Morning Courses 2010
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Courses
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.
M01 - The Art of Sephardic Music
Samuel Asher, Poretsky Artist in Residence
Sephardim have a rich, diverse musical heritage spanning several centuries, three continents, and dozens of cultures from Spain to Iran, from the Crimea to Arabia. Sephardic music is thriving in Israel today; however, Sephardic music is not commonly sung in America, except for a few notable performers, such as Ofra Haza (z”l) and a few notable melodies, such as Los Bilbilicos. This course will explore the riches of Oriental Jewish music in Ladino and Hebrew, new and old. We will learn music, musical styles, and liturgical versus secular pieces. We will also play melodic and percussive instruments and make new music. Expect lively interaction and participation.
Samuel Asher has done extensive work in reviving traditional Sephardic music as well as developing new music for Jewish liturgy. He has taught many classes and led several workshops on music, prayer, and interfaith dialog. Educated at the Eastman School of Music, Samuel has officiated as Cantor for Temple Beth David in Rochester, NY for the last 17 years, and was the first Artist in Residence for the Partnership program in Modi’in, Israel in 2005. Also comfortable with jazz, gospel, and folk music, Samuel lives in Rochester with his wife of 28 years; they have 3 grown children.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- History and Culture
- Extended Format
- Morning Course
M03 - Murder or Mitzvah: the Ethics of Animals as Food
Ellie Ash and Annie Bass
Kashrut, the corps of mitzvot on how and what we eat, is inescapable in Jewish life. It is simultaneously divisive, archaic, and central to Jewish identity and morality. Kashrut elevates our animal need for sustenance by connecting it with how we treat the animals that we eat. We will study Jewish sources across time about the theology, ethics, and sociology of meat-eating. Through these texts we will refine our ethical lens as we examine relevant topics in Masechet Hullin, the section of the Talmud dedicated to non-sacrificial slaughter.
Ellie Ash and Annie Bass are a hevruta born at the NHC Summer Institute. They have been studying Mishna Hullin by phone for the past two years. They are undergraduate students at Stanford and Cornell universities, respectively.
Categories
- Intermediate Text
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M05 - How to Write a Social Justice D’var Torah that’s not a Dud
Guy Izhak Austrian
For those wanting to “cry freedom” to a Jewish audience, the d’var Torah is a key opportunity. But who hasn’t groaned through a predictable d’var Torah that hits an audience on the head with a self-righteous message while distorting or disregarding the text? We’ll learn how to balance moral clarity with nuance; how to engage and challenge the Torah text with love and respect; and how to meet and move an audience. Each participant will work independently on a d’var Torah, with the support of the group. Some will share their divrei Torah with an NHC audience at the end of the Institute.
Guy Izhak Austrian writes for the American Jewish World Service’s weekly Torah commentary, Dvar Tzedek, and has delivered divrei Torah in front of audiences as large as 2,000 people. Formerly a community organizer with the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, he is now a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He lives with his life partner, Jill Jacobs, and their daughter Lior.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
M07 - The Glass is Half Jewish: Mixed Heritage, Conversion, and Intermarriage
Rebecca Ennen
Mixed-heritage Jews are the present and future of the Jewish community. Gentiles are inextricably woven into our communities and personal heritages. Does this trend represent enrichment or watering-down? In the past as today, Jews have been committed to maintaining our distinctiveness, even as we adopted ideas and practices from neighboring cultures. How have Jews created, transformed, and deconstructed the boundaries between others and ourselves? Is there any such thing as half-Jewish? In search of new ways of understanding mixed heritage, conversion, and interfaith families, we will study a wide range of traditional, contemporary, autobiographical, theoretical, and ethnographic texts. We will share personal reflections on mixed ethnicity, faith, culture, and lifestyle.
