The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America
Jewish Educators Study Forum

Presented in Toronto by
The Lola Stein Institute

Overview

Course Details

Dilemmas of Faith
God and Spirituality in the Modern World

This six-part seminar series with the Shalom Hartman Institute will explore the foundational Jewish issue of faith. In an age of radical polarization around religion in modern society, with a rise in fundamentalism on one hand, and atheism and secularism on the other, how does the Jewish tradition approach dilemmas of faith? Senior visiting faculty from the Shalom Hartman Institute will facilitate a deeper exploration of classical Jewish texts and Jewish thought on contemporary questions of faith and spirituality including:

• Is faith an essential component of Jewish life? Do I have to believe in God to be a “good Jew?”
• How can we reconcile faith and reason?
• Does faith provide certainty? How does the Jewish tradition respond to religious fundamentalism? How does the Jewish tradition respond to religious doubt?
• What does it mean to be in a relationship with God in the modern world? What is the nature of the modern “faith experience?”
• What is the relationship between faith and politics?

Forum Registration

Shalom Hartman Institute Faculty

Rabbi Lauren Berkun is the Southeast Director of Educational Initiatives for Shalom Hartman Institute - North America. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University with a thesis on "The Cultural Poetics of Menstruation in Late Antique Judaism," and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2001. Rabbi Berkun was a Wexner Graduate Fellow, a CLAL Rabbinic intern, and a Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She has served as the JTS Midwest KOLLOT Rabbinic Scholar, Director of Lifelong Learning at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, and Scholar-in-Residence for the Women’s Department of Federation. Rabbi Berkun has written and taught extensively on the topics of mikveh, sexual ethics, and body image. She is also a certified Sivananda yoga instructor and teaches seminars on Jewish meditation and Jewish mysticism. She lives in Aventura, Florida, with her husband, Rabbi Jonathan Berkun of Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center, and their children, Jeremy, Jonah, and Eliana.

Dr. Marcie Lenk is a research fellow, team member of the iEngage Project and Program Director of the Christian Engaging Israel Project. She recently returned to Israel after completing her Ph.D. at Harvard University with a dissertation entitled, The Apostolic Constitutions: Judaism and Anti-Judaism in the Construction of Christianity. For more than two decades she has taught Early Christianity, Hebrew Bible, and Rabbinic Literature at institutions such as Boston University and City College of NY, as well as at Jewish and Christian seminaries in Israel and the United States.

Rani Jaeger is Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute School for Teacher Education, which is related to the Be'eri program, and is aimed at pioneering a nationwide model of Jewish education for Israeli high schools. Rani is pursuing his doctorate at Bar-Ilan University in the interdisciplinary program of Culture and Hermeneutics. He has just returned from Paeideia, the European Institute of Jewish Studies in Stockholm, Sweden, where he was the scholar in residence for a year. Rani teaches at Tel Aviv University and is one of the founders of Beit Tefilah Israeli, a secular synagogue in the heart of Tel Aviv.

Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He has just completed a term as Visiting Assistant Professor and the inaugural Chair of Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis University. Yehuda received his doctorate in Jewish Studies from Harvard University, where he wrote his dissertation on the Jews of the Mediterranean Diaspora and their relationship to the rise of rabbinic piety. His recent project offers new thinking on how contemporary Jews can and should relate to our past. An alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowships and Bronfman Youth Fellowships, Yehuda has taught at Harvard University, Hebrew College, the Brandeis Initiative on Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy, NYU's Center for Online Judaic Studies, and the American Jewish Committee's Commission on Contemporary Jewish Life.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a member of the Institute's iEngage Project, and a contributing editor to The New Republic. His first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, was published in 1995. In 2001 he published, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. A Hebrew version of that book was published in 2006 by Shalom Hartman Institute.

Noam Zion is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, he has a Master of Arts in philosophy from Columbia University. His numerous publications include: A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, "A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah, A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home, Sipurei Reshit, a Hebrew anthology on contemporary readings of Genesis that he published together with his daughter, and Halaila Hazeh, and A Night to Remember, haggadot that he published together with his son.