Intensive Academic Learning (Formerly "Me'ah Select") Archives

An American Jewish Bible? – Introducing Robert Alter’s
The Five Books of Moses

An American Jewish Bible? – Introducing Robert Alter’s The Five Books of Moses

Program: Hebrew College Tamid
Instructor: Dr. Avi Bernstein-Nahar (Read Bio)
Dates: 8 Wednesdays, Fall 2024: 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 11/27, 12/4, 12/11 & 12/18
Time: 7-9:00 p.m. EST
Course fee: $400, financial aid is available
Location: Zoom
Hosted by: The Cambridge Collaborative
Registration: Click here

Perhaps every great chapter in the Jewish story includes a new take on the Hebrew Bible – a deep well of narrative, poetry, and law with which Jews have been in dialogue since antiquity. In American modernity, however, the dialogue has slowed for the obvious reason that the great immigration and acculturation process in American Jewish history that occurred between 1881 and 1945 included the acquisition of English and the loss of distinctive Jewish languages, Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew.

Shedding Hebrew, do American Jews thereby end the dialogue with the Hebrew Bible? Not inevitably: American Robert Alter – and Everett Fox before him – is intent on providing us an English translation of the Bible imprinted with the Hebrew original and ripe with opportunities to be in dialogue with the original text and its subsequent rabbinic commentators. Does it deliver what it promises? And what are the inevitable drawbacks and shortcomings of studying the Bible in Alter’s translation?

Robert Alter’s Hebrew Bible: A Translation and Commentary (W.W. Norton) has been called a “landmark” in American literary history, and a “stupendous achievement” destined to “revive the literary power of a Hebrew masterpiece.” Each session will take up a different portion of text, comparing Alter’s renderings with the Hebrew, and with alternate translations, including the Schocken Bible, the Jewish Publication Society renditions, and the King James Version. Each session will also help participants make historical sense of Alter’s herculean effort by drawing connections with Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, whose own translation of the TaNaKh into German paved the way for Alter’s work.

In this class, students will discover connections with the Hebrew Bible they never knew they had, and leave seeking more opportunities to explore its depths. Class preparation will take about two hours per week. A syllabus and bibliography will be distributed prior to the first class. All are welcome.

For additional information or questions, contact the Hebrew College Tamid Team

Jews, Torah, and “Judaism”

Program: Hebrew College Tamid
Instructor: Rabbi Jeffrey Amshalem (Read Bio)
Dates: 8 Mondays, Fall 2024: 9/23, 10/7, 10/21, 11/4, 11/18, 12/2, 12/16 & 1/6
Time: 7:15-8:45 p.m. EST
Course fee: $280, financial aid is available
Location: Zoom
Hosted by: Hebrew College and Co-Sponsored by Temple Sinai in Brookline
Registration: Click here

In this course we’ll study recent archaeological and historical research about the interrelated origins of the Jewish people, the Torah, and what would come to be known as “Judaism,” and discuss their ramifications for our own identities and practices as 21st century Jews. The goals are for the learners to understand current theories about the development of the Jewish people as a self-identified nation and the narratives and laws — which would become the Tanakh — used to develop, maintain, and shape this identity. The class will include scholarly sources, in light of which we will study classical Jewish texts with an investigator’s eye to see how they align with the new scholarship.

For additional information and questions, contact the Hebrew College Tamid Team

Origins of Judaism and Christianity

Program: Hebrew College Tamid
Instructor: Dr. Alan Avery-Peck (Read Bio)
Dates: 5 Mondays, Fall 2024: 10/28, 11/11, 11/18, 12/2 & 12/9
Time: 7:30-9:00 p.m. ET
Course fee: $200, financial aid is available
Location: Zoom
Hosted by: Hebrew College
Registration: Click here

Judaism as we know it today took shape in the first six centuries C.E., in the same period that saw the emergence and growth of Christianity. This course explains the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism, asking what happened to Jews in the first six centuries and evaluating the beliefs and world-views they developed. Our goal is to understand how Judaism evolved on the basis of inherited texts and practices as well as in response to the experiences of the Jewish people. Thus we will come to comprehend the foundations of both Judaism and Christianity and to better conceive of the relationship between evolving religions such as these and the historical settings in which they exist. Significantly, we will see the ways in which Judaism appears to have been, or at significant points was not, the foundation for the Christian ideologies that emerged in this same period.

For additional information and questions, contact the Hebrew College Tamid Team

Torah Mysteries, Scientific Advances, and Secret Knowledge: Ways of Relating Judaism and Science in Jewish Thought and Law – In Person

Torah Mysteries, Scientific Advances, and Secret Knowledge: Ways of Relating Judaism and Science in Jewish Thought and Law -In Person

Program: Hebrew College Tamid
Instructor: Rabbi Benjamin Samuels (Read Bio)
Dates: 10 Wednesdays, Fall 2024: 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 12/4, 12/11, 12/18, 1/8, 1/15, 1/22 & 1/29
Time: 9:30-11:30 a.m. ET
Course fee: $500, financial aid is available
Location: In Person at Temple Beth Elohim (TBE) in Wellesley
Hosted by: Temple Beth Elohim (TBE) in Wellesley
Registration: Click here

In this course, we will explore legal and theological strategies employed in resolving seeming conflicts of Torah and Science. We will discuss how our investigation of these strategies may better direct the use of ancient sources to address contemporary issues. We will also consider how such strategies can help anticipate how Jewish law may respond to changes in scientific understanding and technological capability. The course will be divided into three parts: 1. Theoretical frameworks for relating Torah to Science; 2. Torah and Science in Biblical Commentary; 3. Application to contemporary issues of Torah and Science, such as “Brain Death,” “Assisted Reproductive Technologies,” and “Artificial Intelligence.”

