November 20, 2024 Tamid of Hebrew College Adult Learning GROW Series: November 20

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Join us for Tamid of Hebrew College Adult Learning’s free, monthly GROW series.  For our November program, we will examine memory in Medieval Ashkenaz. We hope you will spend an hour with us for this and future programs in our series, to gather, reflect, observe, and wrestle with topics that will deepen your Jewish learning.

Program: Memory & Memory Enhancement in Medieval Ashkenaz
Date: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 | 12-1 PM/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Instructor: Susan Einbinder
Join us: Register now

Anyone who has crammed for an exam, or left home without whatever you vowed not to forget, has strategies for enhancing memory.  For Late Antique and medieval Jews, an excellent memory was as key to social status as religious authority, and Jewish emphasis on study encouraged the cultivation of memorization techniques.  Beginning with a survey of ancient memory enhancement practices, I look at some Jewish responses to the need to memorize and retain large quantities of text. Where memory fell short, magic was also an option. Remarkably, elements of early Jewish memory magic survived into medieval Ashkenaz in the rituals that marked a Jewish boy’s first day of school.  What might the persistence of these rituals in Jewish life tell us about Jewish attitudes toward learning and how they may differ from modern emphases?

Our Instructor

Susan L. Einbinder is Professor emerita of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut, where she taught from 2012-23 following a long career at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. She received her B.A. from Brown University and Ph.D. from Columbia University, and received rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College (NY 1983).

Dr. Einbinder has written two books on medieval French Jews and their literary responses to persecution and expulsion, Beautiful Death (Princeton: 2002) and No Place of Rest (Phila: 2009). Her third book, After the Black Death (Phila: 2018), gathered traces of Iberian Jewish responses to the Black Death; Writing Plague (Phila: 2023) examined Jewish accounts of the Great Italian Plague of 1630-31.

She has been the grateful recipient of fellowships from the Princeton University’s Shelby Collum Davis Center, the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Cullman Center at the NY Public Library, and the University of Haifa’s Center for Mediterranean Studies. In 2017, she was named a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and in 2022 a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. She has had visiting faculty appointments at Brown University (spring 2019) and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (fall 2019). She lives in Providence, RI, and is currently a visiting scholar in Religious Studies at Brown University.

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December GROW Program

Program: “Kabbalah, Darkness, and Light — Hanukkah’s Season of Balanced Hope”Date: Wednesday, December 18, 2024 | 12-1 PM/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Instructor: Yaakov Ginsberg-Schreck
Join us: Register now

As far back as the Garden of Eden, we humans have feared the dark and yearned for periods of light. This Hanukkah season, for our people’s ancient winter solstice celebration, what darkness are we being asked to release in order to rededicate our lives and communities in the light of eternal hope?

Tamid of Hebrew College is your home for Jewish learning and exploration for your mind, body, heart and soul. The Hebrew word Tamid, which can be translated as “continuous” or “eternal”, links us to our past, honors our present, and connects us to the future. We believe in a continual process of growth and learning and are excited to offer our you a wide array of courses and experiences to expand your thinking, build connection to Jewish tradition and the Jewish people, and nourish your soul. Explore our programs and online course catalog.

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