Bible by the Bay - Santa Rosa Workshops
Session I - 2:15 - 3:30pm
Session II - 3:30 - 5pm
Be Still And Get Going; The Torah's Five-Step Program for Meeting Spiritual Emergencies
What do we do when we have to do something and have no idea what to do? Moses and the Children of Israel stood at such a point when they found themselves on the shore of the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s Army behind them, and only the sea ahead. The Biblical account of their response to that moment offers a five step program for how to respond to such moments in our own lives that still works.
RABBI ALAN LEW is founder and Director of Makor Or, Jewish Meditation Center in San Francisco, Rabbi Emeritus of Cong. Beth Sholom in San Francisco and best selling author of One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi and This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation and Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Guide to Meditation Practice for Real Life.
Women’s Voices in the Bible
The Song of Songs--the love poetry of the Bible--is a quintessential representation of women's voices and a unique resource for Jewish feminism. It's not just that the Song is the only biblical book in which women speak most of the lines. There is reason to believe that women were part of the composition process, making the Song the earliest text we have to which Jewish women contributed authorship. But perhaps the most striking feature of the Song is the way in which it challenges sexist stereotypes prevalent in the biblical (and postbiblical) world. We'll read passages from this sensual and lyrical book, in the original Hebrew and in English translation. Knowledge of Hebrew is not required.
DR. MARCIA FALK is a renowned poet and translator and feminist thinker, author of The Book of Blessings and as translator of Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible; The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems of Zelda; and With Teeth in the Earth: Selected Poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman.
It’s Not Easy Being Green: Mixed Messages from the Bible on the Role of Humans in Creation
Mother Earth. Father Time. Does this make us apathetic and risk-taking teens with seriously fraught relationships to both parents? Though made from the dust of the earth and destined to return to it, one of the many ways Westerners justify shortsighted environmentally destructive behaviors is by quoting the Bible. Join me for a more nuanced look at a variety of Biblical texts that suggest different relationships between earthlings and the rest of Creation.
RACHEL BRODIE is a renowned Bay Area Jewish educator and Founder and Executive Director of Jewish Milestones in Berkeley.
The Bible in Islam
The Koran (or Qur'an), the holy scripture of Islam, includes many familiar features known to readers of the Bible. Muslims, as members of a monotheistic tradition that claims Abraham as a founder, understand that they worship the same God as do Jews and Christians. In the Koran are found narratives describing other biblical figures, including Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus, as well as reference to the Muslim prophet Mohammed (Muhammad). The Koran presumes that its readers understand concepts familiar to readers of the Bible such as divine command, the word of God, the throne of God, heavenly books, and angels, among others. Parallels and differences that emerge from comparing the Koran and the Bible pose difficult theological and historical questions, but also reveal the complex and multi-layered relationship of Islam to Judaism and Christianity.
PROF. FRED ASTREN is the Director and Professor in the Jewish Studies Program at San Francisco State University. He works on Jewish history in the medieval Islamic world and Jewish-Muslim relations and is the author of Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding.
Occupied Territories or Promised Land: The Bible in the Political Debate in Israel
Biblical texts announcing the promise of the land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants, the conquest of the land of Canaan by Joshua and the twelve tribes and the settlement by the people Israel may be thousands of years old, but they are alive and urgent in the political debate in Israel about the future of “the West Bank:” Is it to be held by and settled by Israel as the reincarnation of the Biblical Judea and Samaria (the biblical names the settler block prefers) or “Occupied Territory” which ought to be a Palestinian State? The workshop will focus on close reading of the Biblical texts that underlie the debate.
RACHEL BIALE is the author of Women and Jewish Law, Founder and Director of "Bible by the Bay," and Bay Area Regional Director of Progressive Jewish Alliance.
How Did They Write the Bible? The Origins of the Hebrew Alphabet
According to Jewish lore, the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet pre-existed Creation, and constituted the raw material for the Divine plan for this extensive building project. Modern scholarship sees a -- shall we say -- more evolutionary emergence of the Aleph-Bet for Hebrew. In fact, the characters we see in our prayerbooks and Torah scrolls weren't even invented by the Biblical Hebrew people, but were borrowed from their fierce enemies! Ken Cohen will explain how our people's writing emerged from neighboring cultures, and what ever happened to the original set of alphabetic characters that Abraham, Moses and King David would have used.
KEN COHEN is a Lehrhaus Judaica Master Teacher, former President of Lehrhaus Judaica, and adjunct faculty member at San Francisco State University.