For more information or questions, contact the Hebrew College Tamid Team

Torah Mysteries, Scientific Advances, and Secret Knowledge: Ways of Relating Judaism and Science in Jewish Thought and Law – Online

Program: Hebrew College Tamid
Instructor: Rabbi Benjamin Samuels (Read Bio)
Dates: 10 Mondays, Fall 2024: 10/28, 11/4, 11/18, 11/25, 12/2, 12/9, 12/16, 1/6, 1/13 & 1/27
Time: 9:30-11:30 a.m. ET
Course fee: $500, financial aid is available
Location: Zoom
Hosted by: Temple Beth Elohim (TBE) in Wellesley
Registration: Click here

For more information or questions, contact the Hebrew College Tamid Team

What Makes It Great – Masterworks of Jewish Music

Program: Hebrew College Tamid
Instructor: Dr. Joshua Jacobson (Read Bio)
Dates: 6 Tuesdays, Fall 2024: 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3 & 12/10
Time: 9:30-11:30 a.m. ET
Course fee: $300, financial aid is available
Location: Zoom
Hosted by: Hebrew College
Registration: Click here

We will explore musical masterpieces with Jewish content, asking what makes it great and what makes it Jewish. Our goal is to listen actively and not just hear. We will delve into great vocal and orchestral works by Ernest Bloch, Paul Ben-Haim, Leonard Bernstein, Steve Reich, Arnold Schoenberg and others.

Course details:
1. The First Jewish Concert Music: Art Songs
The beginnings of concert music based on Jewish themes can be traced to composition students at the St Petersburg Conservatory at the beginning of the 20th century. Encouraged by their teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, they began to explore what would be called “Jewish Music” in the classical/romantic styles of the time, and their work would inspire others to follow in their footsteps. We will analyze and listen to art songs with Jewish texts by Moses Milner, Lazar Weiner, and Maurice Ravel.

2. Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service: “A Whole Drama in Itself”
“I aspire to write Jewish music…because I am sure that this is the only way I can produce music of vitality and significance.” In 1929 the Swiss-American composer, Ernest Bloch was commissioned to write a setting of the Sabbath morning service. But Bloch soon realized that he was writing something far grander than the commissioners had in mind. He wrote, “It far surpasses a Hebrew Service now. It has become a cosmic poem, a glorification of the laws of the Universe.” Bloch’s awesome Sacred Service (Avodat Hakodesh) is the closest music we have to compare with the great masses of Mozart and Beethoven.

3. Paul Ben-Haim: Israel’s First Great Composer
When Paul Frankenburger left Germany in 1933 to settle in Tel Aviv, he had already established a reputation as one of the great musicians of his country. But arriving in the land of Israel and changing his name to Ben-Haim, he had a revelation. “I am of the West by birth and education, but I stem from the East and live in the East. … We can provide a musical synthesis between East and West.” Indeed, Ben-Haim become Israel’s first great composer, establishing the “Eastern Mediterranean” style. We will listen to Ben-Haim’s orchestral suite, From Israel, as well as several of his art songs.

4. Leonard Bernstein’s Jewish Symphonies
Leonard Bernstein’s rapid rise to fame is well known. Lesser known is the composer’s deep Jewish faith and his commitment to the State of Israel. The composer of West Side Story also gave us symphonies and songs that are marinated in his Judaism. We will investigate the sources of Bernstein’s faith and delve into several of his works, including the Jeremiah Symphony and the Kaddish Symphony.

5. Arnold Schoenberg: Jewish Revolutionary
One hundred years ago one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg, revolutionized the world of classical music, replacing tonality with his system of organized dissonance. In 1933 Schoenberg rediscovered his Judaism, leaving his native Austria for the United States, declaring, “We are Asians, and nothing of real substance connects us with the West. We have our destiny, …we must return to our origins, to the source of our strength.” We will delve into two of Schoenberg’s dramatic Jewish compositions, A Survivor from Warsaw, and Kol Nidre.

6. Post-Modern Jewish Music: Steve Reich and Osvaldo Golijov
For our final class we will look at two American composers who rejected the dissonance of modern music and found their own paths. The minimalist composer Steve Reich (b. 1936) began his return to Judaism in his forties. His study of Hebrew texts and biblical cantillation inspired him to compose Tehillim (1981). Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960) moved from Argentina to Israel, before finally settling in Boston. In K’vakarat he creates shimmering layers of sound revolving around a traditional High Holiday text.

For more information or questions, contact the Hebrew College Tamid Team