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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.
Download the complete list of courses. (PDF)
M01 - Building Singing Communities
Joey Weisenberg, Poretsky Artist-in-Residence
Musician, ba'al tfilah, and danceband captain Joey Weisenberg will teach new melodies and lay out practical strategies for bringing communities together in song. While studying Jewish rhythms and harmonies and creating spontaneous variations of a nign, we'll discuss the process of developing a core of singers, crossing the musical "tipping point," dealing with the musical politics of a shul or group, and leaving room for silence.
Joey Weisenberg is a mandolinist, guitarist, singer and percussionist based in New York City, who has performed and recorded internationally with dozens of bands in a wide variety of musical styles. Joey works as the Music Director at Brooklyn’s oldest synagogue, the Kane Street Synagogue, and is the music faculty at Yeshivat Hadar, an egalitarian yeshiva in New York. He is an artist-fellow at the 14th Street Y's Laba program, and teaches Klezmer music as a faculty member at KlezKanada. He was recently named to "36 under 36" in The Jewish Week as one of 36 new and exciting innovators in Jewish life today. Joey visits shuls and communities around the country as a musician-in-residence, in which he teaches his popular 'Spontaneous Jewish Choir' workshops. For more information, please visit www.joeyweisenberg.com
Categories
- Arts and Movement
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
- Artist in Residence
M03 - The Spiritual Practice of Mussar
Shirah Bell
Mussar, a centuries-old Jewish practice of spiritual self-examination, provides guidance in identifying your uniquely personal path of spiritual growth as well as tools to help bring about that growth. Utilizing text study, meditation, visualization, and journaling, we will explore questions such as: Why do I keep making the same mistakes over and over? Why do I cause pain to myself and others? What steps can I take to bring my life closer to my spiritual potential? What lessons can I learn from the experiences of previous generations? We’ll focus on the fundamental soul trait of humility as a vehicle for developing a Mussar practice to be continued after the class.
Shirah Bell, a Certified Spiritual Director, serves on the board of The Mussar Institute (TMI). She directs TMI’s basic course offering, Everyday Holiness, and leads local Mussar classes, as well as mentoring individuals in Mussar and spirituality.
Categories
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
M05 - Ki Va Moed: Tell Your (Israel) Story
Sarah Beller
When it comes to your relationship with Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what story have you been waiting to tell? It may be tragic or funny, longing or exhilarating – or all of the above. In this course, we’ll dig for these personal true stories and then work creatively to express them through your choice of written, oral, or graphic storytelling. Along the way, we’ll engage with narratives from Israeli, Palestinian, and American poets, graphic novelists, and activists. This course is for you if you are genuinely curious and hungry to give expression to your convictions (and perhaps confusions) about Israel.
Sarah Beller is a longtime member of the NHC community and serves as Director of Programming and Education at J Street, the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans. While earning her master’s degree at American University in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, Sarah was trained in dialogue facilitation and adult experiential education.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Contemporary Issues
- History and Culture
- Morning Course
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
M11 - Divine Self-Limitation in Jewish Theology
Ethan Merlin
Since Biblical times, Jewish thinkers have struggled to reconcile their conception of divine goodness with their experience of undeserved human suffering. Jewish mystics have imagined God initially “contracting” to make room for agents with free will, and in our post-Holocaust era, some have taken solace in this concept of a self-limiting God. But is a self-limiting God truly “off the hook” for suffering caused by other agents? If not, then what are the theological alternatives to self-limitation, and what are their implications for our Jewish religious life? We will explore these questions through readings and conversation. No prior theological experience needed!
Ethan Merlin is a high school math teacher in Washington, DC. He first attended the NHC Summer Institute in 2000, and he taught a course at the 2008 Institute about the thought of William James and Mordecai Kaplan. Along with his partner Joelle Novey and many others, Ethan helps sustain independent Jewish communities in the DC area, including Tikkun Leil Shabbat and Segulah.
Categories
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
M07 - Praying Naked: You and the Holy One with No Book Between
Mitchell Chefitz
The most profound, complete text concerning Jewish spirituality, Jewish mysticism, or the Kabbalah is . . . the siddur. The prayerbook. Within the siddur, the morning prayer service is the most complete. It contains both the reading of the Sh’ma and the Amidah. In it you will find a profound series of spiritual exercises to take you through the Four Worlds of Jewish spirituality.
But what happens when we put the prayer book down? Without the substance of the book to block our line of sight, we see the Holy One who is always visible. Much as the early rabbis built the prayer service upon the order of sacrificial offerings, we’ll review the order of prayer in the morning service and build . . . as deeply as we dare.
Mitch is the author of The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moshe Katan and its sequel, The Thirty-third Hour. His story collection, The Curse of Blessings, has been translated into German, Korean, and Mandarin. His most recent publication is a digitally formatted novella, White Fire. For twenty-two years beginning in 1980 he was the rabbi of the Havurah of South Florida. Mitch has served as chairperson of the National Havurah Committee, editor of a nationally syndicated weekly Torah column, and is a frequent teacher at Havurah institutes on topics related to Jewish spirituality, alternative religious community, and Jewish family education, and especially topics that challenge the boundaries of reason.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
M09 - Through the Lens of Cinema: Borderlands As Testing Grounds
Ilana Lapid
What is the relationship between borders and identities, and how has this relationship been explored in cinema? How are borderlands also testing grounds - the sites of serious ethical dilemmas? By examining powerful selections from films, many by Jewish and Israeli filmmakers, we will explore ways in which personal and communal identities are defined and re-defined through the complex process of bordering. Participants will be led on creative exercises to reflect on ways in which bordering shapes their own lives.
Ilana Lapid, filmmaker and educator, grew up in the US, Israel, and Canada and is fascinated by borders. She has an M.F.A. in Film Production from USC and was the first Artist in Residence at Slifka Center at Yale. Her short film, “Red Mesa,” finished its international festival run (www.redmesamovie.com) and she is currently in development on her first feature.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Contemporary Issues
- History and Culture
- Morning Course
M13 - Hebrew Calligraphy as a Meditative Practice
Linda Motzkin
The most sacred texts of Judaism have been produced, from antiquity to the present day, by sofrim – scribes – who handwrite each letter using quills or reeds on specially prepared parchment. The writing must be done with kavana - spiritual consciousness and meditative focus - in order for the final text to be kosher. This course will introduce the basic techniques and materials of Hebrew scribal arts, from the cutting of quills to the shaping of individual letters to the uttering of statements of kavana, while exploring how doing Hebrew calligraphy can serve as a meditative practice.
Linda Motzkin is co-rabbi, together with her husband Rabbi Jonathan Rubenstein, at Temple Sinai in Saratoga Springs, New York, and part-time Jewish Chaplain at Skidmore College. She is also a soferet(Hebrew scribe), currently engaged in writing a Torah scroll using parchment she is producing from locally donated deer hides.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M15 - A Taste of Talmud
Joe Rosenstein
Is the Talmud a mystery to you? Here’s your chance to get a taste of how the Talmud works. In this course, we will study a few pages of the Talmud on topics ranging from returning lost objects to martyrdom, from reciting the sh’ma to conducting the seder. We will focus on the flavor of the discussion as much as on its content, so that participants will get an appreciation for how each page records debates involving people with different perspectives and conversations reaching across many generations. Translations and transliterations will be used to convey the meaning and sound of the text.
Joe Rosenstein is a founder and former chair of the NHC. He is the author of Siddur Eit Ratzon 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 four grandchildren.
Categories
- Text for Everyone
- Morning Course
M17 - Giving Songs in the Night: The Art of Singing for Consolation
Regina Sandler-Phillips
Within the “containing wall” of the Nine Days before Tisha b’Av, we will practice the art of consolation through the power of community singing. We will turn our voices toward the ancient Jewish wisdom of the m’konenot, singers skilled in lamentation, as reflected in our sacred texts. We will share accessible rounds, chants, lullabies, and love songs in Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish, and Aramaic that offer comfort as well as deepen mindfulness of the precious gift of life during happier times. And we will discover how singing through these days anticipates the “new song” of redemption promised in prophecy and psalm.
