Tikvah Institute for Jewish Thought to Present Three Lectures on Contemporary Jewish Theology at JTS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Eve Glasberg
Office: (212) 678-8089
Email: evglasberg@jtsa.edu

February 1, 2011, New York, NY

The Tikvah Institute for Jewish Thought of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) will present Contemporary Jewish Theology: Three Lectures. The lectures will be held from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in the Mendelson Convocation Center at JTS’s campus at 3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street) in New York City. All three are free and open to the public. Reservations are not required, but encouraged. To make reservations, or for more information, please contact Bobbi Raphael at boraphael@jtsa.edu or (212) 280-6124. Please bring a photo ID and lunch. Drinks and desserts are available first come, first served.

The first talk, on Thursday, February 3, 2011, is entitled “Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition.” The speaker, Dr. Arthur Green, is recognized as one of the world’s preeminent authorities on Jewish thought and spirituality. He is the rector of the Rabbinical School and the Irving Brudnick Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College and Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University. Previously, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. A prolific author, Dr. Green recently published Radical Judaism (Yale University Press); he has also published Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow (Jewish Lights Publishing) and A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford University). He lectures widely at universities and Jewish communities throughout North America and Israel.

The second lecture, on Thursday, March 10, 2011, will be given by Dr. David Novak, who will speak about “Zionism and Jewish Theology.” He holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Schiff Chair of Jewish Studies as professor of the Study of Religion and professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Previously, he taught at JTS, the New School for Social Research, and Princeton University, as well as other institutions, and he has lectured widely throughout North America, Europe, Israel, and South Africa. Dr. Novak is the author of 13 books, including The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology (Princeton University Press) and Talking with Christians: Musings of a Jewish Theologian (Eerdmans Publishing Company).

The final presentation, on Thursday, March 31, 2011, is “The Renewal of the Covenant: Humanity Come of Age.” The speaker, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, is an influential theologian who has written extensively on post-Shoah theology, on the relationship of Judaism and Christianity, and on the ethics of power and religious/cultural issues of pluralism after the Holocaust. He has served as chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, President of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, and President of CLAL—the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. His most recent book is For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity (Jewish Publication Society).

The Tikvah Institute for Jewish Thought is an academic program with a public dimension devoted to a searching intellectual encounter between the best sources of Jewish and Western reflection on the deepest problems of human life.

Visit JTS at www.jtsa.edu
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