Holiday Webinars for Rabbis Archive

Posted On Dec 23, 2015

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The High Holidays

 

Sufferings Large and Small:
The Religious Meaning of Life’s Everyday Disappointments
with Dr. Sarah Wolfe
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Polarization, Mistrust, and Teshuvah:
Civic Friendship in Jewish Thought and
the High Holiday Liturgy

with Dr. Shira Billet
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The Complexity of Memory During the Yamim Noraim
(High Holidays 5783)
with Rabbi Mychal Springer
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Hineni: A Traveler’s Prayer
(High Holidays 5783)
with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond
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Spiritual Insights into the High Holiday Liturgy from Jewish Mysticism
(High Holidays 5782)
with Dr. Eitan Fishbane
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The Musaf of Rosh Hashanah as Performative Theology
(High Holidays 5782)
with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond
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Cultivating Resilience
(High Holidays 5782)
with Rabbi Mychal Springer
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Authority, Agency, and Powerlessness: Malkhuyot and the Challenges of 2020
(High Holidays 5781)
with Rabbi Jan Uhrbach
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Summary and discussion questions

Fear, Anger and Acceptance: U-netaneh Tokef in the Age of Covid-19
(High Holidays 5781)
with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond
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Aval Anahnu Va’avotenu Hatanu: Atoning for the Sins of Prior Generations?
(Yom Kippur 5780)
with Rabbi Jan Uhrbach.
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Unravelling World Leadership and the Jewish Community
(High Holidays 5780) with Dr. Richard Haass in conversation with Rabbi Julia Andelman.

Learn more about the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy program.

“You are My Witnesses”: The Religious Meanings of Bearing Witness
(High Holidays 5779) with Rabbi David Hoffman

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Creating Intimacy Through Confrontation: The Role of Rebuke in the Religious Life
(High Holidays 5778) with Rabbi David Hoffman

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On Community and Civic Engagement
(High Holidays 5778) with Ruth Messinger

Related Links

Hope as Spiritual Practice
(High Holidays 5777) with Rabbi David Hoffman

Download the source sheet for this webinar, and a translation of the texts courtesy of
Rabbi Benjamin Resnick.

Referenced Works

  • Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility
  • Alan Mittleman, Hope in a Democratic Age: Philosophy, Religion, and Political Theory
  • Jerome Groopman, The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness

Hasidic Reflections on the High Holidays (5776)
with Dr. Eitan Fishbane

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The Transformative Power of Ritual: Reflections on the Shofar, the Avodah, and Kol Nidrei
(5775) with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond

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Sukkot

 

Sukkot and Kohelet: A time to rejoice or a time to agonize? (5777)
with Dr. Stephen P. Garfinkel

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Hanukkah

 

Wonder of Wonder, Miracle of Miracles: The Lessons of the Hanukkah Miracle (5779) with Dr. Marjorie Lehman

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Hanukkah: Dedicating Temples Past and Future (5777)
with Dr. David C. Kraemer

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Miracles, Light, and Mysticism: Hasidic Reflections on Hanukkah (5780) with Dr. Eitan Fishbane

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Difficult Choices: The Challenge of Prioritizing Mitzvot (Hanukkah 5778) with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond

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A New Reading of Hanukkah in the Bavli (5776)
with Rabbi Judith Hauptman

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Related links:


 

Purim

 

Purim’s Other Mitzvot, Past and Present (5779)
with Rabbi Judith Hauptman

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Women Reading the Megillah for Men: Whose Responsibility is Equality? (5777)
with Rabbi Judith Hauptman

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History or Herstory:  An Equivocal Reading of the Book of Esther (5780)
with Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky

Humans Plan, God Agrees: What the Book of Esther Tells Us about the Origins of Jewish Law (5778)
with Dr. Benjamin Sommer

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Purim and the Perils of Diaspora (5776)
with Dr. Alan Cooper

Source sheets: Greek Versions of Esther | Law (דת) in Esther

Referenced works:

  • “Esther and the Politics of Diaspora” by Elsie R. Stern, JQR, Vol. 100, No. 1 (Winter 2010), pp. 25-53
  • “The Rite to Be Reckless: On the Perpetration and Interpretation of Purim Violence” by Elliott Horowitz, Poetics Today, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 9-54
  • The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther by Adele Berlin, JPS (2001)

Pesah

 

The Cow that Laid an Egg: The Seder and Conflict Resolution (2021)
with Rabbi Robbie Harris

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Should We Wear Black Tie for Our Seders?  (5777)
with Rabbi Burton Visotzky

Referenced works:

  • Siegfried Stein, “The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the Pesah Haggadah”, Journal of Jewish Studies (1957)
  • Gordon J. Bahr, “The Seder of Passover and the Eucharistic Words”, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 12, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1970), 181-202
  • Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism  University of California Press, 1986
  • Burton Visotzky, Aphrodite And The Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It, St. Martin’s Press, 2016

When, How and Why are We Free? Revisiting the Concept of Herut (5780)
with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond

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Meaning from Maggid: Contemporary Scholarship, Contemporary Messages (5778)
with Rabbi Judith Hauptman

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Bloody Doors and Bloody Grooms (Pesah 5776)
with Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky


 

Yom Ha’atzma’ut

 

Thinking About Israel at 68 (5776)
with Chancellor Arnold M. Eisen

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Shavuot

 

Where is Halakhah From? Revelation in Modern Jewish Thought and Law (Shavuot 5778)
with Dr. Yonatan Brafman

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Referenced Works:

  • יוחנן דוד סילמן, קול גדול ולא יסף: תורת ישראל בין שלמות להשתלמות (1999)
  • Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (1997)
  • Leora Batnitzky and Yonatan Brafman (eds.), Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on State, Religion, and Morality (2018)

Tracing the Contours of Belief and Desire: A Look at the First and Tenth Commandments (Shavuot 5776)
with Rabbi Eliezer B. Diamond

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Disciplining Desire: The Meaning of the Tenth Commandment (Shavuot 5779)
with Rabbi Eliezer Diamond

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Additional References:

  • Alexander Rofé, “The Tenth Commandment in the light of four Deuteronomic laws” in The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (1990) 45-65
  • Eliezer Diamond, “The Way of Torah as Askesis: An Ascetic Conceptualization of the Life of ‘Mitzvah,’” CrossCurrents Vol. 57, No. 4 (winter 2008), 563-577

How Do We Come to Know God? Psalm 19 and the Balancing Act of Jewish Theology (Shavuot 5777)
with Dr. Benjamin Sommer

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References:

  • H.-J. Kraus, Psalms 1-59 (Continental Commentaries), Fortress Press (1993)—for Karl Barth’s interpretation
  • Alan Cooper, “Creation, Philosophy and Spirituality: Aspects of Jewish Interpretation of Psalm 19” in Pursuing the Text: Studies in Honor of Ben Zion Wacholder on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, Sheffield Academic Press (1994)
  • “Nature, Revelation and Grace in Psalm 19: Towards a Theological Reading of Scripture,” Harvard Theological Review 108 (2015) 376–401

Ruth and Naomi’s Holy Relationship and its Meaning for Shavuot (5775)
with Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky