May 09, 2023 Lag B’Omer Community Education Online Event with Rabbi Natan Margalit

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Join us on May 9 at 7:30 pm on zoom

Disagreements with All Due Respect: Lessons found in Nature and the Talmud

We are suffering from a breakdown in public discourse: we seem to have lost the ability to disagree and still remain respectful or even civil. But the wisdom found in natural systems, and the Talmud, can offer a way back to rebuilding a culture of healthy disagreement. Machloket l’shem shamayim—argument for the sake of Heaven—a Talmudic value that highlights the awareness of the common aspects of our identities that are not in conflict, is even more powerful because it is reflected in the fractal and nested quality that we find in all natural systems.

Natural systems offer key models of holding our distinct identity and point of view while also connecting to those with whom we disagree. Using excerpts from his recently published book, The Pearl and the Flame: A Journey into Jewish Wisdom and Ecological Thinking, Rabbi Margalit will share the wisdom of both/and instead of the dilemma of either/or.

Rabbi Natan Margalit, PhD

Rabbi Natan Margalit is a rabbi and scholar with 30 years of experience in teaching, writing, organizing, and congregational leadership. Raised in Honolulu, as a young adult he spent 12 years in Israel where he received rabbinic ordination. He returned to the U.S. and earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at U.C. Berkeley with focus areas in Talmud, Literary Theory, and Anthropology.

He has taught at Bard College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Hebrew College Rabbinical School, and now is chair of the Rabbinic Texts Department at the Aleph Ordination Program. He is also Director of the Earth-Based Judaism track of the A.O.P., and is founder of the non-profit Organic Torah. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife and two sons.

Rabbi Margalit’s most recent publication, The Pearl and the Flame: A Journey into Jewish Wisdom and Ecological Thinking, was published in 2022 by Albion-Andalus Books. To purchase Rabbi Margalit’s most recent book, please visit his website.