Rebecca Ennen is the complicated child of a complicated Jewish-Catholic union. As a dialogue facilitator for Jewish Dialogue Group in Philadelphia, she helps Jews engage gracefully in thorny conversations. Rebecca is a 2008 and 2009-10 Yeshivat Hadar Fellow, where she studied traditional Jewish sources on peoplehood, conversion, and intermarriage. She co-created a daylong workshop for mixed heritage Jews, including children of intermarriage and converts, in March 2009.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course
M09 - Sixty Years of Israeli Poetry Between War and Peace
Hanoch Guy
“Sixty Years of Israeli Poetry Between War and Peace” examines the deepest recesses of the Israeli psyche. From the elation of the victory of 1948 and the founding of the state sprang hope for peace and the realization that more wars will have to be fought and terrorism will have to end. We will follow three generations of soul-searching agonized poets who grapple with personal existence and the state’s existence through joy, hardship and perseverance. During the eighties and nineties, poetry of protest and dissent expressed exhaustion and despair because of nonstop cycles of violence and opposition to west bank occupation. We hope to read from the works of A.Z.Greenberg, Amichai, Ravikovitz, Alterman, Rubner, Sivan and Gilead. Special attention will be paid to universal war symbols and the applications of biblical motifs to modern Israel. Note: A special booklet is being prepared for the course.
Hanoch Guy grew up in Israel. He is a bilingual poet, Hebrew and English. His works have appeared in Genre, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks, The International Journal of Genocide studies, Visions International, and Poetica, from whom he won an award. The Mad Poets Society gave him an award in 2007. His recent works include both Hebrew poems and English poems. He has taught at the NHC Institute chai times.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Contemporary Issues
- Morning Course
M11 - The Clash of Wills and the Will to Heal: Pediatric Ethics and Rabbinic Thought
Hillel Gray
In contemporary bioethics, some of the most contested and difficult questions concern the bodies of children. At what age should children have more freedom over their bodies and their medical care than parents or physicians? Is it ethical for parents to arrange for a child to donate blood marrow or participate in a biomedical experiment? At what age may a child, regardless of parental wishes, refuse chemotherapy? When, if ever, should parents refuse to have their children vaccinated? Who should decide about life-support interventions for newborns in extremis? Would it be right for children to be genetically designed or enhanced? Class participants will pore over Talmudic and medieval rabbinic law, as well as recent Orthodox, Conservative & Reform responsa that shed light on pediatric ethics. For questions not yet addressed by the rabbinate(s), we will try to chart the likely trajectories of Jewish pediatric ethics.
Hillel Gray is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and the Scholar of Bioethics and Jewish Thought at Emory Center for Ethics. He has a PhD in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago. He is former policy director of the National Environmental Law Center and has served on the board of minyanim from both the left and right ends of Jewish life.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course
M13 - Should the law pierce the mountain? The role of communal narrative in Jewish law
Adam Gordon
“Let the law pierce the mountain” – this approving Talmudic (rabbinic) view of the role of Jewish law has a harsh ring for those, including many women and queer Jews, who have experienced halacha (religious law) as undermining the rocks upon which we build our lives. Some rabbis have recently written that the Jewish legal system should recognize the potential of broader communal values to trump conventional legal interpretation, drawing upon the work of American legal scholar Robert Cover. What is this narrative-based approach? How does it relate to Jewish tradition? And might it pierce mountains of its own?
Adam Gordon is a civil rights attorney at Fair Share Housing Center, a public interest law firm focused on providing affordable housing in New Jersey’s most desirable communities, and a fellow at NYU Law School focusing on federal land use and affordable housing policy. He also co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of The Next American City, a quarterly magazine about the future of cities and suburbs that the New York Times calls “a subtle plan to change the world.” He is a member of Kol Tzedek, a small Reconstructionist synagogue in Philadelphia.
Categories
- Intermediate Text
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M15 - D'raw Yikra
Luke Jaeger
D'raw Yikra - and paint too. Some of us may think we "can't draw"; others may be more confident in our skills but still "stuck" in other ways. We'll free ourselves from these constraints, create a safe space for creative experimentation and use a range of texts - from the ancient prophets to classic Yiddish literature - as jumping-off points for visual exercises. There are no rules about form or content - the goal is to have fun, make a mess, and expand your definition of what is possible!
Artist/filmmaker Luke Jaeger grew up in Brooklyn, NY and attended Yale University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Massachusetts College of Art. He and his family now live in Western Massachusetts. His animated films have been shown in festivals and theaters worldwide.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Open to Teens
- Morning Course
M17 - Torah Queeries: Not Your Zayde/Bubbe’s Parshat Hashavua
Diane Klein
In 2009, NYU Press published Torah Queeries, a groundbreaking set of essays on parshiyot hashavua (the sections of the Torah read each week) and Jewish holidays authored by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise self-described “queer Jews.” In this course, we will read some of these essays side by side with more “traditional” interpretations of the same texts, and familiarize ourselves with the various methodologies employed by queer interpreters of Torah. Are these queer approaches equally or even more appealing and persuasive than some traditional interpretations? Or is this politically-motivated “eisegesis,” as some critics charge – “reading in” what the reader hopes to find, rather than “exegesis,” reading out what is “actually there”? The course will culminate, at the end of the week, with all class members writing (and presenting, if desired) a queer drash on a few verses, an episode, or a character from the Torah.
Diane Klein is a lawyer and law professor living in Berkeley, California, working in San Francisco and participating sporadically in Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. Some of her legal scholarship focuses on gender and queer theory, and she thinks of herself as a 'queer heterosexual.'
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course
M19 - What are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur All About?
Joseph G. Rosenstein
What are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur all about? Is Rosh Hashanah simply a prelude to Yom Kippur, or does the beginning of a new year have a separate existence and meaning? Is Yom Kippur simply a time when we beat our breasts, atone for our sins, and hope for divine favor? 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 and Yom Kippur liturgy, how their authors and later commentators understood these themes, and how these themes might be reflected in our own observance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Our text will be the instructor’s brand new Machzor Eit Ratzon.
Joe Rosenstein is a founder and former chair of the NHC and of the NHC Institute. He is the author of Siddur Eit Ratzon (www.newsiddur.org) and Machzor Eit Ratzon, and a member of the Highland Park (NJ) Minyan. In real life, he is a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University whose focus is K-12 mathematics education. He and his wife Judy are blessed with five daughters, three sons-in-law, and three grandchildren.
Categories
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M21 - Freedom to Love - The Song of Songs in Biblical, Rabbinic, Mystical, and Modern Perspectives.
Jonah Chanan Steinberg
The biblical Song of Songs is a vivid and sensual book that challenges ancient boundaries and defies traditional constraints. The interpretive tradition around the Song of Songs has enabled the book to be a mainstay of Jewish tradition for centuries. In these four sessions, incorporating a rich array of sources, we will explore the Song of Songs in its biblical context; in classical rabbinic interpretations; in the Jewish mystical tradition; and in present-day readings.
Rabbi Jonah Chanan Steinberg, PhD. is an Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. Jonah has received the New Scholar Award from the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. He is a Canadian who grew up in Vienna, Austria - the best thing about which was Italy.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- History and Culture
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Extended Format
- Morning Course
M23 - A Post-Modern Haredi Philosopher? The Thought of Rav Yitzhak Hutner
Miriam-Simma Walfish
Perhaps one of the most under-appreciated 20th century Jewish thinkers, R. Yitzhak Hutner served as the rosh yeshiva (dean) of Yeshivas Chayim Berlin. His sermons, artfully crafted in a style created in the classical Lithuanian yeshivot, consider such questions as the religious meaning of debate, different models of relationship, and the sacrality of human beings. We will study these sermons, appreciating not only their artistry, but also considering the possibly radical messages contained in such an unexpected place.
Miriam-Simma Walfish teaches Talmud at Yeshivat Hadar and at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in New York. A graduate of the Pardes Educators’ Program, through which she studied in the Advanced Talmud track at Pardes and received an M.A. in Jewish Education at Hebrew University, she has also studied at Drisha, the Northwoods Kollel, and Midreshet Ein ha-Netziv. She has taught in a variety of settings, including the Hadar Beit Midrash, the Northwoods Kollel, and here at the Havurah Institute.
Categories
- Advanced Text
- Morning Course
M25 - The Exodus-Narrative: Text and Interpretations
Aryeh Wineman
The biblical account of the Exodus from Egypt is both our freedom-document and a foundation-story for Jewish teaching, tradition, and consciousness. Together, we will examine the nature of that account and also touch upon questions concerning its historicity. Then we will examine interesting ways in which Hasidic teachers viewed and even retold the Exodus account. Some of their comments range beyond a literal understanding to a more symbolic grasp of the Exodus-tradition which might help us to clarify its meaning in our lives today.
Aryeh Wineman, rabbi and author, who has taught several courses at the Havurah Institute over the years, is engaged in research and writing in the areas of Hebrew literature and Jewish mysticism.
Categories
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