Regina Sandler-Phillips is a rabbi, chaplain, cantorial soloist, and “singer provocateur” trained in both classical and folk traditions. She has taught Jewish singing to all age groups in a range of Jewish and general community settings. As the founding chair of a 70-member hevra kadisha (burial fellowship), Regina is a leading innovator in reclaiming the sacred uses of Jewish song for healing through loss. Selections from her forthcoming CD, “MA’AVAR: Jewish Melodies, Chants and Songs of Passage and Transition” will be shared with participants.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M19 - Kiddushin meets 21st-century Egalitarianism
Talya Weisbard Shalem
In recent years, there has been an explosion of creativity amongst contemporary Jewish couples seeking to contract marriages based on principles of equality, mutual commitment, and deep connection to Jewish ritual. This class will look closely at texts from the Talmudic tractate Kiddushin and the Torah, to learn more about the origins of Jewish marriage, and the range of ways women were seen during the biblical and rabbinic time periods. After wrestling with these classic texts, we will look at several Havurah couples’ specific ceremonial choices, to deepen our understanding of how to create new rituals (including queer ceremonies) while maintaining a solid grounding in tradition.
Talya grew up attending the NHC with the rest of the Weisbard family, and it is where she decided to become a rabbi based on enjoying spending time with rabbis-on-vacation. She last taught a class on “The Dark Side of Jewish Holidays” at NHC in 2003. For years before that, she served as the sole teen/young adult rep on the NHC board, and taught in kids’ camp. Since then, she has served on the Everett and Hollander committees. She lives in the Boston area with her partner Josh (with whom she created one of the ceremonies which will be explored in class) and their son Noam Yaron, and davens at Havurat Shalom. One of her favorite things to do is to work with couples to fashion their own unique marriage ceremonies.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M21 - Radicals and Robber Barons: How Jews Both Perpetuate and Fight Inequality in America
Brent Spodek and Zach Teutsch
We will look at the roles Jews have played fighting and intensifying inequality in America -- focusing on our becoming white, building unions, becoming CEOs, and joining the American elite. At the same time that we went from being a discriminated minority to being disproportionately represented in business, politics, law, and medicine, we also became disproportionately represented as environmentalists, unionists, and progressives of all kinds. We’ll discuss how that happened, what was gained and what was lost in the process.
Brent Chaim Spodek is a rabbi in Beacon, NY. In recent years, he’s been the Rabbi in Residence at American Jewish World Service and the Marshall T. Meyer Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York. Brent has taught extensively about spiritual approaches to justice work, Judaism and human rights, and other topics in a wide variety of settings.
Zach Teutsch directs the National Labor College/AFL-CIO’s financial literacy project. Previously he worked as a union educator, campaigner, and strategic researcher at AFSCME, Change to Win, and SEIU. He graduated from Brown University where he received degrees in Economic Sociology and Organizational Behavior.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- History and Culture
- Morning Course
M23 - Yom Kippur: Law and Lore
Miriam-Simma Walfish
What, if anything, is the relationship between Yom Kippur’s prohibitions and its ethical focus on repentance? In this advanced course, we will study sugyot (discussions) from the eighth chapter of Yoma, which deals with the abstentions of Yom Kippur, as well as the exceptions to those rules. In particular, we will pay attention to the interplay of halakhah (law) and aggadah (lore) to see how each helps us understand better the other. The text will be studied solely in the original language so the ability to read and understand Hebrew is a prerequisite, though previous Talmud study is not.
Miriam-Simma Walfish teaches at Yeshivat Hadar, where she has taught courses in Talmud, Bible, and contemporary Jewish thought. 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
- Contemporary Issues
- Spiritual and Religious Life
- Morning Course
M25 - Tales by Shai Agnon
Aryeh Wineman
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, who died a little over forty years ago after sharing the Nobel Prize for Literature, was an eminent Hebrew writer who often drew from Jewish tradition and folklore, creatively re-crafting traditional materials for his own purposes and effects. We plan to read in translation (or in the original for advanced Hebrew readers), discuss and analyze a number of his short stories, situated often between realistic fiction and the world of Jewish folklore, and, above all, to allow ourselves to delight in reading some of the examples of his literary genius.
Aryeh Wineman has written many works in the fields of Hebrew literature and Jewish Mysticism, including Agada and Art (in Hebrew, published in Israel),a collection of his studies on Agnon’s works.
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course
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
