiding differences and enduring disputes pull us apart or together? Exploring poignant and fiery texts, we will encounter the sectarianism surrounding the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent development of Talmudic tradition as an historic illustration of this question and its stakes. We will ask whether those tumultuous and formative chapters of our history bear warnings and wisdom that we might apply in our own era.
Jonah Chanan Steinberg is Associate Dean at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College where he teaches courses on rabbinic literature, liturgy, and thought.
Categories
- History and Culture
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Afternoon Course
A24 - Jewish Customs and Teachings Meet Hospice and Palliative Care
Michael Tayvah
“Go, for the Holy-One sends you. Go, the Holy-One will be with you...”
- from an Ashkenazi death-bed liturgy
When the boundary between extending life and prolonging death becomes increasingly fuzzy, we need to reconsider the teachings of our tradition about death and dying in light of the current medical, legal, and ethical realities. We will examine relevant rabbinic texts on dying, liturgies for the deathbed, and Jewish definitions of death together with the state of the art in palliative medicine and hospice care and share our own personal experiences in order to articulate our own personal preferences to help structure the atmosphere and rituals of our own dying.
Michael Tayvah currently works at the Hospice of the Abramson Center for Jewish Life, located in Pennsylvania’s Delaware Valley. Serving primarily — but not exclusively — Jews, he works as part of the hospice team as a Spiritual Care Coordinator where his role is to address issues of spiritual pain as people approach the end of their lives. A havurahnik since his teens, this is Michael’s tenth institute.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Suitable for Families
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Afternoon Course
A26 - Lilith: Adam’s Ex, Satan’s Lover, or Right-On Woman?
Raysh Weiss
From infanticidal demon to feminist demigod, the figure of Lilith spans a broad range of dramatic personae in Biblical commentary, criticism, and folklore. A character enshrouded in mystery and taboo, the character of Lilith is often referenced, but rarely given the proper critical attention. In this course, we will carefully explore the textual, historical, and cultural origins of this mythical “first woman,” as well as the more contemporary, affirmative attempts to reclaim Lilith as a heroine.
Raysh Weiss is a fifth-year PhD student in Comparative Literature and Cultural studies at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches Film and Cultural Studies and is also the founder of the Uptown Havurah. Raysh also enjoys teaching courses in the area of Jewish Cultural Studies at various Jewish adult learning venues in the Twin Cities area.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- History and Culture
- Text for Everyone
- Afternoon Course
