The Meeting House – Room 300

CLASS 5 How Hillel Became President: Who is an Authority in the Jewish World? The night before Passover, and the pilgrims at the Temple in Jerusalem are in panic. Passover fell this year on a Saturday night, and it turns out the religious leadership doesn’t offer clear guidance about whether the preparations for the Paschal Lamb offering can be done on the Sabbath. Into this vacuum of leadership enters an outsider, Hillel from Babylonia, and in a short series of…

CLASS 6 “It’s Not Heaven”: Power to Interpret, Power to Shame If there is one Talmudic story that became most crucial in the 20th century, it is this one. As the authority for interpretation and action in the Jewish world shifted – according to many readers– from Divine powers to human hands, Jews from across the spectrum reached back to study the“Oven of Akhnai,” in which two Rabbinic figures battle out whether the authority over truth lie sin the hands…

Heresy or Not to Be: Eating the Fruit and Tossing the Peel The renegade teacher and beloved student meet for the last time. As Elisha ben Avuyah, the Talmud’s favorite heretic, and his student Rabbi Meir take a Shabbat stroll, they raise the most tense theological and personal questions through thinly veiled halakhic discourse. At the end, they stand before a line only the two of them can see. One will cross it, the other will not.

  Rabban Gamliel Takes a Piss: Negotiating Public Space in a Multi-Cultural Society How does a minority culture navigate resistance and accommodation within the hegemony? How did Jews manage watching their land turn into a pagan playground? In the middle of the bath house, a roman philosopher accosts Rabban Gamliel for bathing in Aphrodite’s bathhouse, the most Roman and pagan practice, surely forbidden by the Torah itself. But Rabban Gamliel refuses to give an inch, answering with four responses that…

  The Ivory Tower, Plato’s Cave and the First Story of Tikkun Olam What is the life worth living? The life of contemplation or the life of action? This ancient philosophical question is asked in the Talmud through the story of R. Shimon Bar Yochai, the seminal figure of Jewish mysticism, seclusion, and elitism – and the person who goes through numerous intense transformations as this story unfolds. With echoes of Elijah’s cave of zealotry, and Plato’s cave of reality…

  The Tales of Destruction: Kamtza & Bar Kamtza A mistaken identity, a recalcitrant host, and a reigning elite that has lost its moral foundations – these are only three of the factors that brought about the destruction of the Temple, or so this story claims.

    Freedom, Intimacy and the Marital Bed: Heruta Seduces Her Husband Gender and feminist re-readings of our tradition have brought about some of the most profound insights into the intersection of our tradition and modern life. A gender reading of the Talmud's stories is especially juicy, since its authors were obsessed with that terrible yet necessary – or rather that terribly necessary – personality trait called The Yetzer, aka evil inclination. By examining the relationship between sexual desire and…

Spit in My Eye”: the Wife, the Husband, and the Sermon Marriage Counseling A scholarly woman finds herself caught between a charismatic teacher and a jealous and forlorn husband. Is there a way to maintain both worlds and bring peace back to the household without giving up what is most important to each side?