April 10, 2024 Adult Learning GROW Series: April 2024

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For the next program in Hebrew College Adult Learning’s free, monthly GROW series, we examine storytelling. 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.

Date: April 10, 2024 | 12-1 PM EST/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Program: With Strong Hands and Outstretched Arms:  The Journey out of Egypt
Instructor: Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Hebrew College President

The image of God’s strong hand and outstretched arm simultaneously comforts and challenges us. No place, no matter how desperate, is beyond the reach of God’s redeeming hand. Yet, confronted with the urgent problem of human suffering, then and in our own time, we must struggle to understand our own place in the story. What is the role of human beings in bringing about an end to suffering and injustice? How do we cultivate a sense of humility, without encouraging a sense of helplessness in the face of an unredeemed world? A closer look at the opening chapters of Exodus reveals that the image of God’s “strong hand and outstretched arm” has reverberations throughout the story of our departure from Egypt — and it holds out for us a message not of human passivity but of radical partnership between human beings and God.

ABOUT OUR INSTRUCTOR

Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld has been president of Hebrew College since 2018. She came to Hebrew College in 2005 and served first as Dean of Students for one year and then as Dean of the Rabbinical School for 11 years, from 2006-2017. Rabbi Anisfeld graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1990 and subsequently spent 15 years working in pluralistic settings as a Hillel rabbi at Tufts University, Yale University, and Harvard University. She has been a regular summer faculty member for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel since 1993 and is co-editor of two volumes of women’s writings on Passover, The Women’s Seder Sourcebook: Rituals and Readings for Use at the Passover Seder and The Women’s Passover Companion: Women’s Reflections on the Festival of Freedom.

From 2011-2013, Rabbi Anisfeld was named to Newsweek‘s list of Top 50 Influential Rabbis in America, and in 2015, was named one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by The Jerusalem Post. She writes and teaches widely, weaving together Torah, rabbinic commentary, and contemporary poetry and literature in her wise and compassionate approach to the complexities of the human experience and the search for healing and hope in a beautiful but fractured world.

DEDICATE A SESSION

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SAVE THE DATE

Free Monthly GROW Program

Date: June 18, 2024 | 12-1 PM EST/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Program: Jews and the Call for Social Justice: Lessons Learned in the fight Against Racism
Instructor: Marc L. Dollinger
Join us: Register now